ABSTRACT “Personal plight” is the sector of the legal services industry in which the clients are individuals, and the legal needs arise from disputes. This article proposes that competition among personal plight law firms is suppressed by three demand-side phenomena. First, consumers confront high search costs. Identifying competing law firms willing and able to provide the needed services often requires significant expenditure of temporal and psychological resources. Second, comparable price and quality information about firms is scarce for consumers. Both of these factors impede comparison shopping and reduce competitive pressure on firms. A third competition-suppressing factor is observed in tort legal service markets, where offerings are typically priced on a contingency basis. Contingency fees have relatively low salience to consumers, and this reduces consumers’ willingness to negotiate and comparison-shop on the basis of price. This analysis is supported by the author’s empirical research with Ontario personal plight lawyers as well as the existing literature. The article concludes by suggesting possible consequences of this analysis for regulatory policy.

中文翻译：

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神秘购物：个人困境法律服务市场中的需求方现象

摘要“个人困境”是法律服务行业中的客户为个人的行业，法律需求源于纠纷。本文提出，个人困境律师事务所之间的竞争受到三种需求方现象的抑制。首先，消费者面临高昂的搜索成本。确定愿意并且能够提供所需服务的竞争律师事务所通常需要大量的时间和心理资源投入。其次，对于消费者而言，缺乏有关企业的可比价格和质量信息。这两个因素都阻碍了比较购物，并减轻了公司的竞争压力。在侵权法律服务市场中观察到第三个竞争抑制因素，在这些市场中，产品通常是按偶然性定价的。意外费用对消费者的重视程度相对较低，这降低了消费者基于价格进行谈判和比较的意愿。笔者对安大略省个人困境律师的实证研究以及现有文献为这一分析提供了支持。本文最后提出了这种分析对监管政策可能产生的后果。