Virtual Law Practice

Category: SaaS

  • Social Media for the Legal Professional

    This past weekend I presented a CLE session for the North Carolina Association of Women Attorneys (NCAWA) annual meeting on the topic of social media for legal professionals. Anyone involved in virtual law practice needs to understand social media and how it can be used to market a virtual law office, but also about how online clients might attempt to contact the virtual lawyer using these methods and how to tactfully handle that.

    I’ve had online clients attempt to “friend” me on Facebook or chat on Twitter, but I’ve created a policy for my solo virtual law practice not to “friend” or “follow” clients and to let them know up-front that I won’t use unencyrpted or non-secure methods of communicating with them. Most of the relationships I have within the legal professional are for the most part created and conducted completely online using whatever social media app is trending at the time. It’s an invaluable part of my professional networking so I enjoyed the opportunity to share some of my methods and recommendations at the NCAWA Annual Meeting.

    This presentation covered the basics of social media how-tos with a healthy dose of “watch out for x” and “monitor y”. I also provided suggestions for creating consistent online reputations for law firms using social media and discussed how attorneys might implement social media policies for their firm and educate firm members and even clients about procedures the firm has adopted for the use of social media.

    Here are the slides from the presentation. The final slide has a list of recommended resources for further reading up on the topic.

    Social Media and the Legal Profe

  • Call for Comments – ABA Ethics 20/20 Commission Reviews Cloud Computing and Client Confidentiality

    This afternoon the ABA Commission on Ethics 20/20 sent an email through the listserv announcing a public hearing in mid-October in Chicago.  The Commission is looking for comments on two topics: 1) “Client Confidentiality and Lawyers’ Use of Technology” and 2)  “Lawyers’ Use of Internet Based Client Development Tools.”  I’ve uploaded the first of these issues papers which you can review here: 


    ABA Ethics Commission 20/20: For Comment: Issues Paper Concerning Client Confidentiality and Lawyers’ Use of Technology

    Most of the issues discussed in this paper have some impact on virtual law practice.  One of the Commission’s suggested options for action is to “propose amendments to the Model Rules of Professional Conduct, such as Model Rules 1.1 (competency), 1.6 (duty of confidentiality), 1.15 (safeguarding client property), or the comments to those Rules.”  

    Therefore, it’s important that those of us interested in the delivery of legal service online take the time to read this paper, and if there is a perspective that is missing, to submit a comment before the deadline of December 15, 2010.   I contributed Chapter Three of my book and may submit a comment as well after I’ve had time to review and digest the two issues papers again.

  • Virtual Law Pratice at ILTA

    This past week’s ILTA conference was full of great insight about disruptive technologies, virtual law practice and the changes that are expected in practice management as a result.  I wasn’t able to attend the conference in person, but I managed to collect materials and information presented at key sessions.  Here’s what I picked up without the travel expenses and jet lag.

    The Legal Current blog posted about an ILTA session entitled “A New View of the Automated Law Firm.”  The session explained how the commoditization of legal services is leading to the need for automation of the workflow in law practices.  Document assembly and automation will help to streamline the delivery of legal services to meet the consumer demand for legal services based on a fixed fee model.  Here are the slides from that presentation.

    Darryl Mountain, expert on disruptive technologies and document automation, and Marc Lauritsen, co-chair of the ABA elawyering task force and author of The Lawyer’s Guide to Working Smarter With Knowledge Tools, presented a session entitled “Harnessing Disruptive Technologies”.  The slides for that presentation are here.  They covered the nature of disruptive technologies and look at technologies that can be used to create “substantive legal work.”  The presentation slides cover document assembly, web-based document automation and virtual law practice.  Lauritsen covered choiceboxing, an interactive decision support system which has multiple potential forms of application in elawyering and choice management.  The slides also list two stumbling blocks to the use of disruptive technologies in law practice: “1. the knowledge acquisition bottleneck and 2. ethical rules of the legal profession.” (more…)

  • Update on Proposed NC Ethics Opinion on Cloud Computing

    I was notified this past week that the NC Bar Ethics Committee met at the end of July and decided to send the proposed ethics opinion, 2010 FEO 7 “Subscribing to Software as a Service While Fulfilling Confidentiality and Preservation of Client Property” to a subcommittee for further study.  They will be providing an update on the status of the opinion again after the Ethics Committee’s meeting in October. 

    Is anyone aware of other state bar committees that are reviewing this topic?  I believe that the ABA Center for Professionalism is currently reviewing cloud computing and considering the need to create some form of guidance or regulation related to the use of it in practice management.  The elawyering task force is also working on drafting guidelines for the use of cloud computing.   It would be great to know if there are other state bar initiatives related to SaaS, cloud computing or virtual law practice.

  • Ethics Considerations: Guest Post on Mass. LOMAP Blog

    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 law office.  

    Below is the introduction to the post.  Many thanks to Jared Correia for the opportunity to share my research and writing with the readers of the LOMAP blog.

    From the guest post:

    The delivery of legal services online carries with it a number of ethical concerns; however, these ethical concerns are not all that unlike those that have traditionally been addressed by offline law firms. The online lawyer is able to mitigate risks associated with virtual law practice just as a traditionally-practicing attorney would with an offline practice when, for example, installing and using software for law practice management. There are two separate categories of ethics matters to address in connection with the virtual practice of law. The first pertains to the attorney’s duty in selecting the service provider that will be setting up, hosting and maintaining the virtual law practice. With any cloud computing service, there are precautions that must be observed in researching and choosing a software provider. The second category of potential ethics concerns relates to the attorney’s daily operation of the virtual law office; and, the focus there is on ways to mitigate potential malpractice risks when working with clients online. Further issues related to each category are discussed in greater detail below; and, in addition, suggestions are made and additional resources are pointed to, for further guidance.

    You can read the rest of the guest post on the LOMAP blog.

  • Virtual Lawyering Promoted at ABA Annual

    There was a lot of coverage related to virtual law practice and the delivery of online legal services at this year’s ABA Annual Meeting in San Francisco.  Compared with even a year ago, this topic is fully on the radar of attorneys and bar officials concerned with virtual law practice for both solo and small firms.  However, this time there was also interest as it relates to larger firms, the outsourcing of legal services and the globalization of law firms.  

    I sat on a panel discussion entited “20/20 Vision: The Impact of Technology and Globalization on Ethics for the 21st Century Lawyer” and was pleased to see a packed audience as well as have the majority of audience questions pertain to virtual law practice.  Here is a link to a video interview of our panel’s moderator, Judith Miler. 

    The questions from the audience after the panel discussion were the same ones I hear at a lot of presentations.  The primary concern is still related to the basic security of entrusting law office data to cloud computing.  The second greatest concern is about the verification or authentication of client identity online.  “Can you really form a relationship online without seeing the whites of their eyes?”  Sometimes it’s just a matter of being comfortable with the technology and getting used to using it to communicate that helps answer these questions.  Overall, the response was positive and hopefully, the details and resources I provided in the manuscript for the attendees will go a long way in answering their questions about the security and cloud computing concerns in virtual law practice.

    Will Hornsby joined Marc Lauritsen, Richard Granat and myself for a lively panel discussion on virtual lawyering on Friday.  Richard informed me that he also provided a presentation on virtual law practice to a room of state bar presidents and other bar officials who were very receptive to these concepts in practice management. 

    ABA President Carolyn Lamm during her presentation on Sunday night on a panel entitled “Lawyers Surviving in a Darwinian World” mentioned online legal service companies and emphasized the legal profession’s reponsibility to step up to meet the needs of the public who are going online to seek out legal assistance.   The ABA Journal has a write-up of her comments during the presentation. 

    Social media was also a hot topic at several CLE sessions at the annual meeting.  At one of the vendor booths I picked up a copy of Wild West 2.0: How to Protect and Restore Your Reputation on the Untamed Social Frontierby Michael Fertik and David Thompson.  I’ll try to post a review of the book on this blog when I get a chance to read through it.  Even the Twitter hashtag for the event was active this year indicating a growing comfort by my fellow attorneys to embrace technology to communicate.  And to top it off, I got to meet Heather Armstrong, mommy-blogger and famous Dooce.comwriter, at the WestlawNext CLE about social media in the workplace. 

    There were also some vendors that I spoke with who are making an effort to facilitate virtual law practice for attorneys.  This might be in response to the ethics and UPL complaints raised by some state bars to the documents produced by legal service companies.  Both Legal Zoom and Rocket Lawyer are combining their document assembly and automation technologies with the ability to connect an attorney with the consumer going online to fill out and purchase basic legal forms.  I’m reaching out to both vendors to find out more about how their systems will allow for this type of delivery to be controlled by the attorney as a practice management tool for delivering online legal services. 

    The overall tone I left with at the end of the annual meeting was that technology to deliver legal services online and to communicate with our clients and other legal professionals is embraced as the future. Rather than the over-emphasis on the security and risks that I’ve seen the past few years at other conferences, the tone seems to be an acceptance of virtual law practice and a move towards finding ways to responsibly integrate it into our practice management toolboxes.  I much prefer this optimistic, but realistic, mood.

  • Revising Ethics Rules to Facilitate Virtual Law Practice

    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 involve virtual law practice and cloud computing.  Which rules do I think need to be revised?

    Based on my research, not many state bar ethics rules or advisory opinions actually address the use of cloud computing or the delivery of legal services online.  The North Carolina State Bar’s proposed opinion related to SaaS in law practice managment that was published this summer is one of the first to my knowledge.  There are opinions out there that are related to the hosting of law office data by third-party providers, but none that really discuss the actual delivery of legal services online to clients. 

    My main concern with the development of any future ethics opinions is that they should not attempt to define the technology too narrowly.  This is a problem that attorneys have now in trying to interpret the existing rules and regulations based on way that they were drafted years ago.  Try figuring out how to apply rules related to email, fax and cell phone usage to the cloud computing apps you currently use in practice management.  There is a lot of uncertainty in trying to comply with the rules when the rules weren’t really written to take the rapid growth of technology into consideration.  (more…)

  • Virtual Lawyering In the News & Upcoming Presentations

    Online posts and podcast:

    Jim Calloway and Sharon Nelson have published a new podcast on The Digital Edge entitled “Virtual Lawyering Goes Mainstream.”  Calloway and Nelson discuss ways that virtual lawyering is starting to take off within the legal profession. 

    Over at the Slaw.ca blog, Sharon Nelson and John Simek has a post entitled “The Virtual Lawyer Stampede.”

    Jim Calloway also discusses virtual lawyering on his practice management blog under the post “Virtual Law Offices Are Becoming a Real-World Alternative.”

    Live Presentations:

    I will be participating in three events at the ABA Annual Meeting in San Francisco in a couple weeks that are related to virtual law practice.  

    • August 5th, Thursday, 10:30am, 20/20 Vision: The Impact of Technology and Globalization on Ethics for the 21st Century Lawyer. This is a panel discussion in which I will be touching on cloud computing and virtual law practice.
    • August 5th, Thursday,12:30 to 2 pm, Legal Rebels: 10 Ways to Build Your Perfect Practice and Career.  I will be attempting to give a 6 minute presentation of 20 slides on a topic related to elawyering.
    • August 6th, Friday, 2:00 p.m. – 3:30 p.m., The Virtual Law Firm: How to Build Your Practice in An Online World.  I will be presenting with Will Hornsby, Richard Granat and Marc Lauritsen at this session.

    Update (via elawyering blog):  

    eLawyering Task Force Meeting, Saturday, August 7, 2010, Hilton Hotel, Union Square, 9:00 – 11:00 A.M.Open Meeting
    National Conference of State Bar Presidents, Joint Workshop 3A – Keeping Pace with the Evolving Practice of Law

  • Secure Client Portals to Deliver Legal Services Online

    The delivery of legal services online depends on the use of a secure client portal where the attorney and client can interact. This is the key feature of a virtual law practice and what distinguishes it from other online legal services and law firms that claim to be “virtual” by using unencrypted email.

    I’ve noticed in the past year that several new versions of the secure client portal have been introduced. Some of these are even developed specifically for legal professionals and most are designed for use by solos and small firms interested in delivering legal services online. If you are considering opening a virtual law practice, you might want to take a look at these different applications. Some of them have free trials and are still in beta.

    As fast as the technology for virtual law practice changes, it’s worth keeping an eye on what’s coming down the pipeline in client/attorney online communication.  The features that allow you to communicate with your clients online varies.  So far, no one is keen on having their online clients choose avatars or going beyond realtime chat and video communication.  As usual, my imagination fueled by reading too much sci-fi tends to exceed our current capabilities in terms of practical and cost-effective implementation of current technology for law practice management.

    With all of these below, check out the level of security each provides.  Look for end-to-end encyption of the transmission of any sensitive law office data.  You will want the basics — written online communication in some fashion that is recorded with date and time (for ED and CYA of the attorney), online files or other methods of organizing documents, calendaring or the ability to schedule communications with the attorney, uploading and downloading documents, limited client management features to protect them from themselves, etc.  Some client portals are going to work better for unbundling legal services online for many clients and others are more suited to larger online projects with a single client or two.  Keep in mind the chosen structure of your virtual law practice and the needs of your online client base when you are reviewing the products.

    Here are a few new client portal products I’ve run across, along with some that have been around for a few years now.  Know of any other technologies that create secure client portals?  Drop me a note in the comments.

    MyCase Client Manager
    Wizilegal
    DirectLaw
    VLOTech
    Advologix (client portal is not the focus and costs extra)
    HoudiniEsq (was announcing client access this summer, still in beta)
    BaseCamp  (not developed for legal professionals, may not have certain malpractice checks in place)
    ZohoProjects  (not developed for legal professionals, but if your clients are attorneys or other professionals, perhaps a way to collaborate online on a project.  Not sure about the security of this and also there are probably not the same malpractice checks in place)

  • Online Legal Services for “Digital Natives”

    I’m contributing to a public policy paper regarding the risks and benefits to the public from the use of cloud computing in law practice management.   The process has encouraged me to think in-depth about how the general public reaches out to the legal profession for help.  At the same time, I just finished reading Born Digital, by John Palfrey and Urs Gasser.  This has prompted me to add to my analysis how the age-range of clients and their methods of communicating with us change over the course of a law practice.

    Born Digital discusses the generation among us that has known only a digital world – “Digital Natives.”  They were the first generation to write papers in high school using online research engines and Wikipedia entries.  They are able to multitask in ways that the generations preceding them cannot understand.   They form complex online social networks and share information and unique online personalities that create digital records of the different phases of their lives from infancy on. (more…)

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