Shpoonkle

Shpoonkle.com (no longer operational) was an interactive reverse auction web site that provided a marketplace where lawyers and potential clients could connect.

"[3] Susan Cartier Liebel, in her blog Solo Practice University, wrote: "Here you have a race to the bottom as lawyers bid against one another to pay the lowest fee to anonymous clients with legal problems.

"[12] In August 2011, the Wall Street Journal stated that Shpoonkle uses a competitive bidding model to match customers with attorneys and smaller law firms.

The site streamlines the process: You can send private messages to top lawyers who can contact you, or wait to see who has the best offer for your particular case.

Three weeks ago, the Governor General and the chief justice of the Supreme Court of Canada separately said that legal fees are getting out of hand.

Working-class or middle-class people of no great means who have legal needs … feel they cannot take a step of finding a lawyer or launching a lawsuit," Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin told the Canadian Bar Association's annual conference in Halifax.

The Legal Job Stop a feature launched on Shpoonkle in December 2011, "is also looking to match supply and demand, but with a focus on the growing number of unemployed law school graduates.

"[19] Joe McKendrick wrote about Shpoonkle "Legal profession, meet the forces of disruption and creative destruction," in his recent article in Smart Planet.