Thank you to NC Jolt for inviting me to speak to law students at UNC School of Law in Chapel Hill last week. Special thanks to 3L John Kivus (@kivus) for making the connections. I appreciated the opportunity to share this topic with the next generation of legal professionals. Awesome questions from the attendees as [...]

When my husband and I sold VLOTech, our legal software as a service solution that created virtual law offices, to Total Attorneys in the fall of 2009 we were anxious to see some of the items on our development list taken to the next level.   Almost a year and a half later, I’m excited to [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

- University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s School of Law presentation on virtual law offices, next Thursday, February 10th at noon.  – Unbundling Legal Services: Ethics and Best Practices, ALI-ABA Teleconference, February 24, noon-1:30pm EST. – AVVO webinar on unbundling legal services which will also discuss the use of technology to unbundle and deliver [...]

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 [...]

Be prepared this year to see major changes in new legal SaaS products that promote the online delivery of legal services.  Also expect to see greater acceptance of virtual law practice by the mainstream legal profession as legal SaaS vendors band together to set standards for the industry.  Larger players in the legal technology industry are diving [...]

The California State Bar has published its newest ethics opinion, FEO 2010-179, related to the use of technology in law practice, specifically addressing the attorney’s duty of confidentiality to clients when using technology that may be accessed by a third-party.  Given the wording of the opinion, this could include everything from an attorney using wireless to connect [...]

I’m excited to announce the formation of the Legal Cloud Computing Association (LCCA).  See the formal press release below my comments.  About two years ago when I was owner of VLOTech, Larry Port of Rocket Matter reached out to me, Jack Newton (Clio) and Richard Granat (DirectLaw) about forming a group to address the concerns [...]