Virtual Law Practice

Category: Ethics

  • Unbundling Low Cost Legal Services with Contract Lawyers

    I wanted to give a shout-out to Gabriel Cheong, owner of Infinity Law Group, for creating a new business model that unbundles legal services for reduced fees. Cheong has founded Cambridge Divorce Group which brings together contract lawyers who are willing to unbundle family law services for reduced rates. I’ve mentioned Cheong on here before because his law firm website features a web calculator to assist prospective clients in estimating their legal costs.

    Cheong writes about his new venture on the Solo Practice University blog. It’s a great example of using unbundling to meet an underserved market of pro se litigants seeking limited legal assistance for family law matters. I can’t tell from the website, but I would expect that some of these unbundled services will be handled online between the lawyers and clients in order to make the unbundled services more efficient and the process of unbundling more cost-effective for the venture.

    Wouldn’t it be great if these types of collaborative, unbundling lawyer ventures were available to the public in every state? With the ABA’s recent adoption of the Unbundling Resolution, maybe this is exactly what we will see more of in the near future.

  • Ethics and the Virtual Law Office – Article in St. Louis Lawyer

    Michael Downey, a lawyer with Armstrong Teasdale LLP and legal ethics teacher at Washington University School of Law and St. Louis University School of Law, has written an article for the St. Louis Lawyer seeking to balance the messages lawyers might take from two recent events in virtual practice news: 1) Rachel Rodger’s article in Forbes focusing on the benefits of increased work/life balance from virtual law offices and 2) the Virginia disciplinary matter of lawyer Atchuthan Sriskandarah who operated a virtual practice and engaged in misleading lawyer advertising.

    Michael’s article focuses on the ethics issues that lawyers engaging in virtual practice should be aware of. He concludes

    Advancing technology, changing lifestyles, and the current economic climate will inevitably lead to an increase in virtual law offices. As long as a lawyer takes care to comply with applicable ethics rules, including the eight facets discussed in this article, he or she should be able to have – as the Forbes article discusses – a rewarding virtual practice.

     

  • Attorney @ Work: The Next Lawyering Frontier

    talking fingersIn case you missed reading it on the Attorney at Work blog, here is a link to my interview for them. I’ve gotten a huge response from this article in the form of emails from lawyers across the country so something in it must have struck a cord.

    As the article says, I’ll be speaking at the Lawyernomics 2013 conference in Las Vegas on April 27 on “The Consumer Law Revolution: Lawyer Collaboration with Branded Networks.”  More on that later.Here is part of the Attorney at Work interview:

    The greatest opportunities for today’s lawyers are online. This is where the conversation about legal services is happening for the public, whether lawyers are present or not. It’s not just personal legal services that we are talking about. Companies and corporate clients are online, listening and engaging with their customers. Lawyers who understand and stay constantly up to date with the technology and the different opportunities to engage in online conversation are going to continue to grow and succeed. This is not only for client development. Lawyers need to know how their clients communicate and operate their businesses. The lawyer who does not understand online engagement is not going to be the best lawyer for a company whose customers are all engaging with the company online, whether wanted or not.

  • ABA Adopts Unbunding Resolution

    This Monday the ABA House of Delegates voted to adopt Resolution 108 supporting limited scope representation or unbundling. This resolution was crafted by the Standing Committee on the Delivery of Legal Services. ABA Staff Counsel, Will Hornsby, and the Committee Chair, Ritchey Hollenbaugh, presented the Resolution to the House in Dallas.

    Because unbundling is frequently used as a method of legal service delivery for virtual practice, I want to post the actual text of the resolution here. Obviously, unbundling has many different applications in our profession other than being used in online delivery. The adoption of this resolution shows progress on many fronts. Now let’s see the call in the second paragraph of the resolution come into play: state, local and territorial bar associations, the judiciary and court administrations, and CLE providers should increase support and education about unbundling.

    Please also follow the link and read the full report which follows the Resolution.

    RESOLVED, That the American Bar Association encourage practitioners, when appropriate, to consider limiting the scope of their representation as a means of increasing access to legal services.

    FURTHER RESOLVED, That the American Bar Association encourage and support the efforts of national, state, local and territorial bar associations, the judiciary and court administrations, and CLE providers to take measures to assure that practitioners who limit the scope of their representation do so with full understanding and recognition of their professional obligations.

    FURTHER RESOLVED, That the American Bar Association encourage and support the efforts of national, state, local and territorial bar associations, the judiciary and court administrations, and those providing legal services to increase public awareness of the availability of limited scope representation as an option to help meet the legal needs of the public.

     

     

  • Click and Mortar Legal Services for the Public Open in CA

    LegalForce1A 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.]

    LegalForce2This 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.

  • Florida Publishes Proposed Cloud Computing Ethics Opinion

    FloridaOn January 25, 2013, the Professional Ethics Committee of the Florida State Bar published Proposed Advisory Opinion 12-3 2 related to the use of cloud computing in law practice.

    The proposed opinion refers to the ethics opinions already published in Alabama, Arizona, Iowa, Nevada, New York and Pennsylvania. Here is a link to my post that lists state bar ethics opinions related to virtual law practice and cloud computing.

    This short proposed opinion in Florida also comes to a similar conclusion as most of the other states that have addressed the topic: Yes. It is o.k. to use cloud computing in law practice. However, there are precautions that the lawyer should take. And then the proposed opinion provides the usual caveats which essentially come down to using “reasonable care” in the selection and use of the technology in law practice to ensure compliance with the Rules of Professional Conduct (in particular Model Rule 1.6(a) regarding confidentiality).

    The conclusion of the opinion states:

    In summary, lawyers may use cloud computing if they take reasonable precautions to ensure that confidentiality of client information is maintained. The lawyer should research the service provider to be used, should ensure that the service provider maintains adequate security, should ensure that the lawyer has adequate access to the information stored remotely, and should consider backing up the data elsewhere as a precaution.

  • Consumer Law Revolution Ebook

    ConsumerLawEbookCoverI’ve created a new page on this blog for my new ebook: Consumer Law Revolution.

    This ebook is the precursor to my full book that should be published by the ABA LPM sometime later this year. The ebook provides an introduction to the concept of branded networks and online marketing tools for lawyers.

    For the book, I researched almost all of the legal tech startups and branded networks from both the lawyer and consumer perspective. These case studies are in the full book as are all of the important ethics issues surrounding lawyer collaboration with these companies to engage with and provide legal services to the public.

    I wanted to make the best practices portion of this material free and available to practitioners because I don’t know of any other resources out there like this and it’s needed. As most of you know by now from my writing, I believe that the legal profession should find ways to collaborate with companies providing legal services online. It will be a significant way to increase access to justice for certain legal services. Not for all services, not for all clients, and not for all lawyers – see my book on unbundling or that ebook for reasons why not. However, it will be significant for large segments of the public needing basic legal services and may lead to other forms of collaboration and innovation in the delivery of legal services that could expand access in ways we can’t see right now.

    For those who are venturing into this area of lawyer advertising/delivering legal services online in their law practice, this ebook and the full book to come should be a helpful guide.

    As always, I welcome feedback.

  • NJ Supreme Court Adopts Amendments to Bona Fide Office Rule 1:21-1

    New JerseyAdopted Amendments to NJ Supreme Court Rule 1:21-1 will be effective February 1 of this year. This is the “bona fide office” rule that I’ve written about on here before. Thanks to Ekaterina Schoenefeld for sharing a copy of the Notice and Amendments.

    Here is a quick rundown of the amendments. The bona fide office rule now states that a lawyer does not need a physical location, but does have to make sure the practice is conducted in a way to ensure “prompt and reliable communication with and accessibility by clients, other counsel, and judicial and administrative tribunals”.

    To comply, the lawyer may designate “one or more fixed physical locations where the client files and attorney’s business and financial records may be inspected on short notice…where mail or hand-deliveries may be made and promptly received, and where process may be served…including disciplinary actions….” [I still wonder: What could be more accessible and done “on short notice” than giving access to your cloud-based practice?] (more…)

  • 15 Technology and Legal Services Delivery Predictions for 2013

    Every six months I used to write a post with a list of virtual law practice updates or related items that had been “in the news.” Elawyering and virtual practice have become so mainstream these days that doing this would result in a ridiculously long list of references.

    Instead, I’m going to compile a list of my top 15 predictions for the coming year that relate to virtual practice. These are based on the research I’ve done for my upcoming book as well as the presentations and consulting work that I’ve done over the past year.

    1. We will continue to see the number of legal technology start-ups being introduced to the consumer legal marketplace. [For a list of these players, stay tuned for the release of my ebook: Consumer Law Revolution coming later in Jan. 2013]. These companies are going to focus their efforts on consumers, but will also attempt to cultivate strong attorney branded networks that will provide their services with the value add of licensed legal assistance.

    2. Existing legal tech startups may be acquired or backed by larger legal service companies, companies catering to other industries in addition to legal services, or fail to obtain the funding necessary to scale to the next level.

    3. Of the technologies introduced in these platforms we will see two interesting developments that will be a little different than the typical Q&A or forum platforms typically offered to consumers. These companies are adding better matching systems using algorithms, consumer preferences, and online behavior to match the legal needs of the individual with the appropriate legal guidance/forms and potentially with the best lawyer to handle their particular legal need. We will also see the expert systems in some of these platforms increase in sophistication as they learn and improve from user feedback.

    4. The focus of these companies’ services will start to shift more from business law and startup legal services to more personal legal services for the average consumer.

    5. We may see companies negotiating with other non-legal social media and networking applications for access to user data which may be used to help predict or identify consumer’s legal needs as a way to target advertising for their platforms.

    6. Lawyers will become more aware of the need for online marketing that extends beyond the use of social media and focuses more on brand building online using analytical tools that focus on ROI rather than just online reach.

    7. More lawyers, especially solos and small firms, will consider joining forces with one or more of these legal startups. Navigating those networks and figuring out how to convert any leads generated from them into paying clients will be a learning process for both the lawyers and the companies looking to maintain and develop strong relationships with lawyers. (more…)

  • Wall Street Journal Covers Rivalry in Online Delivery Space

    Last week I was interviewed by the Wall Street Journal for an article that was published today regarding companies that deliver basic legal services online and how this impacts both the public and legal professionals.

    I used to write a post every six months compiling developments in virtual law practice. It has become so mainstream now that I think my list that started out a couple years ago with about twenty items would far exceed a reasonable blog post length. The online delivery of legal services is now something larger firms and the media are finally paying attention to. The recent law suit filed by Legal Zoom against Rocket Lawyer has brought the online delivery model on the radar of the legal profession and business world. Why? There is clearly a latent market for online services coupled with a legal profession at a cross roads.

    From today’s WSJ article:

    …demand for high-end legal services fell after the recession, as deals slowed and big companies pushed back on legal bills, and it has yet to recover.

    Meanwhile, some legal entrepreneurs are looking for gold in a largely untapped vein: ordinary people seeking affordable alternatives to traditional lawyers. The idea is to provide access to legal services online, the same way many now look for jobs, pick restaurants and shop.

    Given this recent interest in the space, I’m anxious to get my latest book out there. It will hopefully be published by the spring. I keep having to update the manuscript as more legal tech start-ups enter the market with interesting new models of delivery. (more…)

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