[rayiner]

The legal industry is tremendously competitive. Even if you limit yourself to the most "prestigious" firms, there's dozens of potential choices. Even the largest firms have only a couple of percent market share. How many other industries can you say that about? The information asymmetry issues you mention may be true to the extent you're a small company that needs counsel for one matter. But the vast majority of corporate work is done for big corps who are repeat players. They have extremely detailed data at their fingertips about how much their dozens of previous representations cost, outcomes, etc.

[jacquesm]

> The legal industry is tremendously competitive.

That's got to be one of the funniest things on HN ever.

The hell it is. The fact that dozens of potential choices exist does not mean a market is competitive, you are missing the possibility of price fixing on an industry wide scale.

[rayiner]

The existence of dozens of competitors is the #1 marker of a highly competitive market. I'm not sure what basis you have for raising "the possibility of price fixing on an industry wide scale" (other than that is theoretically possible in any market). In my experience pitching big companies for legal matters, the process is quite formalized. When presented with a new matter, a company will interview several firms to give presentations on how they would handle the matter and how they would price the engagement. That is just how the process works even at the largest, most reputable corporate firms. (A partner I used to work for at one of the big New York firms told me that when he started at the firm, "business development" meant a partner checking his voice mails when he got back from lunch. That's not how the industry works anymore.)

[jacquesm]

Even the worst lawyers still charge 100's of $/E per hour and to get certain services performed you have to go through a lawyer.

Now, I've met some - very few - lawyers that were worth their rates (one of which is commenting in this thread) but for the most part it is simply a title that in and of itself seems to make a mediocre performer suddenly worth a very large amount of money on an hourly basis.

The funny thing is that I suspect the rest of the world probably looks at IT people in much the same way (only we don't have the equivalent of a bar association, and if we did I suspect the minimum rate for a programmer would shoot up).

[Digory]

The 'inelastic' fees aren't the result of overt price fixing, but the professional rules imposed by the bars. At some point, lawyers don't take on the duties for less than $x00.

Lawyers on the internet will tell you a lot for free, and look at all the documents you want for $20/hr, as long as you don't hold them responsible for putting it in front of a judge. And no matter how many excess lawyers come out of law schools, fees don't go below $x00 for most lawyers.

In litigation, those rules are probably necessary for the benefit of the system. In transactions, there should be fewer.

[jacquesm]

> but the professional rules imposed by the bars.

Which are made of lawyers. So price fixing.

[Digory]

Yes. More like a minimum wage, but that's a government intervention into price, too.

[rayiner]

In the U.S. at least, Department of Justice antitrust litigation has prevented law schools from artificially limiting the supply of lawyers. There are about twice as many law graduates each year as job openings. If you just need someone with a law license, you can hire them for $20/hour on craigslist.