Thread

1. dabinat · 1790566087 · focus · HN ↗

   My experience with lawyers is that if you need a legal document, they often have templates ready to go and will take 10 seconds to find & replace your company name into the document. I know this because they often don’t proofread it afterwards. They then charge you $1000 for that 10 seconds of work. Given that I have felt ripped off by many lawyers, I’m totally fine with that industry getting disrupted.

   1. tiffanyh · 1790570116 · focus · HN ↗

      Do you have any issues with thr tech industry selling software licenses?

      Because a lawyer selling a contract template, is in many ways, very similar in concept to tech industry selling a software license/seat.

      They are both akin to “templates”, and selling IP.

      1. sa46 · 1790571388 · focus · HN ↗

         The difference is that lawyers typically charge by the hour. Software is not sold based on how long it took to create.

         So, if a lawyer bills $1000 for "10 seconds of work", it smells fraudulent.

         If $1000 was a flat rate, then it's similar to software: you're purchasing some IP and passing off legal liability to the lawyer. How long the lawyer spent on it doesn't matter.

         1. otterley · 1790571721 · focus · HN ↗

            Why would it be fraudulent if the fee agreement disclosed it?

            1. sa46 · 1790572589 · focus · HN ↗

               I understood the OP's point as follows:

               The fee agreement was an hourly rate for producing a legal document. The resulting document looks like it took 10 seconds to produce. The lawyer billed $1000 worth of hours.

               So, either the document was much more complex than anticipated (in which case the lawyer should have said so), or the lawyer inflated the hours.

               1. baq · 1790574283 · focus · HN ↗

                  They bill with hourly granularity

                  1. crote · 1790575351 · focus · HN ↗

                     And that would be fine, if you were getting an hour of their time. If the lawyer spent 10 minutes finding the right template, 10 seconds filling it in, and then 20 minutes proofreading it, then nobody would be complaining.

                     In reality they'll spend 1 minute grabbing a close-enough template, 10 seconds filling it in, 3 minutes billing you, and 55 minutes double-dipping by doing work for other clients.

                  2. knollimar · 1790591228 · focus · HN ↗

                     Isn't it usually .1 hour increments?
               2. otterley · 1790587870 · focus · HN ↗

                  > The fee agreement was an hourly rate for producing a legal document.

                  We don’t know that for certain.

         2. gspr · 1790580423 · focus · HN ↗

            In the lawyer's case one might argue that it's just a time quantization inaccuracy. There's no smaller unit of time than an hour for them.

            One can argue that there should be, but billing in 10 second increments might also be a bit much to ask.

            One would hope that they would at least aggregate multiple smaller-than-resolution time blocks into one before billing though. (Five documents over the course of a week ends up costing the same)

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