Virtual Law Practice

Category: Ethics

  • 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.

  • Online Bidding for Clients

    Today’s Wall Street Journal published an article on Shpoonkle, an online auction site similar to eBay where lawyers can bid on clients.  Both Susan Cartier Liebel and Scott Greenfield had blogged about this site in the past month.  Robert Ambrogi even chimed in that the concept is old news and will hopefully fall to its demise sooner rather than later.

    Should we really consider this a new method of online delivery of legal services or is it just another form of online lawyer marketing?  

    My interest here as a virtual lawyer is in the potential online delivery of legal services to clients.  It doesn’t seem that Shpoonkle provides the registering attorneys with client portals or any other way of actually working with the clients online.  Once an attorney “wins” a bid, the parties move back to a more traditional attorney/client relationship.  However, I can see this form of bidding taking the next step where the attorney whose bid is chosen uses some form of secure workspace provided through the site to unbundle legal services online to the client.  Think about how Elance.com operates.  (more…)

  • Choice of Law in Cross-Border Practice

    Below is the comment I submitted this morning to the ABA Ethics 20/20 Commission Working Group on Uniformity, Choice of Law, and Conflicts of Interest in response to their request for feedback on the issues paper on Choice of Law in Cross-Border Practice.  One of the fact patterns in the issues paper specifically referrred to a virtual law office and several of the other fact patterns might also apply to a multijurisdictional virtual law firm.

    Virtual Law Practice and Choice of Law in Cross-Border Practice

  • Unbundling Legal Services Webinar Slides

    Check out the slides from a webinar I gave yesterday for AVVO which provides the basics of unbundling legal services with ethics issues and best practices.

    Unbundling Legal Services

    As the owner of a virtual law office for going on six years now I’ve heard multiple times from other attorneys that because I 1) use technology to delivery legal services to my clients, and 2) that I unbundle my legal services, that I am essentially nothing more than a solo mimicking LegalZoom.  

    I feel the need to put this assumption to rest yet again and not just for my own pride in my practice (as an aside I just received the Wilmington Parent Family Favorite Attorney Award for the 5th year in a row for my virtual law office), but because it’s critical that others in the legal profession get this distinction about what unbundling legal services means and how it can benefit our profession and the public. 

    Unbundling legal services is not limited to using document automation and assembly programs to deliver legal forms to consumers online.  Unbundling is a complementary form of legal service delivery that may be used by traditional brick and mortar law practices, even those that focus on litigation, as well as truly web-based law practices and hybrid structures that combine the traditional law firm with a virtual delivery or communication component.  (more…)

  • 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…)

  • Practicing Law Without An Office Address: Law Review Article Published

    Below is a law review article I wrote recently for the University of Dayton Law Review, Volume 36:1, entitled “Practicing Law Without an Office Address: How the Bona Fide Office Requirement Affects Virtual Law Practice.” 


    PRACTICING LAW WITHOUT AN OFFICE - From the law review article (see citations in full version above):

    This Article will examine virtual law practice as a necessary and inevitable solution to the globalization of law firms and the lack of access to justice in our country, and it will consider how bona fide office requirements in some states may work against this practice management method. Recent changes to the legal profession due to the globalization of law firms, trends in outsourcing of legal services, and the public demand for online legal services all indicate the need for a wider variety of law practice management structures with continued accountability and connection between the legal practitioner and the state bar. (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…)

  • 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…)

  • Death, Succession Planning & the Virtual Law Office

    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 handle things. 

    What happens to a completely virtual law office upon the death of a solo, virtual practitioner? 

    All lawyers are aware that they need to have some form of succession planning in place.  In fact, some would argue that it is unethical practice not to have a plan in place that protects your clients and their property that is entrusted into your care.  

    ABA Formal Opinion 92-369 provides that “[t]he sole practitioner should have a [succession] plan in place.” For solo practitioners this issue is even more critical because there may not be anyone else involved in the day to day practice that would know how to notify clients of the death of their lawyer or even how to access the client’s files in order to return their property.  For a virtual law office that is completely web-based, the other issue is that the law office data is hosted in the cloud.  Without some plan in place, how does the SaaS provider know how to proceed?

    A sample scenario: An attorney who operates a completely web-based virtual law office dies unexpectedly without a plan in place.  The SaaS provider sends the attorney’s invoice for the service each month as usual and then follows up with late notices when it does not receive any payment or response from the attorney.  The attorney’s clients are still able to access their secure homepages on the virtual law office, but are not receiving any online responses from the attorney.  (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…)

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