INTERVIEW WITH GREG SISKIND ON NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO'S ALL THINGS CONSIDERED
Date November 23, 1999
Time 04:00 PM - 06:00 PM
Station NPR
Location Network
Program All Things Considered
Noah Adams, host:
The Internet is starting to change the way American lawyers do business. More attorneys are
beginning to offer legal services on-line. The Internet has some advantages for
both attorneys and their clients, but it also could put some lawyers out of business. From Atlanta, NPR's Joshua
Levs reports.
Joshua Levs reporting:
Jean Brown is sitting at a computer in the basement of her sister's house in Lithonia, Georgia, just east of Atlanta.
(Soundbite of typing on keyboard)
After she gets off work as a customer assistant for Hewlett-Packard, she often comes here and surfs the Web.
And from this small room in late-night hours, Brown managed to get a visa for her brother's fiancée to move to the
United States from Sri Lanka.
Jean Brown (Customer Assistant, Hewlett-Packard): And this right here is what sold me and I knew that I would
probably hire this law firm.
Levs: Brown is pointing to the Web page for Siskind, Susser, Haas & Devine, a small Tennessee law firm which
she found after running a search under the words immigration
law. The page offers information about specific laws, a description of the firm and a way to automatically contact
the attorneys via e-mail. Brown wrote them, got a
response and hired them.
Brown: My idea with lawyers is usually you go sit in their office, they're busy, you're wasting your time. I'm very,
very busy and this was a time-consuming thing, even as it was. And you didn't have to sit in anybody's office.
Levs: The firm e-mailed Brown a series of questions to answer on-line and then automatically downloaded the
information onto forms for the Immigration and Naturalization Service. Brown never met the attorney she
worked with and only spoke with her a couple of times on the phone.
Greg Siskind, who started the law firm, says at first he worried that people would feel uncomfortable working with
an attorney they hadn't met. But he's found the opposite.
Greg Siskind (Siskind, Susser, Haas & Devine Online Law Firm): A lot of times the people that I'm doing
consultations with are speaking to me in their living room, or at their kitchen table, and in an environment that
they're comfortable with instead of in a law office, which can be very intimidating for somebody who maybe has not
had a lot of experience dealing with lawyers.
Levs: Siskind says in the five years since the firm opened, its business has skyrocketed. The four attorneys
see, or rather exchange, e-mail with as many as forty new clients a week. Siskind, Susser, Haas & Devine is one of
a growing number of law firms that practice predominantly over the Web. At a time when many attorneys in the U.S.
aren't finding enough work, some are discovering the
Internet as a solution. Bill Paul, president of the American Bar Association, spoke about the Internet at the
group's convention in Atlanta in August.
Bill Paul (President, American Bar Association): There are a lot of underserved legal needs in the people of our
country. And there are a lot of underutilized lawyers. In the past we've said, We've got to figure out a way how to
match up those two things. I think through technology, we may have the way.
Levs: But new technology creates winners and losers. And while some attorneys are saving their practices through
the Internet, others could lose them altogether.
There are hundreds of Web sites devoted to do-it-yourself
law, showing the visitor how to create a contract or file for divorce without an attorney. The self-help law
organization formerly known as Nolo Press has actually changed its official name to its Web site address,
nolo.com. The site offers software you can download or purchase, and Nolo expects ten million dollars in sales
this year. Ralph Warner is the group's co-founder.
Ralph Warner (Co-founder, Nolo Press): What we want to do is create a, what we call kind of as a joke around
here, a living room law machine. An ATM that will actually live in your office, in your home and will solve legal
problems almost as simply as the ATM does at the bank.
Levs: That image of a mechanized lawyer, while likely to add to the annals of lawyer jokes, is a serious matter to
attorneys whose bread and butter comes from preparing basic legal documents. James Johnston (sp), a solo practitioner
in Washington, D.C., wrote an e-mail newsletter calling the
Internet an impending threat to a lawyer's livelihood.
James Johnston (Attorney, Washington, D.C.): I also call it the black death for lawyers. I wanted to be dramatic.
But I do think that lawyers whose main stock, main income
is coming from writing wills, as an example, and it's going to cut out those lawyers. And, you know, they're going to
have to look somewhere else for their income.
Levs: But for now, some are focusing on protecting their turf. The Texas Bar Association sued California-based
nolo.com claiming that by selling its products to Internet users in Texas, the company was effectively practicing law
without a license. Nolo won the court battle. All of its
products sold to people in Texas now come with a disclaimer stating that the computer program does not constitute a
Texas lawyer. Nolo.com's head, Ralph Warren, himself an attorney, says, Lawyers have no reason to worry about
having a place in America. But, he says, `they will have some adapting to do.
Warner: Lawyers are still out there doing divorces, or bankruptcies, or incorporations one by one very
inefficiently, kind of following a model where the client comes in and turns their information over to the lawyer
and the lawyer does the rest. I think in the new world where consumers have loads more information, are lawyers going
to have to change? You bet.
Levs: Warren says, This could be the biggest change the American legal profession has seen in more than a century.
And, he says, it's inevitable that the Internet would help
create a new legal landscape since, after all, it provides new ways to argue and new things to argue about.
Joshua Levs, NPR News, Atlanta.