Legal services also are being changed by nontraditional firms. These firms are taking advantage of four principal Internet forces. The first force is elimination of geographical barriers to business. For e-mail and the Web, geography is meaningless. Unlike the telephone, distance does not affect price on the Net.
Internet companies can amortize technology over a global market.
Law firms will find they are competing against people they never heard of. Today's computer storage devices allow massive amounts of information to be stored and delivered on request. The same information is free on the Net. Computers and the Internet make the marginal cost of reproducing and delivering information negligible. Information is so cheap that it is given away for the few cents earned from a banner ad.