Virtual Law Practice

Category: Cloud Computing

  • Paper on Regulatory Barriers to Multijurisdictional Virtual Law Firms

    Most of my earlier writing on this blog was geared towards the solo practitioner or small firm finding ways to deliver legal services online. But I would also get questions from practitioners in larger law firms and from practitioners who were licensed in multiple states and wanted to understand how they could use innovations in technology to work with clients across the country and internationally. Some lawyers were living overseas and were licensed in several states in the U.S. or they lived in one State here but were licensed in multiple jurisdictions and wanted to make sure they were in compliance with the rules of professional responsibility.

    So I wrote this paper “Regulatory Barriers to the Growth of Multijurisdictional Virtual Law Firms and Potential First Steps to their Removal” which the North Caroline Journal of Law and Technology at UNC-Chapel Hill Law School was kind enough to publish in their recent issue. As it turned out, I could have written a short book on this topic so I had to exclude almost everything related to international regulatory barriers and just focus on the U.S.  Saving my international research for another project I guess.

    If you have time to read nothing else, I’d recommend the first half with the background on virtual firms which provides several case studies and models of multijurisdictional virtual practices and what technology and methods of online delivery or collaboration that they are using. I’ve mentioned the following firms:

    – VLP Law Group

    – FSB FisherBroyles Legal

    – Heritage Law

    – Rimon Law

    – Axiom Law

    – Clearspire

    – Valorem Law

    – Burton Law

    – Hargrove Madden

    – McGrath & Spielberger, PLLC

    – Frame Legal

    – Harrill Law Firm

    Fair warning, most of the model rules I discuss in this paper will probably be at least a little modified by the ABA Annual Meeting in August. But hopefully some of my proposals at the end will strike a cord with someone out there. Comments always welcome.

    Abstract:

    The spread of disruptive technologies to the legal profession is changing the dynamic of how law firms are structured as well as  the value propositions associated with the delivery of legal  services.  The number of law firms with a national presence has grown due to the cost benefits  and efficiency of using cloud  computing.  New models for  expansion across jurisdictional
    boundaries are increasing.  However, the regulatory barriers to  create these new firm structures are numerous and costly.  This
    paper reviews the evolution of technology in multijurisdictional  firms and examines the primary regulatory barriers to their further  development.  A starting point for standardization of regulations is  proposed as well as potential first-steps to removing barriers to the  growth of multijurisdictional virtual law firms.

    The rest is here.  

     

  • Who Does the Technology Replace?

    Last month, I spoke at the annual conference for the IP Paralegal Institute in Cary, NC. The topic of my presentation was how to create an “eOffice” – to move away from paper and go digital. I started the talk with an overview of the legal marketplace for unbundled and online legal services and ended it with a look at where the profession will be in the next five years. I discussed decision-making systems like Neota Logic and document assembly and automation technologies as well as online case and client management systems that automate many of the functions of a law office.

    The final question from the attendees afterwards was a new one for me in the  Q&A, probably because it was the first time I had spoken to a room of paralegals rather than lawyers: “With all this technology, how many human bodies do you think it will replace in the law firm?” I guess my presentation had made a few of them nervous about their job security in the future. Likewise, when I spoke at Stanford Law a few weeks later I was asked at the end of my talk what I thought the make-up of a law firm would be five to ten years from now.

    Where do paralegals and other support staff fit into these new law firm models? (more…)

  • Stanford CodeX Speaker Presentation Video

    Last week I gave a presentation at Stanford Law School entitled “Unbundling and the Future of Legal Service Delivery.” There was a good turnout and we had some great questions from the attendees at the end of the talk which I enjoyed.

    Thanks again to Stanford CodeX and the Stanford Center on the Legal Profession for inviting me out there to share my thoughts on these topics. I am introduced by Tony Lai, one of the founders of LawGives, a legal tech startup working with CodeX and StartX, that I also had the pleasure of spending time with while in Palo Alto. Below is the video from my talk.

  • Release of iPad App for Virtual Practice

    Today, the Apple Apps Store has released the Total Attorneys practice management platform’s iPad and iPhone app.  This clean app allows a lawyer to operate a law practice from the iPad and/or iPhone with secure access to the virtual law office platform. Case and client management features are all integrated into the app, and it syncs with the full browser version of the software. It is free for lawyers who have subscribed to the Total Attorney’s platform ($1/month for the service).

    When I logged in for the first time, everything from my virtual law office was pulled in. I can view my tasks, agenda, documents, case files, contacts, leads, and billing. There is a central dashboard to show me recent activities and tasks that are marked due for today. There is also search functionality with filtering by type so that I can quickly find the files or client information that I need. There is also a timer at the top of the app that allows me to track my time. Even though I don’t use the billable hour, it’s still great to be able to record time spend on a web conference with a client or call that can be recorded into their digital file. This is really a clean, beautifully designed app that I will probably end up using more than the full browser version of the system.

    Congratulations to the team at TA who were involved in making this happen (this especially includes my hardworking programmer husband who kept me informed of their progress along the way)!  There has been much discussion about how lawyers need to be careful about using mobile devices for elawyering. I believe a secure system like this that carries over the encryption and other security measures from the full version is the safer way to go if you are a lawyer who intends to work directly with clients and/or with their case files or other lawyers on a cloud-based system.

  • Burton Law Expanding Virtual Firm Model in NC

     

    For awhile now I have been interested in learning about virtual practice models that go beyond the purely web-based model that I operate. Over the past year, I’ve been talking to Chad Burton, the founder of Burton Law, LLC, to understand his firm’s structure and how it uses technology to operate. Burton Law launched at the beginning of 2011 and is based in Ohio. They offer legal services in several practice areas, including business, data privacy, dispute resolution, estate planning and probate and intellectual property.

    What impressed me the most about this virtual law firm was that it does not have the traditional law firm hierarchy. Many of us who are solo practitioners became so because we had less than stellar experiences with the traditional firm structure of partners and associates – not to mention the billable hour requirements and other firm policies that did not allow us the flexibility we needed to serve our clients.

    Burton Law’s virtual firm structure is unique because the attorneys are all “members” of the firm. There is a manager, but no partners. The often
    least-liked aspects of operating a practice are taken care of by the firm, and the lawyers can focus on delivering quality services to their clients. (more…)

  • Factors Determining “Reasonableness”

    The ABA Commission on Ethics 20/20 published its revised draft resolutions for comment regarding Technology and Confidentiality at the end of last month. Under Comment [16] to Rule 1.6 “Confidentiality of Information”, the revised draft contains a list of factors that determine whether the lawyer has made reasonable efforts to prevent “unauthorized access to, or the inadvertent or unauthorized disclosure of, confidential information.” Comment [16] states:

    Factors to be considered in determining the reasonableness of the lawyer’s efforts include the sensitivity of the information, the
    likelihood of disclosure if additional safeguards are not employed, the cost of employing additional safeguards, the difficulty of implementing the safeguards, and the extent to which the safeguards adversely  affect the lawyer’s ability to represent clients (e.g., by making a device or important piece of software excessively difficult to use). (more…)

  • NC Cloud Computing Opinion Published

     

    At its meeting on January 27, the NC State Bar Council adopted and published the last version of 2011 Formal Ethics 6 “Subscribing to Software as a Service While Fulfilling the Duties of Confidentiality and Preservation of Client Property”.  The last version of this opinion was sent to subcommittee in July 2011, but the discussion over the structure of the opinion has been almost a year and a half-long process. At one point, a draft of the opinion contained a list of minimum requirements for the use of SaaS which raised some concern with NC lawyers as well as others nationwide who are interested in the development of legal technology.

    The final conclusion of the published Opinion:

    a law firm may contract with a vendor of software as a service provided the lawyer uses reasonable care to safeguard confidential client information.

    The ethics subcommittee that reviewed this issue should be commended for the amount of research and thought that they put into this process. They pulled in experts on both sides on the fence on the issue of using SaaS in law practice and really made an effort to understand the broad impact that the opinion would make on NC practitioners in a variety of practices. At one point, experts in online banking, which also relies on strict security standards for the use of SaaS, were called in to provide their perspective.

    Here are some key items to notice in this opinion: (more…)

  • Educating the Digital Lawyer eBook Available for Free Download

    An exciting new resource for lawyers and legal educators has been published online for free thanks to the sponsorship of Harvard’s Berkman Center LawLab and LexisNexis.

    The book project called Educating the Digital Lawyer is now available for download as an epub file here. Editors Oliver Goodenough and Marc Lauritsen pulled together the collection from contributors most of whom met and discussed issues related to digital legal education during a working group that was part of the Future Ed Conference.

    The book contains suggestions for changes that need to be made to legal education with a strong emphasis on how the law school curriculum needs to better prepare law students to practice law in a digital environment. Other online resources, such as videos, podcasts, webinars, or other written materials, related to topics in the book may be forthcoming. The resources in this book are useful not only to law school faculty and students, but also to practitioners who may need direction on how to fill in their own law school education gap. Yours truly contributed chapter 10 “What Should be in a Digital Curriculum: A Practitioner’s Must Have List.”

     

  • December ezine on elawyering

     

    The December issue of Law Practice Today is focused on elawyering with articles from myself and fellow ABA elawyering Task Force members discussing different forms of elawyering.

    My article is a basic “get started with elawyering” introduction.  Here is an excerpt:

    It is not necessary to convert to a completely paperless law office in the clouds in order to benefit from different methods of elawyering. Most lawyers would prefer to get their feet wet first and then gradually find ways to take portions of their practice digital – whether that means moving to cloud-based applications for certain tasks or something smaller in scope, such as the use of a virtual paralegal or virtual assistant. There are a few simple first steps that a lawyer might take to getting started with elawyering…..read more

    Other articles in this issue include:

    Expand Your Solo or Small Firm Practice Using Client Portals, by Donna Seyle

    Document Assembly Over the Internet, by Richard S. Granat

    Dancing in the Cloud, by Marc Lauritsen

    An Update on Governing Cloud Computing, by Will Hornsby and Joseph Duffy

    The Potentials and Perils of a Virtual Law Practice, by Ed Poll

  • New Version of NC SaaS Ethics Opinion

     

    The NC Bar has published the revised version of it proposed ethics opinion entitled “Subscribing to Software as a Service While Fulfilling the Duties of Confidentiality and Preservation of Client Property”, 2011 FEO 6 on the website. It will also be published in the next issue of the NC State Bar Journal. 

    You can read some of the history of this opinion in this post.  After a year or more of subcommittee review and revision, this latest version will hopefully be the final one that the Ethics Committee recommends for adoption by the Council at their January meeting.

    The subcommittee removed the list of minimum requirements for the selection of a technology vendor. Many of the items on the list had raised concern as detailed here by myself and others. The new version of the opinion sticks with the “reasonable care” standard requiring the attorney to do his or her due diligence in researching the technology and any third-party provider. The proposed opinion states:

    …a law firm may use SaaS if reasonable care is taken to minimize the risks of inadvertent disclosure of confidential information and to protect the security of client information and client files. A lawyer must fulfill the duties to protect confidential client information and to safeguard client files by applying the same diligence and competency to manage the risks of SaaS that the lawyer is required to apply when representing clients.

    (more…)

MENU