2010 January, 29th

Kristen Nicole

It could be the over-saturation of the market, or the declined economy that’s making everyone a little more budget conscious. But I never quite imagined a setup like the one launched by Legal River. The startup has created a marketplace of sorts, where those in need can anonymously post a request for advice. The attorneys that have joined Legal River can reach out to those customers where their expertise is a good fit.

It’s kind of like Guru for lawyers–the idea behind Legal River is to establish a buyers market, giving them the pick of the litter. Moving beyond the self-serve document and filing services like LegalZoom, Legal River aims to offer you actual lawyer services. From lawyers.

Legal River still has a relatively self-maintained system, somewhat akin to Vator.tv for legal services instead of fund-raising. Yet there are more shared concepts between Legal River and Vator.tv if you look beyond the basic marketplace setup.

The design of the service gives opportunities to customers as well as attorneys, putting each into a unique position of power. The true benefit of Legal River is the ability to leverage an online system towards effectively supporting your business and legal needs. Seeking the support from another individual would render smaller results, while Legal River combines the efforts of many in order to provide selection, quality and an attention to the needs of all parties involved.

To this end Legal River dies in fact have a separate section for startup advice, appealing to the needs of entrepreneurs. Those daring enough to try their hand at running their own business are often the ones most in need of a service such as Legal River, which utilizes the online space to provide its service at a more affordable rate. Of course, the individual attorneys are able to set their own prices, whether they’re a fixed rate or hourly, but the marketplace of legal River itself would not be possible without the technology we have at our disposal.

Combining the many factors and issues that Legal River is addressing with its service, I’d like to see how much a service like this can change the face of providing legal services and advice to the masses. Without commoditizing legal services, Legal River’s marketplace creates a rather leveled playing field for anyone seeking professional expertise.

Not quite leaning towards the social media space as much as other web-based portals do, it will be interesting to see how Legal River takes to marketing its services across the web. With personal recommendations included into the Legal River system, applying it internally surely aids in search queries towards finding an attorney that best suits your needs. Moving that recommendation system beyond the Legal River site itself may very well be the company’s next challenge.

See info on a current Legal River contest here.

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About the Author

Kristen was the lead writer and Field Editor of Mashable, a popular publication that covers social media and tech. She has contributed to a number of other publications including CenterNetworks, VentureBeat, Bubblicious and The Industry Standard. Her work has been syndicated across a number of main stream media outlets, including Reuters, The New York Times, and NBC. Her latest accomplishment has been co-authoring The Twitter Survival Guide, which you can purchase here. She is also completing her second book, Twitter for Women.

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