The Traffic in Legal Services: Lawyer-Seeking Behavior and the Channeling of Clients

Abstract

This paper discusses the major factors that appear to influence how clients and lawyers come together, and what role professional advertising might play in this process. The context for the discussion is the traditional model of appropriate lawyer-client relations, which is an ideal built into the code of professional conduct. The model presumes a lawyer's professional reputation, and the maintenance of professional standards by the bar. In the real world, conditions of legal practice and problem defining by consumers cause departure from the ideal. A number of factors influence how clients come to perceive problems as amenable to legal assistance. These are certain psychological, cultural, and social attributes whose operation in law is less well understood than it is in medicine. In addition, there are certain structural factors that influence the link between prospective clients and lawyers. Prominent among these is the fact that legal services comprise an imperfect market due to uncertainty of case outcome and difficulties of information procurement. It is suggested that consumers are reasonably rational in their search for lawyers given these problems. Consumers rely heavily upon informal contact networks and influential intermediaries, a process not unlike searching for a job or a doctor. The implications of these findings for opening up information channels through relaxation of the ban on advertising are discussed.