Open Market Auction Exchanges for the Purchase and Sale of Legal Services: An idea whose time has come?

We are still very much in a buyer’s market for legal services. Supply continues to far outstrip demand. Law firms large and small have generally seen their revenues to continue to decline over the past several years.

Clients, again, large and small, are continuing to put substantial pricing pressure on their lawyers. In many instances, long term relationships between client and lawyer have taken a second seat to pricing factors. Clients routinely shop matters around with several prospective law firms. Corporate clients are more often issuing RFP’s for legal work.

The next phase in this evolution may well be open market auction exchanges in which there are open auctions for law firms to bid competitively and openly against one another for legal work.