“Please Tell Me you Didn’t. . . How to Keep Clients Out of the Jailhouse, Poorhouse and Lawyers Out of the Nuthouse” -Blog
Someone posted a photo today on Facebook showing Uptown Dallas 18 years ago. There is almost nothing there, except the American Airlines Center. In fact, standing on the rooftop terrace of the Swexan Hotel (which is one of the new uptown buildings that wasn’t there a minute ago), I made the observation that I have a story for just about every building in the Dallas skyline.
In the 1990’s, before the American Airlines Center was built, I used to play basketball every day with Mark Cuban in the the Premier Club building across from SMU. This was before he became the Owner of the Mavericks. I distinctly remember exchanging the usual, “What to you do?”
He said he had a company that allows people to listen to basketball games over the internet. In 1990 there was almost no way to pick up radio signal, let alone video, in Texas if broadcast from anywhere farther than Oklahoma. So he invented “Broadcast.com.”
I thought, “good luck making any money with that!” He sold the company a couple years later for $5.7 billion to Yahoo, which never made a cent on the purchase. In fact, the other thing I remember him saying on television:
“For any proposed business arrangement, look around the table and try to spot the one being played for a fool, if you can’t spot him, it’s you.”
The “Door Dash” Trap. I suppose the “.com bubble” (of which Yahoo was a part), has always left me with suspicion about online platforms. I am not picking on Door Dash, but it is an online platform, that neither cooks food, nor delivers it, and like many “.com” companies, has never made a penny in profit.
If you have ever wondered how the Door Dash model makes any financial sense—it doesn’t. There is no way to deliver a McDonalds meal in a private car for anywhere near the cost the customer would willingly pay. Because it can’t be done.
I am told, the online platform eats up any profit the restaurant would make. But the drivers are the ones in jeopardy. The driver is paid for the trip, but at the hidden cost that his vehicle depreciates at a rate of $.67 a mile. He is basically giving away his car, one mile at a time. Worse, he is very likely driving “naked,” without liability insurance, because auto personal auto insurance usually excludes driving for a delivery service.
I did check, Door Dash says it provides “excess” liability coverage, while the independent driver must maintain “primary” coverage. Which probably means (just a guess), that absent primary coverage, there is no liability insurance coverage at all. The driver also doesn’t have coverage, for the same reason, if he totals his car crashing into a tree while delivering food.
I am sure, without reading it, the Door Dash independent contractor agreement is perfectly legal and clearly states this and drivers should know better than to drive without commercial insurance (making the driver the fool.)
Online Marketing of the Delivery of Legal Services and Health Services. But a platform can be perfectly legal and people with licensees can still get in trouble. Doctors and lawyer who “deliver” professional services come to mind.
SOAH is the same State Office of Administrative Hearings which revokes driver’s licenses, just the same as medical and law licenses. I should know, I have defended a few.
This all came to mind because I gave a legal ethics speech I gave last week. One of the attendees asked me for my thoughts on Legal Services Plans, in which a third-party online platform advertises to clients that for “one low fee,” lawyers will provide a free “consultation” and “discounted services.” There is no way the up front fee the client pays, could cover the entire legal services bill.
The problem, the attendee said, is that people don’t understand what “consultation” means. (And instead, think “discount” means that everything the lawyer does is discounted to “zero,” because the customer already paid the online platform company.)
Much the same way people don’t understand what “primary” and “excess” auto insurance means, this illustrates the problem with online marketing of any professional service. While the plan might be “legal,” that doesn’t mean there won’t be legal problems for lawyers or medical professionals whose licenses are on the line when someone else speaks for them about the services being delivered.
If you allow online platforms to do the marketing and advertising, you can’t necessarily control the expectations that the client or patient is being led to believe. Especially if there is a phone call where the customer is talking to a person at the online platform, which generated the lead, about the services professionals are to deliver.
Licensing boards, like the state bar and medical boards, don’t generally have jurisdiction over non-licensees. Going after online platforms companies requires involvement with the attorney general’s consumer protection division, which is fairly over-worked as it is.
If you are a professional licensee, medical or legal, and sign up for online marketing services, you must watch what these people are telling customers.
Look around the room, if you can’t spot the one being played fool, it could be you.