Shpoonkle

Shpoonkle.com (no longer operational) was an interactive reverse auction web site that provides a marketplace where lawyers and potential clients can connect. Shpoonkle aimed to help its users find more affordable legal assistance. It also aimed to provide a venue where lawyers can find casework. Shpoonkle has shut down and the website is no longer operational.

Shpoonkle was founded by Robert Grant Niznik, a 21-year-old third year student at New York Law School. Recent controversy and lawsuits between law school graduates and their schools support the difficulties many law school graduates are experiencing. Many young lawyers, struggling to repay student loans, could benefit from an online legal marketplace. In several interviews Niznik has referred to the decline in American legal jobs, citing a study by the Northwestern University Law School that found that since 2008 over 15,000 attorney and legal-staff jobs have been eliminated and that according to Forrester Research, about 50,000 American legal jobs will be outsourced overseas by 2015.

Even before Shpoonkle was officially launched, it became the subject of controversy within the legal community. Scott Greenfield, a noted New York criminal defense lawyer, wrote about Shpoonkle in his blog, Simple Justice: "Any lawyer who signs up for this service should be immediately disbarred, then tarred and feathered, then publicly humiliated." 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." And lawyer Charles Cooper wrote in his blog, NonTradLaw: "Why the ridiculous name? Is the service provided not demeaning enough to lawyers already without adding to their shame?" A less critical discussion of Shpoonkle in The Wall Street Journal called it an "eBay for lawyers" and the ABA Journal called Shpoonkle "a playfully named Web site that allows attorneys and law firms to bid on legal requests submitted by clients."

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