Virtual Law Practice

Category: Alternative Billing

  • 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.

  • WSJ Article Showcases Benefits of Fixed Fees, Virtual Law Practice

    Today’s Wall Street Journal has an article entitled Legal Advice…on a Budget featured in a special report section about small businesses.  The article discusses how some law firms are offering fixed fees and discounts for start-ups.  Firms that they profiled for the article report growth in small business clients who are attracted to the service. 

    The article mentions that some law firms will insist on these fixed fee services being conducted by phone rather than in the law office while others will require email.  The article lists some of the precautions of offering limited or unbundled legal services, but states “[s]ome entrepreneurs, however, say that they don’t mind, since they’ve gotten used to dealing with customers that way to save time.”    (more…)

  • Billable Hour Must Die – ABA Article

    This is the comment I posted to an article entitled, “The Billable Hour Must Die”, by Scott Turow, published in the ABA Journal‘s August issue.

    “I am hoping that lawyers, especially litigators, will more often be bold enough to consider offering clients alternative billing arrangements.”

    I agree with this statement made by Turow in his article. It was taking an initial risk professionally, but I have been practicing law online from a virtual law office where I can offer clients price quotes and fixed fees for my services. It’s similar to the “fair fee” system Turow mentions in the article. It lets my clients know upfront what they can expect to pay so that they may budget for it.

    The system has a learning period for the attorney to figure out the balance of how many hours it will take to do a project and then equate that with a fee based on the initial consultation with a client. However, the client response to this system of paying for legal services has been great. I’m hoping more attorneys will consider this or at least integrate it along with their current billing methods. Virtual law practice is also a great way to provide cost-effective services to clients. Without the overhead of a physical law office it also makes sense for the attorney.

    If anyone is interested in how it works, Virtual Law Office Technology (VLO Tech) provides software that sets up virtual law offices for attorneys (patent pending). Again, I’ve been practicing law completely online for over a year now and the public response has been very positive. It provides a good alternative to the traditional billing system.

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