Last week I was honored to give a keynote at the annual Canadian Discipline Administrators Conference in Toronto hosted by the Law Society of Upper Canada. The attendees were the discipline authorities of the different Canadian Bar jurisdictions. After speaking with several of them and based on the Q & A session, I can report that [...]

The Ethics Committee at the North Carolina State Bar voted to send the proposed formal ethics opinion 6 (FEO 6), entitled ”Subscribing to Software as a Service While Fulfilling the Duties of Confidentiality and Preservation of Client Property” back to the subcommittee to reconsider responses they received to inquiries #1 and #2. Both of these inquiries contained worrisome [...]

I love SaaS.  I depend on SaaS to operate my virtual law office.  I support an attorney’s right to choose their own practice management tools and make their own business decisions whether it’s in the cloud or in a filing cabinet.  But there are responsibilities that come along with choosing any practice management system and [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

Death.  The issue recently crept up in a presentation I gave about virtual law practice.  Then, the question that most of us like to avoid came up again on a personal level when in December I needed open surgery myself and in preparation started questioning what would happen to my virtual law office if I weren’t around to [...]

The California State Bar has published its newest ethics opinion, FEO 2010-179, related to the use of technology in law practice, specifically addressing the attorney’s duty of confidentiality to clients when using technology that may be accessed by a third-party.  Given the wording of the opinion, this could include everything from an attorney using wireless to connect [...]

I’m excited to announce the formation of the Legal Cloud Computing Association (LCCA).  See the formal press release below my comments.  About two years ago when I was owner of VLOTech, Larry Port of Rocket Matter reached out to me, Jack Newton (Clio) and Richard Granat (DirectLaw) about forming a group to address the concerns [...]