Thoughts on Shpoonkle…

1.  Why the ridiculous name?  Is the “service” provided not demeaning enough to lawyers already without adding to their shame?

2.  It serves no purpose other than to cash in on a race to the bottom.  This is indisputable (sorry Kimber).  Any form of auction is primarily designed to get the product for the least amount of money, and Shpoonkle adds nothing to that formula.  (The same result can be obtained, by the way, by calling local attorneys and finding out how much they charge for services!)

3.  The buyer/client has no way whatsoever of determining which seller/lawyer is better for them via Shpoonkle, and in fact will gain far less pre-representation information than by picking the first five firms in the Yellow Pages and calling for basic lawyer and rate information.  In fact, I would suggest that for anyone who has a legal matter that is pressing enough to seek legal assistance, it would be more expeditious and simple to spend ten minutes with the Yellow Pages and a phone.  At least that way, the lawyer is guaranteed to be local, and at least the potential client can actually go and meet the attorney beforehand.

4.  Shpoonkle is catering to the most unsophisticated clients out there.  They have no idea how to properly select an attorney, and the site itself gives very little guidance.  It essentially suggests to the potential clients that picking an attorney is as simple as signing up and waiting for offers to flood in.  Is that really beneficial to unsophisticated clients?  No, it’s not.  It’s encouraging clients to look at cost alone when picking an attorney, and worse, these are exactly the clients who should not be merely looking at cost alone.  It’s like walking onto a used car lot and buying the cheapest car without considering anything else (size, color, make, model, age, mileage, safety etc.)  We’re not talking about selling a loaf of bread here, where you are pretty much guaranteed that what’s inside the packet will work for you.

5.  Surely if the founder was truly interested in helping lawyers and clients, he’d set up a simple educational site telling people how to select an attorney, and where to go for good referrals?  And the site would include a page explaining why some lawyers charge more than others, and why it’s not good to base a decision on price alone.  And a page breaking down the costs of running a law practice, illustrating that while low-end attorneys may charge $50-$150 per hour for their services, those attorneys aren’t actually making any profit whatsoever.  I guess the public has the odd idea that when an attorney charges $100 per hour, that means $100 per hour is going into the lawyer’s pocket at the end of the day.

I could go on and on and on about why this is such a bad, bad idea.  And it’s not an attack on the founder, who should be congratulated for having the balls to set this service up while most other people are sitting around crying about how they can’t find a job and waiting for help to arrive.

It’s the idea itself that is bad, and the more I think about it, it’s merely a way to “cash in” (in the future, if the site takes off) on uneducated clients and desperate lawyers.  The site won’t stay free forever, and revenue streams will have to develop – note that at the bottom of the home page for Shpoonkle, there’s a link for “investors” and a link for “advertisers”.  The founder will be set when the money comes in, but by doing so, he’ll have just put another nail in the coffin of the small firms and solo practitioners out there, most of whom are already under severe attack from online services such as LegalZoom.  But that’s okay – as long as he’s set, screw everyone else, I guess?

Perhaps I should set up “Shquankle.com”, which is a service matching doctors with patients? Surely the cheapest doctor is the most suitable, right?  Or maybe “Shrootle.com”, which will attempt to match teachers with schools, and we can watch teachers degrade themselves by scrambling around for $5 per hour jobs with no benefits that schools will offering, instead of the already-low salaries and benefits teachers currently get.  What about “Shyoobie”, in which I offer a service to hospitals that allows the hospitals to hire the cheapest possible nurses?  It’s the whole “I’ll make money by trashing the livelihoods of other people” attitude that gets to me a little.  Law has little dignity left as it is, and certainly for most lawyers, there’s virtually no profit.  Shpoonkle will take that away, just like Wal-Mart crushed local businesses.

I’ll go one step further: Shpoonkle is more damaging to the profession than Nando’s childish ranting.  I guess I have a new “worst thing in the legal profession” to complain about…