Virtual Law Practice

Category: Book

  • Virtual Law Practice: Second Edition Released

    Cover bookThe second edition of my book, Virtual Law Practice, will be released from ABA LPD Publishing this month. (There will be a digital copy for sale in the coming months and eventually it gets released on Amazon for those of you who want other purchasing options.)  I’ve updated the book significantly since the original publication in 2010 to include new technology solutions and methods of designing a law practice around technology and delivery mechanisms. Here is the copy from the back of the book:

    Virtual Law Practice: How to Deliver Legal Services Online, Second Edition

    The internet has made it easier for potential clients to find legal services.  Virtual law firms have revolutionized the delivery of legal services, lowering costs as well as evening the playing field. Whether you are a large law firm or a solo practitioner, there are business models of delivering legal services online that can bring your law practice up to speed with the 21st century legal marketplace. What are you doing to stay competitive?  Do you have the know-how to responsibly incorporate technology and online delivery into your existing law firm?  The revised and updated Virtual Law Practice is the one resource you need to take advantage of this fast-growing market. This book will help you:

    • Identify and develop a law firm business model for the online delivery of legal services
    • Successfully set up and manage a virtual law firm
    • Increase law firm revenue by responsibly implementing the delivery of online legal services
    • Make use of the latest technology
    • Create a successful marketing strategy for the delivery of legal services online
    • Understand state ethics and advisory opinions
    • Find more flexibility and work/life balance in the legal profession

    Stephanie Kimbro’s practical guide also provides case studies of law firms that successfully integrate virtual law practice into their traditional business models along with client scenarios to show how web-based technology may be used by legal professionals to work with online clients and avoid malpractice risks.

  • Practicing Law Online Ebook

    Practicing Law Online Ebook

    Here is the revised version of the Practicing Law Online ebook, which I first released in 2008 and updated in 2010.

    This revised edition of the ebook examines different business models for virtual law firms and goes beyond solos and small firms to apply the concept of virtual practice to larger firms and in-house legal departments. The ebook walks the reader through the process of choosing a virtual law firm business model and examines methods of online delivery that work best with the firm’s practice area and client base. I also incorporated some of the design methodology and design thinking process I have learned here at Stanford.

    The updated 2nd edition of the full book has a lot more detail, including checklists and policies and procedures, and goes into topics such as online marketing, developing a virtual law firm business plan, ethics issues and best practices. The second edition of the book is with the publisher right now and should be out by the spring of 2015. I hope my readers enjoy this new edition of the ebook. Please consider checking out the full book in the spring. It’s full of case studies from law firms of all sizes as well as an appendix of sample documents, checklists, and ethics resources.

    The first publication of this ebook was created as a way for me to address all of the questions I was receiving from lawyers when I would give presentations about virtual law practice. Questions about ethics issues and cloud computing came up back then. Lawyers wanted to have a virtual law office, but they were hesitant because they did not understand how the technology would work and how that would comply with their jurisdictions rules. This first ebook was intended as a basic guide for setting up a virtual law office and geared towards solos and small firms. ebookcover

    Back in 2008 there was still a lot of controversy around the use of cloud computing in law practice – yes, basic cloud computing for practice management. There was even more controversy around delivering legal services to clients online. Only a handful of states had issued ethics opinions on the topic at that time and lawyers had a ton of questions, most of which related to ethics and malpractice concerns. A lot of misinformation was flying around. Jack Newton, founder of Clio, Larry Port, founder of Rocket Matter, Richard Granat, President of DirectLaw, and myself got together by phone for the first Legal Cloud Computing Association call to discuss how we could set industry standards, reassure state bars and lawyers, and counteract some of the false statements that were going around about cloud computing. A couple of us even sat in on state bar ethics committees and spent a considerable amount of our unpaid time advising and evangelizing to make sure restrictive rules and opinions that did not make sense from a technology perspective did not make it to print. So that first ebook, which has had hundreds of downloads since I released it, spent a lot of text looking at how SaaS and cloud computing work, what the benefits and risks of virtual law practice are, and how to apply best practices to avoid ethics issues.

    This time around revising the ebook I did not feel the need to focus on the same content. Many state bars have either published formal or advisory opinions approving of virtual law practice or third-party hosting of law office data. There is less skepticism about the consumer demand for online legal services and our profession’s ability to deliver it while complying with the rules of professional conduct. There are more hybrid virtual firms – traditional law practice incorporating some form of online delivery. More law firms are finding ways to unbundle their legal services which also facilitates online delivery. I receive fewer questions about ethics concerns and more about the successful online marketing of online services. I’m glad that I have my strong tech and ethics background for these questions, but I’ve had to learn a lot about business planning and management, online marketing and design to keep up.

    Thank you to those who have worked with me over the past ten years to develop and support the concept of virtual law practice. Future innovations on the model are no doubt on their way in the New Year.

     

     

  • Second Edition of Virtual Law Practice Book

    book pic2I am updating the second edition to the Virtual Law Practice book that I wrote back in 2010. The book needs to be almost completely re-written based on the way that technology has changed since I wrote about the set up of online delivery in law firms only four years ago.

    I am expanding the book to include my newer experiences working with law firms and lawyers to integrate online delivery of legal services into different law firm business models. Over the past four years, I’ve taught law school courses on the subject of virtual practice and related topics, such as unbundling of legal services and law practice management. Some of the content and material from my courses will end up in the text of the updated edition of the book.

    At the time of writing the first edition, I was very focused on the idea of completely virtual law offices, mostly operated by solos or small firms. However, since then, I’ve worked with so many varieties of business models that use technology to deliver online services that I realized I need to expand the book to include these different models. In many cases, in terms of economic success, these other methods of delivering online services seem to be more successful than the purely virtual law office model.

    In terms of statistics and specific data about the operation and success of any form of virtual practice, we still have very little concrete information to share. Companies like Clio and MyCase may gather useful information on the use of their systems to help with their marketing campaigns to lawyers. However, no one else seems to be able to gather data on how many lawyers deliver legal services online, what tools they use,  how it integrates with traditional delivery models, who their customers are, and any success they may or may not be having. I have my personal experience and that of my colleagues in elawyering working with many law firms and lawyers to create virtual law practices. Perhaps in the future as more lawyers add unbundled, online legal services to their offerings, the state bars will assist in collecting this data.  For the second edition, I will try to locate more statistics that might be useful in helping practitioners determine what the risks and benefits are of the different models of delivery.

    I’m going to spend the next two months finishing up this second edition and then turn my focus back to the work on my fellowship at Stanford Law School with the Center on the Legal Profession. I am attending the GSummit event in San Francisco next week to learn more about gamification and games and to think of ways to apply this form of increased online engagement to the legal profession and to serving the public.

    If anyone who read the original book would like to make suggestions about anything that you would like to see me cover in this updated edition, please let me know. Thanks and I look forward to having new content to share on this blog and elsewhere in the very near future!

  • ABA Journal Article on Virtual Practice

    cloudThe ABA Journal published an article entitled “Lawyers’ definitions of virtual practice vary, but not when it comes to finding success“.  The article runs through the different definitions of virtual law practice and the wide variety of ways that lawyers are choosing to deliver legal services online. The debate over the definition of the term (which the online legal community hashed out in multiple debates over the past eight years) does not matter as much as the use of the technology to serve clients, increase access to legal services, and provide lawyers with flexibility in their business models.

    The most valuable content in this lengthy article is the second half that goes into the ethics issues and the value of a virtual practice and how that might differ from a traditional law firm. The article references the ABA eLawyering Task Force’s the Best Practice Guidelines for Legal Information Web Site Providers and recommendations for working with cloud-based providers.

    The ABA LPD has asked me to write a second edition of my Virtual Law Practice book which was published in 2010. I’ll be working on that over the next couple of months. I’m expecting to need to re-write the majority of the book. So much has changed in only a few years in the area of online legal service delivery.

  • 15 Questions Before Unbundling Legal Services

    legosI was thrilled to read that unbundling was mentioned several times at Reinvent Law in NYC last Friday. Unbundling, or limited scope representation, is the primary delivery method used by many of the newer, online methods of legal service delivery. Of course, not all lawyers have been trained in how to unbundle legal services ethically. Unbundling tends to get only a footnote in most law schools when and if they cover law practice management.

    In order to compete in a changed legal marketplace it will be imperative for lawyers to learn how to unbundle their services for clients, but also for other lawyers and law firms if they are solo or small firm practitioners. I wrote a book on this topic a couple years ago so I’ll start sharing more of those tips on here for those who are interested in staying competitive. For a virtual law practitioner, this is even more critical because of how much easier it is to deliver unbundled services online than full-service.

    Here are 15 questions that may be added to the client intake process to help a lawyer determine whether the client is a good candidate for unbundling. They may also help the client understand the nature of the limited scope representation and how it differs from full-service assistance.

    1. Have you worked with a lawyer on any issues surrounding this matter before?
    2. Have you personally researched the law and legal issues involved in this matter?
    3. How much is financially at stake?
    4. How much is emotionally at stake?
    5. What do you see as a positive outcome for this case?
    6. What would you be willing to settle for if that exact outcome is not achievable?
    7. What aspects of this process are you willing and able to handle yourself?
    8. Have you ever been involved in a lawsuit or have any experience in the legal system?
    9. What resources are available to you in terms of time to devote to this matter, such as time away from work, arranging for childcare, etc.?
    10. What resources are available to you in terms of assistance from family members, paralegals, nonlawyer professionals, etc.?
    11. What tasks do you know that you want the lawyer to provide?
    12. How do you expect for us to collaborate to create a strategy for your case?
    13. How do you expect to communicate with the law firm?
    14. Are you comfortable using technology to communicate, such as web conferences, secure real-time chat or encrypted email?
    15. How much are you able to budget for unbundled legal services?

  • Five Tips for Lawyers Purchasing Online Lead Gen Services

    Lead-Generation-ROIFive Tips for Lawyers Purchasing Online Lead Generation Services

    1.   Find out how much traffic the branded network’s site generates. Check with a company like Quantcast, which provides an estimate of the traffic generated to a single website.

    2.   Find out where the company pulls in the leads. An unscrupulous company might be purchasing low-quality leads to funnel to their lawyer network.

    3.  Find out how the service operates. For example, does it focus on generating the traffic by purchasing Google AdWords? What is the strategy for generating leads to push to the lawyer network? The cost of the service to your firm is going to depend on its costs to generate the leads to forward to you.

    4.   Note how tailored the lead generation service is to your specific practice area and jurisdiction. Some companies may restrict their own marketing to particular states or regions to generate leads for the areas where they have the most lawyer members in their network.

    • If the service is attempting to generate leads from landing pages that are too broad, this is going to mean fewer warm leads for you.
    • Are you in a jurisdiction where the company has focused its marketing to the public, or will you be one of only a handful of lawyers in your jurisdiction using the service?

    5.   Do a cost/benefit analysis based on the return you would get from each lead and how much the company is charging for leads.

    • If the service is performance based, then find out if you must pay for leads even if they are not warm leads or if you are unable to convert a lead to a paying client. Most performance-based services will define a qualifying lead as any individual sent to you with a legal need that you have told the company you will handle.
    • Factor in the amount that you would charge that client for services and make sure the cost to acquire the client in the first place is the most effective use of that money.
    • Some companies with these services offer lead monitoring and tracking tools as well as other forms of support to help the lawyer with lead conversion.

    What Is Online Lawyer Lead Generation? (more…)

  • Chapter from New International Report on Online Legal Services

    CoverImageThis summer I wrote a report for Managing Partner, a UK-based publishing company focused on law firm management. The report is for lawyers who are interested in learning about and possibly adding online legal services to their law firms. Here is the Executive Summary and Chapter One.

    This is not intended to be an academic report so there are few citations and more checklists and recommendations for analysis and implementation. It is written for lawyers who want to focus on client-development and customer service for existing clients by adding online services in their firms. The case studies I reviewed are law firms that are successfully doing this. For example, Brilliant Law in the UK and Slater & Gordon in Australia. I’m not focusing on branded networks or companies in this report.

    The chapter I wish they would have given me to share is the final one where I take a look at why online legal service delivery by firms have not been as quickly adopted or as successful as many had hoped and what I think needs to be done to see it evolve and really increase access to legal services for the public. I will try to make this the subject of a blog post soon because I think there are definitely some lessons to be learned from this research that need to be shared. You can purchase a copy of the full report here.

    This report was international in scope, but I had difficulty finding firms in some areas that were marketing and delivering their services online. Some areas I neglected to write about simply because I couldn’t find anything there (Africa, South America, China, Japan, Russia, and others). I’m sure there must be some innovation in online delivery happening there, but to what extent? Already, since turning in the proofs last month, I’ve learned about a new company in Germany that is focused on online delivery. That’s the nature of this topic and why I should only write easily editable ebooks!

    As always, feedback, comments, and connections to others innovating in this space, are gratefully encouraged.

  • Podcast: How People Search for Lawyers: The Consumer Law Revolution

    Here is the podcast for an edition of The Digital Edge with Sharon Nelson and Jim Calloway where we discuss the subject of my new book, The Consumer Law Revolution: The Lawyer’s Guide to the Online Legal Marketplace.

  • Writing, Writing and More Writing

    A few articles to note and a request for leads:

    • A Symposium on Justice, Lawyering and Legal Education in the Digital Age will be held by Chicago-Kent College of Law this week in conjunction with the CALI’s 2013 Conference for Law School Computing. Richard Granat and I co-wrote an article entitled The Teaching of Law Practice Management and Technology in Law Schools: A New Paradigm, for the symposium which has been published in the law school’s law review.
    • I also wanted to point out Will Hornsby’s article in this journal entitled, Gaming the System: Approaching 100% Access to Legal Services Through Online Games, an earlier copy of which I read with great interest. I incorporated some of his research on this topic into the business plan for my game project.
    • My chapter entitled “eProfessionalism” has been published this month in the new book from the ABA Center for Professional Responsibility entitled Essential Qualities of the Professional Lawyer.
    • I’m collecting research and case studies for an international report on online legal services that I’ve been commissioned to write. In particular, I’m looking for examples of online delivery methods by private practitioners and law firms in Asia, Africa and South America. If you know of any studies that cover these countries, please share.

    I like to write.

  • Online Legal Marketplace Book Release

    Consumer_Law_Revolution_Cover_ONLY (2)My new book about the online legal marketplace, Consumer Law Revolution, was released today from the publisher and pre-orders should be shipping this week.

    I’m excited to share this book with the legal profession. It dives into an area that is growing in practice and where we don’t have clear, established best practices to guide us. The online legal marketplace naturally involves technology and the unbundling of legal services, but also new forms of online lawyer advertising and collaboration with non-lawyer legal service companies that provide online marketing tools and platforms for lawyers to connect with consumers.

    As with most of the work I do, part of my motivation for writing this book was because growth of the online legal marketplace increases access to justice by providing the public with alternative methods of receiving assistance and of matching them up with the lawyer or self-help service that will be best for them. By alternatives, I mean that more individuals will be able to find a legal service that they can afford to pay and which are delivered in a manner that they are able to receive it without financial or physical hardship.

    The book covers a lot of online marketing basics but also provides case studies of many of the legal technology startups that are coming on the scene to disrupt the delivery of legal services. Lawyers need to be a part of this disruption. For most of these case studies, I joined up as a lawyer and as a prospective client to see how the process worked from both sides. I hope the readers will find this review and my analysis useful in making selections about which branded networks to join. There are checklists and suggested best practices as well as evaluation of the potential ethics issues that may arise.

    I look forward to the conversations and debates this book will generate. I did not mince words in criticizing the outdated lawyer advertising rules and questioned the lack of data behind many of the assumptions that are behind those rules. If there are answers to my questions or reasons my proposals would not be feasible, that’s great. If there are none, then I hope this book sparks some reform or clarification or something useful to further the progress of our profession’s ability to stay relevant and adapt effectively to the changes in the legal marketplace. Thanks to everyone who supported my research and writing for this book.

    Here’s the official marketing copy for the book from the ABA LPM:  (more…)

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