New Jersey lowered the boom on AVVO and LegalZoom the other day, finding their practice models violated a number of ethics rules, including fee sharing with nonlawyers and operation of an unlicensed referral service. I doubt this marks the end of them — it’s more like a speed bump — but what our chief justice had to say the other day on alternative forms of dispute resolution is probably much more important.
I have been following AVVO, LegalZoom and a host of other players in this “disrupted” legal market for years, trying to figure out whether they are going to really change the way we do business or just cut the pie into thinner pieces. Interestingly, as these enterprises matured, they seemed to grow more like traditional law delivery systems instead of revolutionizing things.
