Well said grellas. One of the things I have seen happen to most professions - and especially in markets that are not fully familiar with the startup space - is that when industry players, that have been making bank from the 'trivial' tasks, see a startup challenging them, they see it as a full frontal assault.
Rather than seeing it as a way to move themselves up the value-chain, they keep trying to defend the low-hanging fruit. That makes no sense.
The real value and real big bucks are further up the chain. I would think that all lawyers would welcome a service like this, which allows them to focus on M&As and much more complex deals and structures that can't be outsourced.
It just makes for a much better world overall.
I think it comes from an insecurity in them thinking they can't adequately compete for the higher-value-add (which may be true), but we are all better off if those professionals stop practicing anyway.
Well..product cannibalization is different than a professional moving up the value-chain.
A professional is trading hours for dollars, the only way to increase their income is to either arbitrage cheap tasks (i.e. hire low-paid professionals and bill them out at a higher rate), increase the amount of hours they bill, increase their hourly rate.
The best paid in an industry tend to have the highest hourly rate - not necessarily the most amount of hours worked.
So, it would seem to me, that all professionals should be looking to move up the value-chain.
Clerky forces lawyers to make a choice. They can either fight for the 'automatable stuff' or they can move up the value-chain.
If you're not already familiar with him, there's a great professor at Harvard Law School, Ashish Nanda, who writes about exactly that - the choices service providers have to make as to where on the value chain they sit:
Rather than seeing it as a way to move themselves up the value-chain, they keep trying to defend the low-hanging fruit. That makes no sense.
The real value and real big bucks are further up the chain. I would think that all lawyers would welcome a service like this, which allows them to focus on M&As and much more complex deals and structures that can't be outsourced.
It just makes for a much better world overall.
I think it comes from an insecurity in them thinking they can't adequately compete for the higher-value-add (which may be true), but we are all better off if those professionals stop practicing anyway.