In August of 2009, Robert Capps wrote a great article for Wired Magazine entitled The Good Enough Revolution: When Cheap and Simple is Just Fine. I commend to you the entire article (you can click here to read it) but the gist of it is as follows: Since the early 2000s some of the most innovative and successful technologies have focused on providing inexpensive and convenient products and services while sacrificing a certain level of quality. Consumers have gobbled up these products and services because they value flexibility and convenience more than quality.

Here are just a few examples. We stream any song at any time using Spotify and play it through a tiny iPhone speaker or earbuds. We’re happy to do so and pay $10 a month for the privilege. But the quality of the music is significantly lower than even a CD played on home stereo. We rely on three-phrase text-only ads to direct us to websites and companies spend billions annually making sure their ad is the first one we see. We use inexpensive, cloud-based versions of Word and Excel, dependent on the availability and speed of our internet connection in exchange for the flexibility of being able to work anywhere and at anytime. None of these solutions is the most optimal way to listen to music, research, or work—but we flock to them in droves because they are good enough.

So how is this relevant to the legal profession? Thankfully, you asked, otherwise, this article might be pointless on the YLD blog. We are all aware of the impact websites and technologies like LegalZoom, Watson, and legal advice kiosks can have on our profession. The point of this article is not to simply repeat what we’ve all heard. Rather we should recognize that our clients are the same people who have helped support and expand the market for these types of “good enough technologies.”

The impact to the legal profession is not simply that we must compete with a website that can form a corporation or draft a will for $49.95. Learning to combat or compete with new technologies that spring up weekly to offer legal services at a reduced price is only part of the issue. The other part is learning to work within the psychology that drives the market for these services. We must learn to gain and work with a client who is happy with “good enough” and expects to be able to pay a reduced rate and accept a certain amount of imperfection. These are not just clients that cannot afford “traditional legal services”—CEOs like Spotify just as much as teachers.

Unfortunately, I have not yet cracked the code on how to solve this issue, particularly harmonizing what I consider sufficient (read: perfect) legal work and what a client believes is sufficient. When I do, you can join me on my private jet while I fly around giving seminars on the topic. But one step in the right direction seems to be recognizing that our clients and prospective clients live in a world where they can obtain the satisfaction of almost any need or want quickly and economically, despite that satisfaction being a little imperfect—and they are happy doing so! Addressing this psychology is the real key, in my opinion, to the solving many of the issues our profession now faces.

Jason Lambert lives in Clearwater, Florida and is an appellate and construction litigation attorney at Zinzow Law. He is a graduate of Stetson University College of Law. Jason is one of the 6th Circuit representatives on the Florida Bar Young Lawyers Division Board of Governors and Secretary of the Clearwater Bar Association Young Lawyers Division.