Adopted 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.

There is a proposed North Carolina ethics opinion that may affect virtual practitioners who use leased time-shared offices or PO Boxes as addresses because they work from home or only need to meet with clients infrequently.

The New Jersey State Supreme Court Professional Responsibility Rules Committee has recommended an amendment to the bona fide office rule, Rule 1:21-1(a). The proposed changes would no longer require that the lawyer provide a physical office location as long as the lawyer was accessible by his or her clients, the courts and other lawyers, including for purposes of service of process.

A couple weeks ago, I wrote a post for the NC Law Blog entitled “What Contact Information Must a Non-Traditional Law Firm Provide?“. The post discussed how more non-traditional law offices are opening up, many of them delivering legal services online, and how this is raising the question of how to comply with residency requirements, [...]

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 [...]

The final guest post in my three-part series for the Massachusett’s Law Office Management Assistance Program (LOMAP) has posted on the blog.  This final post covers ethics considerations in virtual law practice including both the attorney’s responsibility to thoroughly research their software provider as well as best practices for the ethical management of a virtual [...]

I’m on a panel discussion this morning at the ABA Annual Meeting about the impact of technology and globalization on ethics for the 21st century lawyer.  One of the questions that I expect will come up will be about the need for ethics rules to be revised to reflect the changes in practice management that [...]

If you are keeping up with developments in the bona fide office rules or residency requirements of state bars that govern the practice of law, you might want to read through this recent opinion: In the Matter of the APPLICATION OF CARLTON, No. 10-mc-160 U.S. District Court D. Maryland (April 26, 2010).  I’ve only got the Westlaw citation for [...]

New Jersey’s Advisory Committee on Professional Ethics and the Committee on Attorney Advertising released a joint opinion dated March 25 that states that even when an attorney hires a virtual assistant or receptionist or shares a rented office space for conferences to attempt to create an office presence in the state, this does not create [...]

I’ve been reading with interest the case of Attorney Ekaterina Schoenefeld who filed a lawsuit against the State of New York claiming that by requiring an attorney to maintain a physical law office in the state, New York law discriminates unconstitutionally against attorneys who are out-of-state.  Schoenefeld is licensed in California, New York and New Jersey and claims she was [...]