Crowdsourcing Legal Questions

Crowdsourcing can answer such legal questions!

One of the great innovations of the internet is the ability for anyone to get answers to their questions in a short amount of time from multiple sources. This happens all across the internet, from more formal sites dedicated to asking and answering (think Yahoo! Answers or Ask.com) to the informal nature of polling a Twitter following for advice.

Quizzing a lawyer for legal advice is the original domain of hiring a professional for their knowledge and expertise, but it has yet to become a standard practice to turn to the internet when you find yourself in need of it. Why is that and what is the future of legal crowdsourcing?

Like many professions that are adjusting their business models in the internet age, there are no easy answers or guarantees on what will happen. However, with the emergence of sites such as Law Pivot and the increasing number of lawyers turning to social media and the web, there are definite trends to keep an eye on.

Clients Choose Their Questions, Not Their Lawyers

Law Pivot is a service designed by two lawyers that lets clients ask questions online, anonymously.

You can ask questions about a variety of legal topics that concern your startup: contracts, stock issues, employment, licensing, patents, trademarks, real estate, just to name a few. But when you tag your question and request a lawyer, you needn't only do so based on subject matter expertise. You can indicate, for example, that you need someone who's quick to respond.

You can then choose to send your question to the lawyers you choose or the ones LawPivot recommends, and you'll get an email when a lawyer responds to your question.

The interesting factor in the Law Pivot model is that clients can, but are not required to choose the lawyer they want to hear from. This is a big change from the past that allows the focus to be on issues, and therefore helps clients reach the best lawyer for them, without relying on formerly important factors such as word of mouth or advertising practice areas. This will be key for new companies and ventures that will be looking for both easy and inexpensive ways to take on legal issues.

Lawyers Can Use Public Answers to Bring in Private Clients

Though services such as Law Pivot or Rocket Lawyer can help clients take on basic legal issues and provide the more common and simpler legal documents free of charge, many clients will need more than just basic information. No legal issue is every truly free of complexity and that only becomes more true when business and money may become involved. So what happens when clients are no longer comfortable operating in the open, social area of the internet?

Now, many of these emerging services make it possible for clients to disclose their information “confidentially” to the website in question. Let’s set aside, for a moment, the wisdom of uploading to a faceless website the details of your aged parent’s capacity to make decisions or that dispute with your company’s key supplier. Let’s suppose that a critical mass of people is willing to take that risk and reap the rewards.

If that’s really how things evolve, that’s all well and good, but those kinds of transactions are not social. The whole premise of social media is that it is public, interactive and conversational; when you ask a question on Quora or LinkedIn, everyone sees it. Once you go behind the equivalent of a closed door and disclose your case in private with an identifiable individual, you are no longer in the realm of social media.

The good news is, of course, that anything that starts off public or online can be brought into real world, private meetings and working relationships between lawyers and clients. Because our legal system works, ultimately, in offices, court rooms and the specificity of individual cases, there is going to be a limit to crowdsourcing.

However, there will always be a role for legal advice online, and it is one that is still evolving and refining each day. Do you have questions on crowdsourcing? Please, contact us! Or if you have had experience working with crowdsourced legal advice, we'd love to hear about it in our comments. 

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