Vocationally, intermediation is synonymous with overspecialization. Disintermediary livelihoods can be described as activities that cut across the narrowness and over-specialization of law, medicine, and education. The paralegal profession is disintermediary because it provides the option of a less specialized professional which is appropriate to the problem to be solved. It is the same with lawyers. Service economies are reacting and adjusting to having too many intermediaries.
Every intermediation adds costs that are passed on to the consumer.
Eliminating intermediation is one of the key ways to being the least-cost producer. The more intermediary a job or business is, the more vulnerable it is to disintermediation. The lawyer is the classic intermediary. Eliminate the lawyer in its traditional form and the cost of the legal product can be reduced dramatically. Because the lawyer cannot be eliminated from the legal transaction without major regulatory reform, which is unlikely, it becomes critical to design law firms where the lawyer's role is optimized without introducing diseconomies of scale.