I was recently talking with a lawyer who said that a good portion of the law is just going through a legal process. He said that when he teaches a new lawyer about a process he first explains how to do it, then lets the lawyer do it with his oversight, then let’s him go on his own. So if you had a site that walked a non-lawyer through the same process with lawyer oversight, it seems you would reach the same result. This is what eLawyering is about. Richard Ganat is doing this as explained in article in the Wired magazine. Here’s a quick explanation:
Granat, who runs his own law firm and cochairs the American Bar Association’s task force on elawyering, has designed and marketed a number of Web tools that walk people through common legal procedures. He created a child-support calculator, for example, which assists couples going through relatively amicable divorces. There’s also a tool to help people decide whether they need Chapter 7 or Chapter 13 bankruptcy. These widgets then generate legal forms, which may be reviewed by a licensed attorney who can make suggestions or offer advice over the phone.
Granat predicts this will be the way law is practiced in the next five years or so. I think this will happen when you can get lawyers who think this way with programmers who can make it happen. These two groups just don’t seem to bump into each oher that often.