As we are nearly ¼ of the way through the 21st century, it is beneficial to examine how consumer preferences and business services have developed in recent years. Subscription-based offerings have permeated through dozens of industries over the past decade. From Peloton and Equinox Plus to Netflix and Apple Music, businesses have started to offer consumers the ability to purchase products and services in a different way than was previously available. And subscription-based product offerings aren’t just beneficial to venture capitalists and Wall Street. Oftentimes, they are beneficial to consumers as well. Business services—particularly legal services—have been slower to modernize than consumer services.
How subscription-based benefits consumers
Of course, the subscription-based model benefits companies like Netflix and Apple with more consistent cashflow. But it also provides an enhanced consumer experience. Compared with decades past, consumers of on-demand entertainment have access to more options and are able to consume more of it. As opposed to spending 99 cents per song on iTunes, consumers can now listen to as many songs as they would like. As opposed to spending $3.99 to rent a movie, consumers can now watch unlimited movies.
Where legal services are inefficient
While music listeners can now pay $10 per month instead of 99 cents per song, consumers of corporate legal services are still paying for legal counsel in 6-minute increments—about the equivalent of listening to one or two new songs. While the 6-minute billing certainly works for law firms, it is about as inefficient as paying 99 cents per song. For music listeners, the choice was either to spend lots of money or listen to less music. For consumers of legal services, the choice is still either to spend lots of money or receive less dedicated time and attention from their attorneys.
With large, publicly traded companies, the answer is usually to just spend tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees. But for most small and midsize businesses, they wind up consuming less legal counsel because of budget constraints. That is, of course, until it is too late (think, defending a lawsuit). But what if consumers of corporate legal services didn’t have to compromise on quality or quantity just because of price? Like today’s music listeners, they could consume as much as they want or need. The result? An enhanced consumer experience.
How subscription-based legal services can help
Instead of giving an attorney X number of hours to draft a contract based on budget limits, the attorney can take as much time as is necessary to draft the contract as well as possible. And as opposed to omitting certain legal services because of high cost, subscription-based legal consumers wouldn’t have to worry about whether or not it is “worth it” to consult with their attorney on a particular question or issue. Moreover, subscription-based legal consumers also benefit from certainty in cost—something every business owner would like.
In advising business clients as outside counsel, Frieser Legal offers subscription-based legal services. This approach helps us meet our clients’ needs by providing higher-quality—yet more cost-effective—counsel. Instead of continuing to pay for legal services in 6-minute increments, ditch the 99 cents per song model. You listen to as many songs as you would like. Why not get as much legal counsel as you need, too?
