This was my first attempt at creating an infographic using Piktochart. Any feedback is welcome! It’s challenging for a writer to think in terms of graphic design, but I’m trying!
Category: Document Automation
-
Breaking News: Major US Bank Offers Online Legal Services in Business Hub
An exciting breakthrough in online delivery is occurring through the new offering that Suntrust Bank is launching. They have partnered with a third party to create an online Business Hub which provides legal services in addition to assistance with planning, websites, data backup and finances.
From the website: “This online portal helps you create legal documents, develop business plans and generate invoices and financial reports.” It appears to be a one-stop shop for small business owners who need accounting and planning software, and even some marketing services. The service also claims to provide risk assessment services for businesses through the legal services tools.
Business Centric Services Group, Inc. is the named developer of the Business Hub according to the Terms of Service. Both Epoq Legal, a company based in the UK, and DirectLaw, a US based company are providing technology components to this project. Mozy Pro, PlanHQ, Moonfruit and Freeagent are also providing software. The link on Suntrust takes the user to a third-party website that is run by the Business Centric Services Group, Inc. All of the tools provided in the Hub cost the user $25 a month which may be debited from the user’s Suntrust account.The online legal services are provide through a product called Legal Document Builder. According to the site, this lets the business owner handle the following:
– Create legal documents for your business from a wide range of templates using a straight forward question and answer process.
– Templates include: website terms and conditions, privacy policy, tenancy agreement, debt recovery letters, shareholders agreement and many more.
– Avoid risks and disputes that could financially weaken your business and comply with Health & Safety legislation by performing risk assessments and more.
That’s a lot of practical software in one place for a small business owner for only $25 a month. I haven’t had time to dig into the details of using each product on the Hub because I have not registered yet. But as a small business owner myself and having been a solo practitioner for many years, I can certainly see the appeal of this package of unbundled legal and other services. I do not at this point see any reference to licensed lawyers providing support for the legal documents. For many small business owners’ legal needs, this would not even be necessary. However, there may be more options available once you register.
In my classes, I tell the law students to think about what happened when Intuit got into the tax business. What happened to accountants when Turbo Tax went on the market? Then I ask: “What would happen to estate planning or small business legal services if Turbo Tax added those online options at the end of the annual tax software?” How many consumers are going to go straight through that trusted brand for the convenience and the fact that their confidential information is already being handled in that space. With this new online Business Hub from Suntrust, it seems like that future is starting to get here.
How will pure-play virtual law offices serving business law manage to compete with $25/month for all of these services? I will leave that for another post.
-
Click and Mortar Legal Services for the Public Open in CA
A new hybrid of legal service delivery has launched this week with the opening of the LegalForce storefront in Palo Alto. The delivery model combines online services with the customer service of a traditional store front operation complete with a network of lawyers who charge a flat rate of $45 for 15 minutes of legal advice.Raj Abyhanker, the lawyer who created the Trademarkia Enterprise, is responsible for this new innovation in legal service delivery. The LegalForce website provides personal online legal services in a self-help manner. The store front offers access to go online and purchase these services and also sells mobile devices, such as tablets, and legal self-help books. Employees of the store, called concierges, are there to assist customers as needed but do not provide legal advice. Customers may book appointments with lawyers online prior to meeting them in the store.
The company plans to cultivate relationships with law firms and lawyers so that the store front may be used as a meeting place for lawyers and prospective clients. The store may also be used as a way for community legal education sessions to be offered. This type of collaboration between practitioners, the community, and companies providing legal services online (and now in hybrid form) is only the beginning as I’ve suggested in past posts.
Richard Granat, who was present for the store’s launch this week, has written his first impressions on his blog and explains the value of this “click and mortar” strategy both for the public and the legal profession. [Many thanks to Richard for sharing the pictures with me as well as the overview of this model. I was unable to make it to the launch of the storefront, but plan to make it out there for a quick tour in March.]
This concept will appeal to the DIY client. It combines elements of unbundling and virtual law practice with more traditional face-time with a lawyer and the in-person customer services of a small business venue. I see two potential benefits to this model: 1) it could increase access to legal services and basic legal education for the public in a local community; and 2) it could provide lawyers with another way to offer services which could be used for client development and as part of their online and offline marketing strategies.The company hopes to expand its branded network of lawyers outside of CA and into other states in the future. I am looking forward to seeing how their network grows and plan on including a case study of their business model in my upcoming book providing guidance on ethics issues and best practices for lawyers who want to join up with branded networks such as LegalForce as part of their online marketing strategy.
-
LTN Innovative Use of Tech Award
I’m pleased to share the news that the virtual law firm I joined last spring, Burton Law LLC, has won a Legal Technology News 2012 Innovation Award in the category of Most Innovative Use of Technology in a Small Law Firm. Here is the ALM press release.I’ve described our firm’s tech structure on this blog before when I announced my move from solo virtual lawyering to this different structure of virtual practice. The LTN article announcing the award briefly explains the tech we use in the firm. However, we have also now added DirectLaw to the list of software that we use to deliver services to clients. As someone who has unbundled online services for the past seven years, getting the document automation and assembly piece of the puzzle into our firm’s structure was an important addition to the usual cloud-based delivery of legal work.
You can read the LTN article’s brief description of our firm’s technology here. Chad Burton, the founder of our firm, will be attending LegalTechNY to receive the award for the firm. Chad is always one step ahead of the curve when it comes to exploring new technologies and processes that might be integrated into our firm’s model. Almost once a week he is sharing with us some new iPad app to increase personal productivity. I’m sure he’ll return from LegalTechNY with a few more new tools and ideas to share with the firm on Yammer.
I was also very happy to see that John Mayer received an award as Champion of Technology for his work at CALI, eLangdell, and the A2J Author software. The article should have also mentioned the MOOC he developed last year on Digital Topics in Law Practice which is an awesome free online educational resource that all lawyers interested in virtual law practice should go through. Congrats on the well-deserved recognition, John!
-
Review of SubTech2012 at New York Law School in Tweets
Yesterday was a productive day of brainstorming at New York Law School which is hosting the 2012 Twelfth International Conference on Substantive Technology in Legal Education and Practice (SubTech). Topics discussed at the roundtable included Automation of Legal Work,
The Nature of the Current and Future Legal Profession, Technology and the Law School Predicament and Re-Invention. You can see a list of the attendees on the site. The discussion was heated at times because of the mix of technologists, academics and practitioners.I’m posting my notes which were tweeted below. For the record, these are not all my thoughts. The moderators asked that we not attribute anything that was said in the discussion to any one particular individual. They are also posted backwards below so read from the top up. I’m sure there is a better way to scrape tweets off of Twitter. If you don’t care about the law school dilemma and only want to read about the legal technology, jump straight to the bottom. The ideas are there. Enjoy, comment.
Heading back to SubTech this morning to listen to individual presentations that address some of the topics we discussed yesterday.
______________
Wonderful wrap-up from Liz Chambliss at #SubTech2012. Looking forward to more productive discussion at dinner.
UDSL has two online programs starting this fall. RT @rgranat: How about a Certificate in Digital Lawyering? idea surfaced at #subtech2012
Collaboration among law schools on certificate programs with an assessment component that employers can verify. #SubTech2012
Could we add more gamificaton to legal education and add multidisciplinary collaboration to that online system? #SubTech2012
Not having to teach to the bar would also help deliver a product to students that would be more applicable in real practice. #SubTech2012
Should law schools take a new role in training legal engineers, new firm roles, not just lawyers? #SubTech2012
Reinvention of legal ed may have to figure out what happens to legal scholarship and research. What is value, who pays for that?#SubTech2012 (more…)
-
WebJD: Online Self-Diagnosis of Legal Ailments?
I’ll confess that I use WebMD’s symptom checker way more than I should. Sometime it’s to reassure myself that the situation does not warrant a trip to the doctor’s office. I like the user interface – the fact that I don’t have to come up with a multitude of keywords for symptoms, but can just scroll over the photo of the adult or child and pinpoint the source of my worries. I like that from that point I can use a process of elimination and in a few steps have a list of possible ailments with descriptions of them and suggestions for proceeding with care.
When the alternative is spending half a day in a doctor’s waiting room, I will take the online self-diagnosis any day. Sometimes the answers I get just lead to more questions and I actually do end up making that appointment. But, for the most part, this web advisor answers my question, eases my worry, and I wait and see what happens.
Could the legal profession provide something similar for the public? A “WebJD” webadvisor that helps you figure out what area of law your need is in and what the different types of solutions you might need for that issue? There are a ton of legal referral sites and directories, but if I were the client I’d want to run a self-diagnosis before I started shopping online for an attorney.
I’m familiar with the AJ2 Author and how it walks the client through a process of answering questions until the end where the final legal document is completed with instructions. There is a similar concept that Foundrs.com has perfected which has virtual incorporation for business ideas and startups to handle the business planning and create unbundled legal documents with online assistance before taking them in to an attorney’s office. See TechCrunch’s article on FairSoftware. I’m thinking of something different though; a web advisor that’s even simpler and for lower-level legal guidance without even the document assembly component. (more…)
-
A Revolution that Combines Humans & Computers
Darryl Mountain, a fellow member of the ABA eLawyering Task Force, has just published “An Update and Reconsideration of Chrissy Burns’ ‘Online Legal Services-A Revolution that Failed?’” in the European Journal of Law and Technology, Vol. 1, Issue 3, 2010. If you haven’t yet read Chrissy Burns’ article which she published as her PHD Dissertation in 2007 at the University of New South Wales. School of Law, start there first.
Mountain’s article touches on each of Burns’ thesis points, including “the knowledge acquisition bottleneck, combining people and software, combining different technology paradigms, and combining people from different backgrounds.” Mountain’s concludes that in the past several years since Burns’ thesis was published online legal services have continued to develop and grow in use among legal professionals and the public. (more…)
-
List of Products that Facilitate Virtual Law Practice
Updated November 6, 2012 (some items on the list now include iPad or other mobile device apps)
In the appendix of my book, I mention a list of current SaaS and other cloud computing service providers with products that may be used in the delivery of legal services online. I’ve posted some of these companies below. There are more coming out every month, and I welcome suggestions for new ones to add to the list.
I have not personally used all of these products or services, but have read reviews or taken trial runs or demos for most. They are in no particular order. It is also difficult to categorize them perfectly because many contain multiple features or differ in how the classify their products and services in the market.
Time, Billing & Invoicing
Credit Card Processing
Electronic Signatures
Encryption Tools
Case & Client Management
Document Assembly/Automation/Drafting
HotDocs User (part of HotDocs Suite 10 out this summer)
Document Management/Storage
Virtual Law Office Platforms
Litigation/E-Discovery
Products with Secure Client Portals
Research Tools
Project Management
Online Document storage/Backup
Probono Legal Services Support
Remote Access
Web-Conferencing
Website Hosting/Management
Password Generators/Tools
PC Tools Free Password Generator
Expert System/Decision Making Tools
Coming Soon: A list of companies marketing directly to consumers that provide platforms for lawyers to delivery online legal services and market their firms.
-
No Substitute for an Attorney
During yesterday’s ABA ELawyering Task Force call, we discussed the recent settlement agreement entered into by LegalZoom and the Washington State Attorney General’s Office.
In an Assurance of Discontinuation, the online legal services company must not state in advertising to the public that its services are less expensive than those of a law firm without also explaining that its services are not a substitute for an attorney. With the far-reaching and well-funded advertising campaigns of the company, it is easy to see how the message may be misleading to members of the public, many of whom may have never retained the services of a licensed attorney and who may only have the price points and t.v. ads with which to make a judgement.
One of the statements in Assurance of Discontinuation pertains to the unauthorized practice of law in the state of Washington – a claim we have seen issued against the company in N.C. and Missouri. While LegalZoom does not admit to UPL in this document, it does agree not to engage in UPL with regards to providing personalized legal guidance that is state-specific within the legal self-help forms.
Other concerns that myself and others have brought up in the past related to the practices of online legal service companies are also covered in the agreement. It will be interesting to see if other state attorney generals will take notice of this and implement similar actions.
Here is the Assurance of Discontinuation:
-
Technology eReport Features ELawyering
The September issue of the Technology eReport from the ABA GP, Solo and Small Firm Division has a feature article on elawyering written by virtual lawyering pioneer, Richard Granat. The article is entitled “Doing Law on the Web: eLawyering for Competitive Advantage” and provides an introduction to elawyering or virtual lawyering, but also goes into a great description of web-enabled document automation and how this can be used to deliver legal services to clients online.
Also cited in the article is the evidence of growing demand by the public for online legal services. Granat writes,
A recent survey of more than 2,000 online users revealed that a majority of consumers expect good law firms to offer their services online in the next couple of years. The online poll revealed that nearly half (47%) of consumers would be more likely to choose a law firm that offered the convenience of online access to legal services and documents over one that had no online service capability. Some 56 percent said they expected good law firms to give customers the ability to use their services online in the next couple of years. Over two-fifths (43%) agreed that they would change law firms if an alternative firm offered a reduced fee in return for the consumer providing initial details about their matter online.
This is good news for those of us with a virtual law office who have seen the demand from our online clients, but have not seen any report published to confirm this.