Focusing On A Client-Centered Approach To Connecting With Lawyers

By David Richardson


Using online matching services is one of the fastest ways of getting the exact product or service you need. By using such matching services, are clients assured of the best legal assistance for their specific situations? Now that more clients are beginning to appreciate their legal rights, there is an increased demand for legal services which makes online legal matching services good sources of income.

The difference between these new services and traditional services is that the former requires a more thought out process of determining matches. Clients who intend to avail of online legal matching are given online forms where they can enumerate the facts and details of their problem. Before making a decision on the requests, participating lawyers are required to read through them to get to know the issues better.

Many lawyers are willing to spend some amount for monthly or annual fees to matching companies with the hope of getting more clients. Matching businesses claim that they are not covered by federal and state ethics regulations because the clients are screened by the participating lawyers themselves and not by the companies. They assert that their business does not fall within the scope of a referral service. The client is given a free hand in choosing the specific lawyer he or she likes. Information on a specific case is disseminated to all interested lawyers who are participants in their services.

What can clients and lawyers expect from these services? If you're looking for simple legal assistance, this may work but for cases with some level of difficulty, other options should also be explored. For an amount that is not considered measly, member attorneys are afforded the opportunity to build a robust portfolio. For lawyers who have built their own niche, this is not a necessity.

Not all requests are potential cases and so time used to meet with clients who don't need legal assistance is time lost for lawyers. For cases with some level of difficulty, lawyers will want to gather more details by calling the clients themselves. Lawyers need to personally talk to the clients because this could help them to form more intelligent decisions.

Both legal referral and matching companies have been observed to be growing with unexpected pace over the last decade. As of the moment, a lot of lawyers have subsribed to this.

Can lawyers receive as many referrals as they want? Being the hub of activity and people, urban areas would expectedly yield more referrals than in the outskirts and rural areas. Are cases matched to the proper lawyers? The companies have no clear way of knowing. It is not the practice of matching service providers to keep an eye on the matches, hence no specific figures are available. The volume of requests from clients are not uniform in all places and is determined by the level of progress in a place.

In order to be more attractive to lawyers, competing companies offer varied ways of serving them. For certain online sites, lawyers and clients are virtually strangers while requests are being referred and until the clients have chosen their lawyers. For clients with requests, they simply need to complete forms provided by online sites which are thereafter electronically delivered to the lawyers who possess the required expertise. After studying the information sheets, lawyers who want to take on the cases should inform the company. After being informed of the names of prospective lawyers, the clients can now make a choice.

Not wanting to be left behind, some matching service owners can grant their lawyers special benefits if they are willing to pay the corresponding rates. They assure lawyers that they will be billed their next payment only after recovering the cost of their first payment from the referred clients. What some well known companies do is attract more clients. The roster of possible lawyers is immediately presented to clients to save time. Also, by withholding their identities, they are encouraged to give more comprehensive details about their request. Take away this confidentiality and people will be tempted to tell half truths and half lies.




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