What Lawyers Can Learn From Uber
Over the last few weeks I’ve had a number of terrible experiences with traditional taxicabs. While I usually use Uber or other ride-sharing services when I travel for work, I used traditional taxis a few times recently for a variety of reasons.
Over the last few weeks I’ve had a number of terrible experiences with traditional taxicabs. While I usually use Uber or other ride-sharing services when I travel for work, I used traditional taxis a few times recently for a variety of reasons.
Never again!
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Nearly every taxi ride was laughably bad, especially when compared to the convenience of Uber. Here’s what happened and how this relates to lawyers.
A few weeks ago, a colleague and I hired a taxi to take us to a restaurant that was a few miles from our hotel in downtown Houston. I would have preferred to use a ride-sharing service but my colleague suggested we take a taxi and I didn’t want to be difficult. We got in the taxi, gave our driver the address, sat back, and expected that he would successfully deliver us to our destination. A few minutes later the driver announced that we had arrived at the restaurant but it was nowhere in sight. My colleague and I both quickly pulled up the address we had given the driver on our respective phones and confirmed that the restaurant was another mile or two down the road. We eventually convinced the driver that he had brought us to the wrong address and proceeded to use our phones to direct him to our destination.
Upon arrival, I attempted to pay with my corporate credit card, which is paid directly by my employer, saving me time and enabling me to avoid floating travel expenses on a personal credit card. He demurred the offer of my card: “No. N huge hassle of paying in cash but it really wasn’t a big fare and I didn’t want to be difficult. So I paid, exhausting my small supply of travel cash, and asked the driver for a receipt so that I could submit the expense for reimbursement. The driver rustled around in the front seat and finally handed me a small, somewhat crinkled receipt form. It was blank. When I half-offered the receipt back to the driver suggesting that perhaps he’d forgotten to fill it out, he motioned that I should fill it out myself. While I wasn’t thrilled with the blank receipt given that I would need to fill it out right away lest I forget the details of the ride, I concluded that perhaps my expectations were too high, and I reluctantly accepted the blank crinkled receipt and got out of the cab.
The next day I needed to quickly get from one side of downtown Houston to the other. It was only a ten-minute walk but I needed to make the trip in just a few minutes in order to be on time for a meeting. While I intended to take an Uber, as soon as I got out onto the sidewalk I saw a long line of taxis ready to take fares and I was in quite a rush. With the previous night’s navigation/cash/receipt fiasco fresh on my mind, I approached the first taxi and told the driver: “Listen. I only need to go across town. It’s a short fare and I don’t have cash. Can you take a card for a small fare?” “Oh, yes, yes.” He assured me, gesticulating that I get in.
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No sooner had I sat down, than the driver started regaling me with complaints about driving a taxi. In addition to long wait times for short fares, he explained that, “the machine doesn’t always register small fares like this on a card. We may have to run it for $10 or more to get it to work.” A few minutes later we arrived across town at my destination. The fare was five bucks and change. I handed the driver my card and he said: “Should I run it for $10? Got to make sure the machine will take it!” “No,” I responded, “how about we just go for $7 and see what happens.” Sure enough the machine took my $7 fare and I walked away, burned again.
Finally, just yesterday, I was headed to the airport in a city where ride-sharing hasn’t yet launched. (Believe it or not, there are a few such places.) Before hailing a cab, I left my bag at the bell desk for just 5 minutes while I ducked into a nearby convenience store to purchase a snack for the plane. Returning to the bell desk, snack in hand, I asked for a cab and was led right over to a waiting taxi. As the driver emerged, I pulled a small wad of cash from my pocket to tip the person watching my bags.
We pulled up to the airport terminal. The driver announced the fare and quickly jumped out of the car, rushing to take my bags out of the trunk. I too got out, and met him at the back of the car, where I tried to hand him my corporate credit card. Like his colleague in a far-off city, he demurred: “No, how about cash?” he asked, motioning at the small remaining stash of cash in my pocket. I thought about protesting but didn’t have time to argue. Paying him the exact amount of the fare in cash I asked for a receipt and was rewarded, with a blank business card that, complete with some simple fields on the back, doubled as a receipt form.
There are some prominent analogies between my experiences and how legal services are delivered.
First is the end-to-end experience of ride-sharing. When I hail an Uber or Lyft, all of the details are taken care of. Automatically. I can get a fare quote before I ride, there’s no confusion about destination – both the driver’s phone and the passenger’s phone have the same coordinates, payment and tip are automatic, and I get an auto-generated email receipt in my inbox that I can forward on to my accountant (which, by the way, she doesn’t even ask for because I can produce them at any time and both Uber and Lyft archive them too). Each and every one of these individual features is an incremental yet tremendously helpful improvement over the traditional taxi experience. I’m baffled that traditional taxis still haven’t adopted them. But more than the incremental improvements is the “complete experience” that each of these features combines to create. I don’t have to worry about whether the driver is eyeing my cash, or whether their machine can’t take a small fare, or whether there might be confusion about the destination, or how much I will tip, or any other complications. The experience feels nearly seamless.
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No one has come close to creating this kind of a complete experience in law. Admittedly, legal services are not like taxi rides, but many lawyers still struggle with even the incremental improvements listed above such as cost predictability, flexibility in accepting various payment types, and adaptability of fee structure (e.g. fixed fee vs. billable hour vs. not-to-exceed (NTE)) depending upon the nature of the transaction and the client’s needs. Smarter lawyers are figuring out how to bring greater transparency to their billing processes including portals that allow clients to monitor costs, and updates that keep the client informed about the cost and status of a given matter, but automatic billing and receipt generation are still a pipe-dream.
There are some interesting analogies to my specific experiences too.
Regarding my short, cross-town trip: Dan Katz has said, and so have I, that innovative legal service delivery remains a bumper sticker for many lawyers – an outward expression to bring clients in that lacks true substance. How many lawyers are bringing clients onboard with promises of meeting their needs in a specific, perhaps, innovative way only to default back to the way things have always been done? How many are pleading poverty when their flat-fee or NTE arrangement turns out not to be in their favor?
Related to my cash-loving airport chauffeur, what are lawyers doing to truly reverse the perception that they’re constantly eying clients’ pocketbooks? How are lawyers using technology to automate repetitive systems and processes that an associate or paralegal can bill in six-minute increments to a client today but, in the long run (or even medium to shorter run), could be effectively automated? What kinds of tools or resources are lawyers and law firms creating to effectively give away forms, content or legal information to clients or prospective clients either as a loss-leader or as an inbound marketing resource? How many law firms are honestly committed to efficiency and how many are simply saying that they are, all the while continuing to eye the client’s pocketbook?
The disparity that has emerged between the ride-sharing and traditional taxi experiences in only a few short years is quite remarkable. Where taxis were previously viewed as elite and expensive at best and a necessary evil at worst just a few years ago they are now facing stiff and legitimate competition from ride-sharing networks that provide a better experience in almost every regard and do so for a lower cost. The disparity is so great, that for people like me, ride-sharing is a happy go-to alternative to the inefficient, unpredictable, expensive and hassle-full traditional taxi. Today, the delivery of legal services looks more like a taxi than an Uber. While analogies comparing law and transportation aren’t perfect, one lawyer’s decision to avoid taxis in favor of a relatively young but dramatically superior product should give legal professionals pause, and maybe even a bit of heartburn, as they think about how they help clients get from one place to another with the law.
