‘Unbundled’ legal services gaining traction with lawyers, laypeople
Self-represented litigants can now buy specific services from a lawyer without breaking the bank
As the number of individuals representing themselves in court continues to grow, lawyers are being encouraged to get creative and transform their traditional view of how legal services should be provided in order to make them more affordable.
A database launched last year by the National Self-Represented Litigants Project now features more than 100 lawyers who offer what is known as “unbundled” legal services — where a person only pays for specific services from a lawyer while still remaining in charge of their case.
For example, this could include paying a lawyer to review a statement of claim for a lawsuit before it is filed, or for help researching case law. The self-represented litigant would still do the bulk of the work, including filing material and appearing in court.
“It’s kind of piecemeal work, so you say to a painter: OK, I can’t afford to hire you to paint my entire house, but I hate doing the ceilings,” said University of Windsor law professor Julie Macfarlane, project director for the initiative.
“I think what we’re going to see are these pieces of innovation because people do want help, but they want help where they can control the cost and direction of it.”
One has only to look at family court- rooms, where divorce and child custody proceedings take place, to see that thousands of Canadians cannot afford a lawyer for an entire case. Up to 80 per cent of people involved in family matters appear in court without a lawyer and 40 per cent in civil cases, according to the National Self-Represented Litigants Project.
Unbundled services have been backed by three senior judges in B.C., Ontario and Nova Scotia, who appeared in a video to promote the new database last year.
“Without the option of unbundled services, the alternative is litigants are forced to represent themselves from beginning to end,” said B.C. Chief Justice Robert Bauman. “I encourage lawyers to try out unbundling in your practice.”
The judges note that a litigant who is better prepared for court generally makes dealing with cases more efficient.
Macfarlane said there is still resistance from many lawyers regarding unbundled services, mainly for fear that it puts them at a greater liability risk, but she said there is no evidence of that being the case.
Frank Marrocco, associate chief justice of Ontario’s Superior Court of Justice, also tried to assuage concerns about unbundled services in the video in support of the database.
“Every time you provide legal services you incur risk,” he said. “What I can tell you is that the judiciary, the Law Society and LawPRO very much want to help you successfully manage those risks.”
LawPRO is the Canadian company that provides professional liability insurance to lawyers.
The National Self-Represented Litigants Project also recently launched a legal coaching initiative, which it calls “the next natural step in the evolution of the unbundling model.”
Coaching would include a lawyer providing ongoing mentoring to a self-represented litigant throughout their case.
“Coaching is a concept that makes a lot more sense from the point of view of the public, they kind of roll up their sleeves with the lawyer,” Macfarlane said.
“Increasingly we hear from people who have this experience of coaching, and from lawyers offering it, and everybody wins. It’s much more affordable. It means there’s much more of a partnership between the lawyer and client, which is completely antithetical to how legal services have been developed.”
Toronto lawyer Joel Miller is the founder of the Family Law Coach and is listed in the database. He said he never really paid attention to self-represented litigants in court when he worked as a family lawyer.
“Just like every other lawyer, my concern was finding clients who would pay my fee, so I wasn’t really paying attention to people who couldn’t afford lawyers,” he said.
But eventually, Miller said he began to focus on the large pool of self-represented litigants, realizing there were more people who couldn’t afford a lawyer than who could. Miller offers fixed-fee services; for example, 15 minutes of legal assistance for $95, which he also provides remotely. He said almost 100 per cent of the individuals who use this service ask and pay for more time.
“I think this process gives the client a degree of control that lawyers don’t normally give clients,” he said.