Will there be a Wal Mart Law Firm?

Jeremy Wright at Ensight writes about how Wal-Mart is trying to commoditize the web design and web hosting industry. His advice to web designers includes these nuggets:

You can't service everyone. If this is your client base, and Wal-Mart serves them better than you, you can either change your client base or differentiate. If it isn't your client base, it hardly affects you. . . . This move may expand the segment more than crowd it. . . . Whether you want the clients who are willing to go after 5$ websites is up to you.

Jeremy cautions that focusing in areas where big businesses like Wal-Mart shine (doing it better, faster, cheaper) will lead to failure. Instead, he tells his readers they should:

1. Provide more value.
2. Have more skills.
3. Have a better relationship.

Reading his post, I wonder if legal services are capable of being commoditized. The large firms in the best position to work better, faster, and cheaper have squandered the opportunity to cut their costs because of their ties to the billable hour. A firm that bills by the hour has no incentive to decrease the amount of time it takes to do a given task or provide a given service. Until large law firms begin to approach their practice with the single-minded focus on efficiency that the "big box" stores like Best Buy, Wal-Mart, and the Home Depot do, perhaps us in small firms can be both "better, faster, and cheaper" and be more valuable, more skilled, and more likely to have a better relationship with our clients than the big firms can.