Virtual Law Practice

Category: Marketing

  • Virginia Disciplinary Case on Misleading Lawyer Advertising

    A recent disciplinary case out of Virginia addresses the issue of a lawyer’s use of misleading online advertising and references “virtual” law offices. In fact, the objectionable actions taken by the lawyer are those that could apply to any lawyer or law firm that has a website or any online presence. It is not in fact related to the online delivery of legal services, but to lawyer advertising in general.

    The practitioner’s website and other forms of advertising stated that the firm included multiple attorneys, one  devoted to each practice area. These attorneys were actually independent contractors of the firm and each listed that they covered multiple practice areas. At the request of the Bar, the lawyer made changes to his agreements with the lawyers to make them full employees of the firm and amended the lawyer’s profiles on his website to correctly state all of the areas of law that they handled. Other advertisements stated that the firm had six offices in Virginia as well as in other states. Five of those offices were temporary, leased office space.

    The case does not go into detail about the firm’s practice management system, but states that the lawyer claims the client files are “secured electronically” which indicates they are using a cloud-based system to coordinate work among the lawyers in the firm. The lawyer also amended his website to explain the nature of the temporary, leased office space as “client meeting location” rather than permanent offices.

    Of all of the above grievances that were noted and responded to by the lawyer, the court in this case found that the lawyer was in violation of Virginia Rule of Professional Conduct 7.4 regarding communication of the fields of practice and certification, which requires compliance with 7.1 (related to misleading advertising). He was given public reprimand without terms for the violation.

    This disciplinary action raises interesting questions about law firms that outsource legal work to temporary lawyers for hire. Axiom is an example of a practice that leases lawyers to other firms to handle specific work. May these temporary, virtual practitioners be used by the firm for advertising purposes to hold out to the public that the firm provides legal assistance covering more practice areas than their permanent employees may cover? Or that the firm covers jurisdictions where those temporary lawyers are licensed but the primary law firm members are not?

    The Commission on Ethics 20/20 has asked for feedback regarding changes to Model Rule 5.5 and whether any are needed to address the concept of “virtual presence” under the UPL rule. How does the use of temporary virtual lawyers factor into this analysis?

    I am currently writing a book for the ABA/LPM on the topic of online marketing tools for lawyers and am researching the topic of how lawyers must comply with Model Rule 7.1 when using online forms of advertising. My opinion is that if you are going to be using temporary, outsourced lawyers and leased office space in multiple states, that it would be a violation of the Rules to misstate the nature of this law firm structure to the public in any advertising, online or traditional.

    But “misleading” is one thing and “giving them more info than they need to know” is another. Where do we draw the line in notifying the public about our business decisions and the business structures of our law firms?  How do we measure the potential harm to a public that is empowered to search online for alternative sources for legal assistance? [For the record, I am not disagreeing with the Virginia decision referenced above. I am merely posing a general question about the nuances of the term “misleading” in MR 7.1.]

    I think the core question is what is misleading to the public under Rule 7.1? It sounds like such a simple question, but lawyers love to complicate things so this won’t be the last time we will hear about these issues. (In fact, North Carolina recently published a draft ethics opinion discussing some of the these same issues related to false advertising of a lawyer’s law firm location and size.)

    Again, while virtual law firms obviously need to be hyper aware of online lawyer advertising restrictions, these new trends in law firm staffing, remote workers, and the use of cloud computing to connect practitioners across jurisdictions is applicable to all law firms, not just those that are delivering their legal services online to clients.

    [Thanks to Brock Rutter for sharing the Legal Profession Blog post about this with the elawyering task force listserv. Also, check out Bob Ambrogi’s post on this case on his LawSites blog.]

  • NC Proposed Ethics Opinion – Use of Leased Time-Shared Office Address

    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.

    Proposed 2012 Formal Ethics Opinion 6 “Use of  Leased Time-Shared Office Address or Post Office Address on Letterhead and Advertising” was considered by the NC State Bar Ethics Committee at their meeting on July 19, 2012. The proposed opinion will be published in the next issue of the State Bar’s Journal and public comments will be accepted. Depending on the feedback received, the Committee will either adopt the opinion or decide whether to drop or revise it before meeting again.

    For those of you familiar with the “bona fide office” rules of some states, the questions raised in the proposed opinion will ring a bell. (more…)

  • Update on the Ethics of Performance-Based Marketing

    Most lawyers who have researched ethics opinions related to online advertising are familiar with the Total Attorneys ethics matter, which began in April, 2009 when a single Connecticut lawyer filed an ethics complaint with the state bar disciplinary counsel in 47 states. The complaints targeted not just the company, but also more than 500 of its bankruptcy law firm customers. Here’s the final update on how this played out along with my thoughts on the significance of this process.

    Established in 2002, Total Attorneys is a cloud-based technology and marketing company that is the country’s oldest and largest performance-based lead generation provider to small law firms. As some of you probably know, this is the company that acquired VLOTech, the software that I co-created and use for my virtual practice. For those not familiar with advertising terminology (after all, we don’t typically receive business education in law school), a “lead” for a law firm would be a “prospective” client. (more…)

  • Standing Committee Recommends Deletion of Problematic Advertising Rule

    Remember how I wrote that virtual practitioners may need to collaborate with “branded network concepts” when updating their marketing strategies?  I also argue that this is necessary in the conclusion of my new book on unbundling because it’s a major component in increasing overall access to justice. Apparently I’m not the only one who sees the potential benefits to the public and the profession from the availability of newer online lawyer advertising methods.

    The ABA Standing Committee on the Delivery of Legal Services has written a letter to the Commission on Ethics 20/20 providing its recommendations regarding lawyer advertising rules. In an interesting move, the Committee has recommended the deletion of Model Rule 7.2(b).

    For those of us in virtual practices who depend on online advertising methods perhaps moreso than traditional law firms, this would be a potentially revolutionary change to the rules. Model Rule 7.2(b) is the rule that prohibits a lawyer from giving anything of value for recommendation for his or her services with four exceptions. It is these exceptions and the speed at which online advertising methods have developed that has caused confusion and controversy over the past few years.

    The Committee’s letter provides a background on how changes in online advertising methods have impacted the options available to the public seeking legal services. Because one of the primary goals of the Committee is to increase access to justice for individuals of moderate income levels, they are quick to point out that these new online methods actually allow for individuals of all income levels to find both the lawyers that they could work with as well as other resources that empower them to make educated decisions about the legal services they might need. (more…)

  • Updating the Marketing Strategy for a Virtual Law Practice

     

    This Saturday I’m giving a live lecture focused on virtual law practice marketing strategy for my students in Concord Law School’s Small Business LLM program. I’m having the students slowly add in components of a business plan with each assignment so that by the end of the semester they have a complete and ready-to-implement business plan for a virtual law practice. Some of them are going to have completely web-based, unbundled practices and others are adding a virtual law office to their traditional, full-service offerings. Each form of virtual practice will require a unique marketing strategy based on their approach to providing unbundled services online and the state of their existing brand development.

    I’ve written about marketing issues in virtual practice on this blog before. But because marketing a virtual practice is so dependant upon web-based forms of marketing which changes at a crazy pace, your strategy has to be regularly re-evaluated and revised.

    Below are some bulleted tips and things to consider. Be warned, I am not even touching how social media plays into your strategy (which should be a major part) and for once, I’m not going to harp on ethical issues other than to tell you to check with your state bar and use some common sense.

    Start out by asking: (more…)

  • Upgrading My Virtual Law Office Website

    After five years, I finally got around to updating my virtual law office website. I’m still kicking the tires and making a few tweaks, but I’m pretty pleased with it as it is. I’ve got grand plans to update my whitepapers and to send out monthly emails to my online clients.  I’d also like to add realtime chat and more instructional videos and testimonials in the near future.

    Because most of my clients are seeking online legal services, I needed to focus on the integration of social media applications and online “calls to action” to provide free, useful content related to NC Estate Planning. This approach should generate additional prospective clients for my practice.  I’ve also added a property analysis calculator for prospective clients to use to get an estimate of the value of their estate. The site launched last Tuesday afternoon and that week I landed a new estate planning client and saw an increase in prospective clients registering on my site. Not bad. Note also the disclaimer at the bottom of the homepage regarding information about my physical location, jurisdiction and office hours. There should be no question in anyone’s mind where I am licensed to practice law and serve clients.

    I worked with Cynthia and Selena at Rowboat Media on the redesign. Feedback is welcome.

  • Another State Bar Proposes to Allow Online “Daily Deals”

    I wrote a couple weeks ago about South Carolina’s new Formal Ethics Opinion 11-05 regarding an attorney’s use of services, such as Groupon, to offer discounts and deals on their legal services.  North Carolina also has a proposed ethics opinion, 2011 Formal Ethics Opinion 10 entitled “Lawyer Advertising on Deal of the Day or Group Coupon Website.”

    The proposed NC ethics opinion states:

    [A] lawyer may advertise on a website that offers daily discounts to consumers where the website company’s compensation is a percentage of the amount paid to the lawyer if certain disclosures are made and certain conditions are satisfied.

    The primary concern with this opinion and the one that was published in South Carolina is that it does not violate Rule 5.4(a) which prohibits sharing of legal fees with nonlawyers. In the case of the website providing the daily deals service to the lawyer for his or her practice, the fees are directly paid by the lawyer for the cost of advertising and does not include any fees paid by the lawyer’s clients obtained through the daily deals service.

    Ensuring that this method does not equate to fee-splitting and that the method falls under the normal costs of advertising, the opinion goes on to caution that a few other rules and regulations related to lawyer advertising may arise depending on the website service used and how the attorney uses it to market their services.

    To simplify the basic rules laid out in this opinion:

    1) Don’t mislead your prospective clients (it has to actually be a discount from your regular fees offered);

    2) Disclose the method and remind prospective clients not to act hastily in making decisions about their legal representation (um, isn’t that actually the marketing benefit of a coupon – to create immediacy and prompt the consumer to spend? anyway….) ;

    3) Remind them that there may be some reason why you can’t go through with the discount because of conflict of interest, jurisdiction conflict, etc.;

    4) Still follow trust accounting rules even if the funds go to the website service first as prepaid fees;

    5) If you put a time limit on the discount and the client lets it expire, you can’t go back and charge your regular fee for the same service. You have to return any advance payment on the service or if the client agrees to the higher price, add that advance payment to the revised cost;

    6) The legal work provided must still be competent. So if the services exceed what the discount included, you still have the obligation to provide full, competent services to complete the matter for them.

    Both this proposed opinion and the one in South Carolina will be interesting to watch to see how attorneys implement them into their marketing strategies for their firms. It would seem like unbundled legal services at fixed fees would work best with these types of daily deal offers. Following best practices for delivering unbundled services, in terms of educating the client about the scope of services and signing a limited scope engagement agreement would protect both the attorney and the client in this situation.

    UPDATE: It looks like the New York State Bar Association published an ethics opinion on daily deal sites in December 2011: NYSBA Committee on Professional Ethics Opinion 897 (12/13/11). (HT to NY Attorney Paul Jeff Perez.)

     

  • How Does Google’s Investment in Online Legal Services Impact Virtual Lawyers?

    By now most of you have read the news that Google Ventures invested $18.5 million into Rocket Lawyer. Back in 2008, we read that Rocket Lawyer had partnered with Lexis Nexis and their Lawyers.com service. Should we really be surprised at this next stage of evolution?

    Many of us in the legal industry are trying to figure out what the impact of this development might be in the long and short term for the delivery of legal services. Those of us who make our livings delivering legal services to our clients online and who focus on unbundling services are naturally more than a little on edge thinking about what this might mean to our law practices (and the ability to continue paying off those law school loans).

    I’m going to make an effort here to brainstorm both ways that this news might be beneficial and detrimental to the profession.  It would be great to hear from Charley Moore, the founder of Rocket Lawyer, if he has any predictions or suggestions for how those of us engaging in virtual law practice should be taking this news.

    Pros

    – The public becomes more aware that there are alternatives to traditional, in-person legal services available to them. This is probably a benefit that no one can argue is a bad thing. (more…)

  • No New Restrictions On Use of Tech & Client Development

    The ABA Commission on Ethics 20/20 has published for comment its draft proposals on Lawyer’s Use of Technology and Client Development.   Proposed changes relate to Model Rules 1.18 (duty to prospective clients), 7.2 (advertising) and 7.3 (direct contact with prospective clients).

    Overall, the Commission concludes that no new restrictions need to be added to a lawyer’s use of technology for client development.  The proposed changes adequately reflect two major impacts of the Internet on our profession: 1) public accessibility to lawyers online, and 2) the immediacy of communication with prospective and future clients over the Internet.  Below is a brief look at each rule’s proposed changes.

    “Communicating” with Prospective Clients Online

    Proposed changes to this rule include switching out the word “discusses” with “communicates.”  “Communicate” is a much broader term and is probably something we do online with prospective clients far more than actually “discussing” a potential attorney/client relationship.  Communicating could be anything from having them fill out a “contact us” form to sending you a tweet asking if your firm handles their specific legal need.  Something as simple as “Liking” your law firm’s Facebook page is a bit of a stretch because it’s not specifically “about the possibility of forming a client-lawyer relationship.”

    This would be a dangerous rewording if not for other new lines added to clarify the definition of a prospective client: “A person who discusses communicates with a lawyer about the possibility of forming a client-lawyer relationship and has a reasonable expectation that the lawyer is willing to consider forming a client-lawyer relationship with respect to a matter is a prospective client.” [proposed additions in italics] (more…)

  • 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…)

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