Virtual Law Practice

Category: Cloud Computing

  • Revised Proposed Ethics Opinion on SaaS

    UPDATE: CHECK OUT THIS POST by Erik Mazzone, Director of the Center of Practice Management at the NC Bar Association, on his Law Practice Matters blog.  Erik is concerned that the proposed opinion will limit the cloud-based vendors that attorneys in NC can use based on the location of their servers.  While most legal SaaS vendors will probably be in compliance by housing the data on servers located in the States, other non-legal SaaS companies, such as Dropbox, Google, etc., may not be in compliance with the proposed opinion because their servers are located overseas.  Will this proposed ethics opinion have a broader reach than expected? Are these other services really safe to be using with law office data in the first place?  See this post by Information Law Group discussing a recent Ponemon Study about cloud providers and security.

    The North Carolina State Bar published the revised version of its proposed ethics opinion on the use of SaaS in law practice management on April 21st, entitled, “Formal Ethics Opinion 6: Subscribing to Software as a Service While Fulfilling the Duties of Confidentiality and Preservation of Client Property”.

    The direction that this opinion takes provides guidance to the practitioner, rather than attempting to write technology standards into an ethics opinion, which is not the safest place for it.  Instead, the opinion requires that the attorney do a thorough job investigating the technology provider and any agreements with that providers to ensure confidentiality of the client data.  They also include a reference the ILTSO standards in the footnotes of the opinion (www.iltso.org) along with links to other resources for attorneys to accomplish this process. (more…)

  • NYSBA Report Reviews Virtual Law Firms

    The New York State Bar Association published its Report on the Task Force on the Future of the Legal Profession on April 2, 2011. Written for the practitioner rather than the IT consultant, the report provides suggested guidelines for the adoption of technology solutions as well as a discussion of current trends.

    The report devotes an entire section to virtual law firms and does an excellent job of defining the online delivery of legal services and distinguishes it from extranets and other forms of mobile lawyering, which have their own sections.  Describing changes in firm structure, virtual law offices are included as a significant and growing trend both for connecting lawyers with each other for collaboration purposes and for delivering services online to clients.

    The report also discusses new legal products and services that are being created through the use of technology-enabled law firms. This section does not specifically mention that the primary delivery of these new services is online or through a secure virtual law offices, but they acknowledge the use of newer knowledge management systems and document assembly and automation tools used in unbundling legal services.  The report also recognizes that the use of this technology can create greater opportunity for unique legal service delivery systems to develop as well as facilitate multijurisdictional practice.

    From the report:

    “Mass customization,” for example—broadly defined as the use of flexible computer-aided systems to produce custom output—can serve the objective of combining the low unit costs of mass production processes with the flexibility of individually tailored services to increase variety and customization without a corresponding increase in costs. While the technology for creating such applications—such as form agreements for repetitive transactions, or “macros” that assist in the development of first forms—has existed for some time, changing dynamics in lawyer/client relationships may make the investment in developing and maintaining such proprietary applications more attractive. Another example of the opportunity for this kind of investment in automation is the development of integrated systems for specialty and multijurisdictional legal projects.

    I choose to read that as a call for innovation.

    The report concludes with the recommendation that “NYSBA’s Committee on Standards of Attorney Conduct should study and make recommendations concerning the ethical and risk management considerations associated with new technologies such as social networking, third party hosted solutions, and virtual law firms.”

    We will see if this recommendation results in a set of separate guidelines or best practices for New York-licensed attorneys wanting to engage in virtual law practice.

  • Why I Read Hacker Mags

    If you are using technology to deliver legal services online then it’s part of your responsibility to keep up to date on the technology that you are using. Different security risks pop up every day and if you aren’t aware of the them then you can’t protect your law practice and your clients.

    For example, just this week the WSJ reported that Apple and Google collect location information from their users’ mobile devices.  How many virtual lawyers are transmitting confidential client information via mobile devices without any idea of what information is being collected?  Maybe location isn’t a major problem but what about sending photos taken by you or your client on mobile devices across unencypted email and those photos store the locations of where they were taken.  There are situations where this information could put your client (or their children, friends or family members) at risk.

    There are so many benefits to using cloud based technology to deliver legal services online, but we also have a responsibility to protect the confidentiality of our client’s data.  This means understanding how the technology works and how to use it responsibly on a daily basis.

    Several times at the ABA TECHSHOW in Chicago last week after giving presentations I was asked how I keep up with technology.  There are a lot of great law and tech bloggers, but frankly, if you really want to keep up to date on technology and security risks then you need to step outside of the legal profession.  Go into the world that programmers live in or look at the way that the banking or medical industries are handling the transfer of sensitive information using cloud-based systems.

    Yes, I enjoy reading hacker magazines. I understand about 3/4 of what’s in them because I don’t know how to read a lot of code, but it gives me good insight into the risks that are out there and how hackers are able to get ahold of data and manipulate it. I don’t condone the actions of the authors because a lot of it is illegal.  But why not learn from the pros and turn it around to protect my own practice and my clients by making sure my own system is not vulnerable to attack?

    For example, this last spring issue of 2600 had a great article about passwords from a hacker who had downloaded several databases of usernames and passwords and then compiled statistics that showed what is most popular and the vulnerabilities.  That teaches me what I need to do to be more secure online and how to educate my clients when they create usernames and passwords for themselves.

    Here are my two favorite hacker mags:

    2600 (a classic, written by anonymous and well-respected hackers who break systems mostly for the purpose of revealing vulnerabilities; starting to put some issues online)

    phrack (sometimes a little hard to plow through to find gems, but worth the time; posts issues online)

    If you don’t enjoy keeping up with the technology, which includes understanding the security risks, or don’t find this at all interesting, then you should find someone in your firm who does and can keep you updated.  Or you could always retain an IT consultant who will charge you for that education. Or maybe operating a virtual law firm is not something you should be jumping into at all.  You might decide to trust your legal SaaS provider to keep your system updated and maintained to protect your data from vulnerabilities, but they can’t be responsible for your own use of the hardware. Keeping up has to be part of your daily regime because of how quickly it moves.

     

  • International Standards for Legal Technology

    This morning the International Legal Technology Standards Organization (ILTSO) published its standards for the use of technology in law practice.

    This resource has been a long time in coming.  The standards will be open for public comment and feedback after it has been out there for awhile.  It will be a continual work in progress as something like this should be.

    My hope is that the state bars and other regulatory entities will use these standards as a resource for their attorneys.  Rather than each state bar creating these vastly different ethics opinions that are rarely updated in a timely fashion that attempt to dictate how we use technology in our law practices, these entities could instead remind attorneys of the rules of professional responsibility that they must comply with and then point them to regularly updated technology standards such as these and other resources for education.   Especially with the rise in multijurisdictional and virtual law practice, the need for standardization of technology and security is becoming even more critical.  Plus the standards take into consideration the needs of different types of practices that have different resources available to them, from the solo to a BigLaw firm with a full-time IT consultant. The suggestions are ranked accordingly and also written with very technical descriptions next to “easier to implement for the not so tech-savvy” explanations.

    The goal of the ILTSO standards is to meet this need in the legal profession and to keep those standards updated as the technology and security changes.  The board of the non-profit is made up of legal professors, international consultants, malpractice insurance carriers, IP attorneys, IT consultants and programmers, legal SaaS vendors, and attorneys from solo to BigLaw firms.  I became involved in this non-profit about two months ago when called upon to review the draft manuscript of the standards.  I specifically worked with them on the drafting of the ethics portion of the manual, but also advised as a solo practitioner with limited resources to implement really complex in-house tech solutions.

    As with everything it seems, some in the industry will feel threatened by the creation of standards and attempt to find something negative about the formation of this group.  I’m just glad that this resource is out there for the many attorneys that I speak to who are actively seeking this type of guidance.  I look forward to the feedback from others as they read through it.

  • Legal Tech Geeks Convene

    This week I’m attending the ABA TECHSHOW in Chicago. I’m looking forward to learning from the many legal tech geeks that show up to this event every year and to see what new products or services are being launched that might facilitate the online delivery of legal services.  I’m also expecting some challenging questions from the attendees which should make it fun.  Here’s where I’ll be:

    – April 11, 10:30-11:30am, “Expanding Your Practice with an Online Office”, co-presented with Catherine Sanders Reach

    –  1:30, keynote to hear Laurence Lessig speak.  (I’m a big fan, but never have been in same geographic location.  Super excited! Probably can’t top live talks I’ve seen by Richard Stallman or Larry Wall since we’ll be in a room full of lawyers and not programmers.  I’ll let you guess which one gave his presentation barefoot while eating a footlong sub. But hey, I’ll take inspiration wherever I can get it.)

    –   2:30-4:30pm, will attempt to make myself useful by standing at the concierge booth

    – April 12, 8:00- 9:00am, Meet the Author, “Virtual Law Practice: How to Deliver Legal Services Online”

    –   10:00 – 11:00am, “Popular Cloud Services for Lawyers”, co-presented with Tom Mighell

    –   luncheon, eLawyering Task Force will give out the 2011 James Keane Award to Legal Genie

    – 7:00pm, Hosting Taste of Techshow Dinner with an “elawyering theme”

    If you are attending and want to chat about virtual law practice or delivering legal services online, please feel free to come find me.

  • Virginia & the Ethics of Cloud Computing in Law Practice

    James M. McCauley, ethics counsel for the Virginia State Bar, has written an article for the February issue of the Virginia Lawyer Magazine, entitled “Cloud Computing — A Silver Lining or Ethical Thunderstorm for Lawyers?”

    Even if you aren’t licensed to practice in Virginia, I would recommend reading this well-balanced article on cloud computing.  

    McCauley summarizes the benefits of the technology for practice management, but spends the majority of the article answering the questions I’m sure he and other ethics counsel hear all the time from attorneys trying to figure out how to implement cloud computing in their practices.  He starts out by stating that “there is no basis in the Virginia Rules of Professional Conduct for an unqualified prohibition of lawyers managing their office software applications and client data using cloud computing.”   And then explains how Rule 1.6(a) gives attorneys an ethical duty to protect our clients’ confidential information.  From there the discussion moves to concerns about security and reliability of cloud computing.  (more…)

  • Outsourcing and the Virtual Law Office

    A virtual law office relies on a third-party provider to operate.  A legal SaaS provider maintains my virtual law office and the data is hosted on a server that is maintained by another third-party company that has leased its servers to my SaaS provider.  

    By using this form of technology to practice law online, am I “outsourcing” as governed by ABA Formal Ethics Opinion 08-451?  Does my use of a third-party technology provider fall under supervision of “non-lawyers” in Model Rule 5.3? 

    *open can of worms*

    The ABA Ethics Commission 20/20 has raised the question of whether cloud computing should be classified as a form of outsourcing.  This can be found in the issues paper entitled “Client Confidentiality and Lawyers’ Use of Technology.”  ABA Formal Ethics Opinion 08-451 describes a lawyer’s obligations when outsourcing work to lawyers and non-lawyers.  One comment to Rule 5.3 states that the duty to supervise non-lawyers extends to those who serve as independent contractors.

    My position:  Selecting a cloud-based technology solution for practice managment is not outsourcing.  It is a business method, a form of delivery.  Rules 1.6 (duty of confidentiality) and 1.15 (safe-guarding client property) require that attorneys use reasonable care in protecting the confidentiality of their client’s property.  To comply, attorneys must do their due diligence in researching and selecting their SaaS provider and any other third-party services.  This requirement provides adequate regulation for the use of a cloud-based technology in law practice management. State bars may provide their members with guidelines and education about how to handle the selection of technology providers or larger firms may decide to hire IT consultants to help them with these decisions.  (more…)

  • Animated Movie Intro for a Virtual Law Office

    An attorney operating a virtual law office relies more on online marketing and social media to develop their reputation and an online client base.  Some virtual law offices are creating YouTube tutorial videos that will walk prospective online clients through their virtual law office registration process and explain how legal services are delivered online.

    Below is my experiment using animated movies to introduce a virtual law office.   Check out this Wall Street Journal article from last week about the use of animated movies. A movie like this could be placed on an attorney’s website and then circulated on different social media networks.  It was simple to put together and took less than a half hour.  The dialogue for the avatar in the movie comes straight from the text you provide.  Many of us could cut and paste the text from existing law office marketing materials and just adjust it with the avatar’s facial expressions and motions to make it less stiff.  There are many different characters and backgrounds to choose from.

    As the ABA and other state bars analyze the use of the Internet as a tool for client development, here is yet another example of a technology that they will have to factor into their research on the topic. 

    This type of video could be used to market the online delivery of legal services of a virtual law office or used to educate the general public about basic legal issues, but in a fun format.  While you might think it would appeal only to a select target client base, most likely younger or tech-savvy clients, I think that to rule out a larger audience interested in watching an animated movie would be ignoring the value of novelty.  Much of the public gathers their information from the television screen or movie. Maybe those of us wanting to provide a basic legal education to the public are not using the correct form of media to reach them. 

    What do you think?  Does this format have potential in elawyering?  Could we use this to market our virtual law offices?  Could we create educational movies using animated characters – one an attorney and one a client – to explain how unbundled legal services are delivered online or walk prospective clients through limited scope representation legal issues?

  • ABA Ethics 20/20 Addresses Choice of Law Issue in Virtual Law Practice

    Virtual lawyers and multijurisdictional virtual law firms take note: The ABA Commission on Ethics 20/20 has released yet another issues paper proposing changes to ethics rules that could affect the delivery of legal services online.  This newest paper comes from the Working Group on Uniformity, Choice of Law, and Conflicts of Interest and is entitled “Choice of Law in Cross-Border Practice.”  It even includes a sample scenario for the virtual law practice which I’ve posted below.

    With lawyers and clients more frequently not located in the same geographic location and many of them communicating and receiving legal services online, this raises the question of which jurisdiction’s ethics laws apply.  The Commission recognizes the need for guidance and greater clarity for a growing number of lawyer and law firms faced with questions about choice of ethics law. (more…)

  • Upcoming Events Related to ELawyering, Virtual Law Practice

    – University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s School of Law presentation on virtual law offices, next Thursday, February 10th at noon. 

    – Unbundling Legal Services: Ethics and Best Practices, ALI-ABA Teleconference, February 24, noon-1:30pm EST.

    – AVVO webinar on unbundling legal services which will also discuss the use of technology to unbundle and deliver legal services.   Thursday March 10th at 10:00 am PT.

    – ABA/LPM Meet the Author Series Podcast, 1pm

    – ABA TECHSHOW, Chicago

                     – April 11, 10:30-11:30am, “Expanding Your Practice with an Online Office”, co-presented with Catherine Sanders Reach

                      -April 12, 8:00- 9:00am, Meet the Author, “Virtual Law Practice: How to Deliver Legal Services Online”

                                      10:00 – 11:00am, “Popular Cloud Services for Lawyers”, co-presented with Tom Mighell

                                       7:00pm, Hosting Taste of Techshow Dinner with an “elawyering theme”

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