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Commoditization of legal services through offering online, flat-fee services is coming, just not very quickly in Canada. future E Lawyering for the BY GLENN KAUTH arly in the decade, Mark Hicken found a way to get clients to do the bulk of their own wills online. Using a web-based questionnaire, clients would submit information about their assets and beneficiaries, all of which would feed into software that would create the first draft of a will. Hicken, a Vancouver lawyer, would then receive the document and, after what were often fairly brief consultations with the clients, could create a finished product. "It really did work very well, and the clients really liked it," says Hicken of the system he helped develop. The goal at the time was to market the product to other law firms through a B.C.-focused web portal. But facing a reluctant audience and following the withdrawal of sponsor Telus Corp., Hicken let it die. The problem, he argues, was 36 M ARCH 2009 www. C ANADIAN Law ye rmag.com largely one of timing. "It was probably too early." Hicken is now focused on practising wine law but says few of his colleagues have jumped on the innovation bandwagon. "I am surprised that more law firms aren't doing it for that sort of simple transactional work," he says. Essentially, Hicken was practising a rudimentary form of e-lawyering. While commonly defined as offering services over the Internet, a key component is usually "online docu- ment assembly." Through the Internet, clients could do most of the work — Hicken estimates an online system would do up to 95 per cent of it — themselves. Then, a lawyer could offer legal advice, either by phone, in person, or on the web, to complete it. In return, clients would pay a lower fee, while Hicken would benefit by being able to serve more people. Another Vancouver lawyer, Nicole Garton-Jones, runs BRANDON STEEN