After a career working at a large law firm and for large and small companies, I am now practicing solo in a variety of practice areas and enjoying it as much as anything I've done in law. There are more and more lawyers finding themselves in the same good circumstance.
From
time to time, I find it helpful to reach out to other solo
practitioners and small law firms for expertise in their practice areas. It has become apparent that common people need the kind of access to legal resources that I have, so I decided to create this gathering spot where persons seeking legal counsel can come for assistance.
LAWYERS FOR THE COMMON PERSON
LAWYERS FOR THE COMMON PERSON
There is a growing need among common people for access to affordable legal services. Persons with sufficient resources to hire counsel have no trouble finding competent lawyers to assist them. But for those of more modest means, it's a different story.
A GROWING NUMBER OF OLDER LAWYERS AND SMALL PRACTICES ARE HAPPY TO WORK FOR LESS
A GROWING NUMBER OF OLDER LAWYERS AND SMALL PRACTICES ARE HAPPY TO WORK FOR LESS
Couple the need for affordable legal services with (a) the growing army of experienced lawyers with available time and resources, and (b) increasing numbers of underutilized older lawyers approaching or at retirement but who remain interested in continuing to provide affordable legal services. That's how the Legal BeaglesTM model of legal service delivery was born.
Legal BeaglesTM combines the need of common people for affordable legal counsel with legal resources able to satisfy that need.
Legal BeaglesTM combines the need of common people for affordable legal counsel with legal resources able to satisfy that need.
WHAT IS LEGAL BEAGLESTM?
Currently Legal BeaglesTM represents a way of providing affordable legal services that I have been practicing for decades. Legal BeaglesTM is for (a) lawyers with the experience and ability to obtain good results in a variety of practice areas who demonstrate a willingness to work for affordable fees (and sometimes just free consultation) and (b) common persons needing those affordable legal services without expensive offices, overloaded support staff and excessive Profits-Per-Partner goals driving legal service prices higher.
Legal BeaglesTM seeks relationships with lawyers willing to embrace an affordable services concept. Clients will find us by word of mouth and through social media without expensive commercial advertising. Lawyers embracing the Legal BeaglesTM concept provide fixed fee and menu item services as well as work pursuant to more traditional hourly rate and contingent fee arrangements.
WHAT KIND OF CLIENTS NEED LEGAL BEAGLESTM?
Legal BeaglesTM seeks to address the middle market. Organizations already exist that focus on pro bono publico services for those unable to afford to pay legal fees. And high income and wealthy individuals have no end of lawyers willing to provide legal services at higher prices. We are about everyone else.
Legal BeaglesTM address the middle market - clients unable to satisfy the financial eligibility requirements of free pro bono legal services but who also cannot afford or do not wish to pay high hourly rates for legal services of the same quality that can be obtained for less.
WHY LEGAL BEAGLESTM and NOT LEGAL EAGLES?
WHAT KIND OF CLIENTS NEED LEGAL BEAGLESTM?
Legal BeaglesTM seeks to address the middle market. Organizations already exist that focus on pro bono publico services for those unable to afford to pay legal fees. And high income and wealthy individuals have no end of lawyers willing to provide legal services at higher prices. We are about everyone else.
Legal BeaglesTM address the middle market - clients unable to satisfy the financial eligibility requirements of free pro bono legal services but who also cannot afford or do not wish to pay high hourly rates for legal services of the same quality that can be obtained for less.
WHY LEGAL BEAGLESTM and NOT LEGAL EAGLES?
Some have asked, "why legal beagles and not legal eagles?" The question itself evidences the problem that Legal BeaglesTM addresses. Access to justice is unnecessarily constrained. Common people often cannot afford or do not wish to pay the cost of legal services as they are currently provided by many lawyers and law firms. Clients at the top, where eagles fly, have no problem obtaining legal counsel and paying for lawyers at higher hourly prices. But legal services are needed by common people who work and live on the ground - the same ground where beagles walk, not the sky where eagles fly.
TRADITIONAL LAW FIRM ECONOMICS ARE OUT OF WHACK
Many lawyers tend to be busy focusing on the legal needs of clients at the top of the market who can afford to pay well for legal services. As a result, lawyers are being drawn out of the middle market and are self-allocating preferentially to serve wealthy individuals and companies - those who can afford to pay high legal prices. What about the common person who also needs legal counsel? Legal BeaglesTM seeks to address that need.
TRADITIONAL LAW FIRM ECONOMICS ARE OUT OF WHACK
Many lawyers tend to be busy focusing on the legal needs of clients at the top of the market who can afford to pay well for legal services. As a result, lawyers are being drawn out of the middle market and are self-allocating preferentially to serve wealthy individuals and companies - those who can afford to pay high legal prices. What about the common person who also needs legal counsel? Legal BeaglesTM seeks to address that need.
First, it is the responsibility of all lawyers to aid in the administration of justice and uphold the rule of law. But if only wealthy persons can obtain effective legal counsel, the law could tend to skew to the side of those wealthy persons.*
Lawyers are needed to fill the gap by providing affordable legal services to those in the middle. More and more lawyers want to serve that middle market and are willing to reduce prices to do so.
The price of legal services can be reduced. Legal services need not be so expensive. But over time, the price of legal services has risen to meet the market's ability to absorb those higher prices. Moreover, the limit on price has not yet been exceeded, even though law firm hourly rates have continued to rise.
TECHNOLOGY AND SOFTWARE REDUCE THE COST TO DELIVER LEGAL SERVICES
Nevertheless, good quality legal services can be provided at lower prices. The reason is that new tools and technologies are available to level the playing field.
The computer is to the legal field as the six-gun was to the Wild West - the great equalizer. With computers, desktop scanners, optical character recognition of scanned documents, word processing software, cloud-based document, file and case management systems, solo practitioners can more than hold their own against larger law firms and, in many practice areas, provide equally excellent service at substantially lower costs.
The pervasive use of computers, software, electronic document management, and less expensive office overhead substantially reduce a practitioner's costs to provide legal services. Legal BeaglesTM, and a few other forward-thinking law firms, have been challenging the traditional high-price paradigm with a different approach. Lawyers can operate very comfortably and efficiently with modern tools and less-than-oppulent office arrangements to deliver affordable legal services while still achieving good results for their clients. And as many lawyers achieve personal lifetime financial goals they tend to put a higher value on their own continued useful productive legal engagement than on earning yet more money.
Increasingly, much of a law firm's revenue has been absorbed by office overhead (principally rent and staff labor) and higher expectations of law firm partners for more and more personal income. Profits Per Partner have been grown relatively unchecked over time. And law firms have incurred increased self-imposed costs as they migrate to higher rent spaces, employ increasingly large legions of support personnel, and seek to increase Profit Per Partner. By and large, clients have groused, but generally acquiesced to the higher legal fees.
But law need not be practiced that way for all clients even though it remains the model that many lawyers and law firms envy and try to replicate.
CHANGE HAS ARRIVED - BABY BOOMER LAWYERS WHO AIN'T DEAD YET
Today there is little valid reason to keep legal fees high other than that the market will pay them.
Enter a new factor - the Baby Boomer generation adding viable practitioners with decades of high quality experience at the very same law firms that continue driving the same old financial model. But there is a new sheriff in town - viable competition from the same lawyers who retired from those law firms, or who have just had enough of the way that law has been practiced and clients treated.
Moreover, Baby Boomer practitioners who remain interested in working represent an excellent source of experienced legal counsel at substantially lower prices. Admittedly, not every practice area lends itself to this concept, but virtually every practice area needed by the common person surely does.
Hence Legal BeaglesTM - "Lawyers for the Common Person"TM. The goal of Legal BeaglesTM is to provide reasonably priced legal services so that the common person can afford them. In the process, the Legal BeaglesTM concept can provide legal practitioners with self-actualization in their work together with a reasonable amount of supplemental income dependent mostly on time and effort.
Lawyers are needed to fill the gap by providing affordable legal services to those in the middle. More and more lawyers want to serve that middle market and are willing to reduce prices to do so.
The price of legal services can be reduced. Legal services need not be so expensive. But over time, the price of legal services has risen to meet the market's ability to absorb those higher prices. Moreover, the limit on price has not yet been exceeded, even though law firm hourly rates have continued to rise.
TECHNOLOGY AND SOFTWARE REDUCE THE COST TO DELIVER LEGAL SERVICES
Nevertheless, good quality legal services can be provided at lower prices. The reason is that new tools and technologies are available to level the playing field.
The computer is to the legal field as the six-gun was to the Wild West - the great equalizer. With computers, desktop scanners, optical character recognition of scanned documents, word processing software, cloud-based document, file and case management systems, solo practitioners can more than hold their own against larger law firms and, in many practice areas, provide equally excellent service at substantially lower costs.
The pervasive use of computers, software, electronic document management, and less expensive office overhead substantially reduce a practitioner's costs to provide legal services. Legal BeaglesTM, and a few other forward-thinking law firms, have been challenging the traditional high-price paradigm with a different approach. Lawyers can operate very comfortably and efficiently with modern tools and less-than-oppulent office arrangements to deliver affordable legal services while still achieving good results for their clients. And as many lawyers achieve personal lifetime financial goals they tend to put a higher value on their own continued useful productive legal engagement than on earning yet more money.
Increasingly, much of a law firm's revenue has been absorbed by office overhead (principally rent and staff labor) and higher expectations of law firm partners for more and more personal income. Profits Per Partner have been grown relatively unchecked over time. And law firms have incurred increased self-imposed costs as they migrate to higher rent spaces, employ increasingly large legions of support personnel, and seek to increase Profit Per Partner. By and large, clients have groused, but generally acquiesced to the higher legal fees.
But law need not be practiced that way for all clients even though it remains the model that many lawyers and law firms envy and try to replicate.
CHANGE HAS ARRIVED - BABY BOOMER LAWYERS WHO AIN'T DEAD YET
Today there is little valid reason to keep legal fees high other than that the market will pay them.
Enter a new factor - the Baby Boomer generation adding viable practitioners with decades of high quality experience at the very same law firms that continue driving the same old financial model. But there is a new sheriff in town - viable competition from the same lawyers who retired from those law firms, or who have just had enough of the way that law has been practiced and clients treated.
Moreover, Baby Boomer practitioners who remain interested in working represent an excellent source of experienced legal counsel at substantially lower prices. Admittedly, not every practice area lends itself to this concept, but virtually every practice area needed by the common person surely does.
Hence Legal BeaglesTM - "Lawyers for the Common Person"TM. The goal of Legal BeaglesTM is to provide reasonably priced legal services so that the common person can afford them. In the process, the Legal BeaglesTM concept can provide legal practitioners with self-actualization in their work together with a reasonable amount of supplemental income dependent mostly on time and effort.
So, if you are interested in participating in some capacity with Legal BeaglesTM, feel free to contact me.
Ellis R. Mirsky
Attorney at Law
MIRSKY AND ASSOCIATES, PLLC
Two Blue Hill Plaza, P.O. Box 1571
Pearl River, NY 10965
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EMirsky@MirskyLaw.com
www.MirskyLaw.com
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*Witness the Citizens United case, 558 U.S. 310 (2010), holding that the free speech clause of the First Amendment to the Constitution prohibits the government from restricting independent expenditures for communications by nonprofit corporations, for-profit corporations, labor unions, and other associations. That decision effectively opened the floodgates to unlimited political advertising thereby advantaging wealthy donors in advancing their agendas, ultimately resulting in the 2016 election and a $1 trillion increase in the federal budget marked by huge tax cuts for the wealthy with the cost offset by multitrillion-dollar cuts to Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, food stamps, public schools, the Environmental Protection Agency, and virtually every other public institution that the middle class relies on.
MIRSKY AND ASSOCIATES, PLLC
Two Blue Hill Plaza, P.O. Box 1571
Pearl River, NY 10965
------------------------------
EMirsky@MirskyLaw.com
www.MirskyLaw.com
----------------------------------------
*Witness the Citizens United case, 558 U.S. 310 (2010), holding that the free speech clause of the First Amendment to the Constitution prohibits the government from restricting independent expenditures for communications by nonprofit corporations, for-profit corporations, labor unions, and other associations. That decision effectively opened the floodgates to unlimited political advertising thereby advantaging wealthy donors in advancing their agendas, ultimately resulting in the 2016 election and a $1 trillion increase in the federal budget marked by huge tax cuts for the wealthy with the cost offset by multitrillion-dollar cuts to Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, food stamps, public schools, the Environmental Protection Agency, and virtually every other public institution that the middle class relies on.
Legal BeaglesTM is not a partnership nor an association of law firms
Legal BeaglesTM is not a
partnership nor an association of law firms. Each attorney and law firm with which Legal BeaglesTM has a relationship is solely
responsible for the matters entrusted to his/her/its care. No attorney is
responsible for the work, professional service or legal advice provided
by any other attorney not a member of or employed by that attorney.
Legal BeaglesTM does not refer nor endorse or recommend attorneys.
Legal BeaglesTM does not refer, endorse or recommend clients to law firms, attorneys or legal support organizations. The
listing in any materials of the name of such a person or entity is not an endorsement
or recommendation of that person or entity by Legal BeaglesTM.
Note: Unless otherwise noted, each lawyer having a relationship with Legal BeaglesTM is an attorney licensed to practice law in the state(s)
in which he/she has an office.
