The quarterly publication of the International Legal Technology Association
Issue link: https://epubs.iltanet.org/i/34686
practice areas, clients might also feel that they are buying things like judgment or risk management — things they’d happily pay more for than a document or a unit of time. That is a big disconnect between lawyers and clients and where the opportunity for freemium law practice comes into play. How might you start to consider freemium models in the practice of law? Anderson’s book is a great starting place. It has plenty of ideas that might apply to the practice of law. In addition to the fifty free business models he lists, he describes four major freemium models, each built on the notion of limits: • Time limited (e.g., 30-day trial subscription) • Feature limited (e.g., basic version free and pay for advanced version) • Seat limited (e.g., three users for free and pay for additional users) • Customer-type limited (e.g., small and young companies get free services) Discover Opportunities for Freemium Once you start to do a little brainstorming, you’ll probably be surprised how many ideas you will have that use free as an entryway to profitable products or services. Will there be resistance and barriers? Of course. It hasn’t been done before. It’s change. How do we bill our time? How do we apply bar regulation based on a 20th-century framework to 21st-century client needs? I won’t pretend that these will not be difficult frames to change, but freemium is for innovators, and innovators like challenges. We ignore the difficulties other information businesses find themselves in on almost a daily basis, and at our own peril. Simple technology and small efforts and experiments can drive this. Document assembly has been around for years, and it’s difficult to think of a freemium approach that would not take advantage of it. Existing knowledge management efforts might be another source of freemium prototypes. Where might you find other ideas? I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about Bryan Cave’s Trade Zone, a well-known extranet application that might serve as a model that could be adapted to a freemium approach. Other professional services firms, authors and consultants have successful models. Stories of the financial success of authors who make e-books available for free and find that they sell more paper books as a result (and often to the same people) have become commonplace. Talk to young people, see what’s going on outside the U.S., and get a range of opinions. There are lots of ideas out there. Don’t limit yourself to what other law firms have done before. Let me emphasize that I’m not advocating a wholesale or total freemium approach in the practice of law. However, I do think that economic survival for the long term depends on taking a diversified portfolio approach to business models, balancing risk and reward across a range of strategies in a prudent (not simply a conservative) way. Using free to create enhanced-value freemium revenue streams should be one part of your portfolio. ILTA Dennis Kennedy is a well-known legal technology author and information technology lawyer based in St. Louis, Missouri. He writes a monthly technology column for the ABA Journal, co-hosts The Kennedy-Mighell Report podcast on the Legal Talk Network and co-authored “The Lawyer’s Guide to Collaboration Tools and Technologies: Smart Ways to Work Together.” This article is loosely based on a presentation he gave at Ignite Law 2011. You can follow him at http:// denniskennedy.com/blog. Action Steps to Get You Started • Borrow Chris Anderson’s book from your public library or go to iTunes and get the audio version for free. Then see if you find yourself spending money to buy the book and proving his point about freemium. • Spend 30 minutes with a piece of paper and brainstorm ways you might try free and freemium models, starting with places where you already heavily discount or write- off legal fees and using simple technologies. • Change your frame and see if it changes your game. • Provide highlights to clients in a free annual summary of important cases prepared by an associate and delivered as an email newsletter. • Create an audio or video product where partners explain why the cases matter and which are really the most important, with discussion of practical implications. • Prepare fixed-price half-day customized presentations where your best people show a client’s legal and executive team how to address those new cases in ways that specifically help the company and answer their questions. ILTA Peer to Peer the quarterly magazine of ILTA 25