[jt2190]

It's a bit more complex and nothing new.

Roughly: An individual lawyer creates a "national brand" law firm and advertises it widely to find new clients. Of course, an individual lawyer can only take so many clients a year, so advertising nationally doesn't make sense since they'd quickly have more clients than they could ever manage. Additionally, a lawyer advertising nationally would need to be licensed in many jurisdictions and possibly also be able to handle many different legal specialties. This is essentially impossible for one person to do themselves.

Instead, the lawyer sends clients to their "associates" in the client's jurisdiction with the specialty that the client needs. For this referral, the lawyer gets a fee, agreed to beforehand.