Virtual Law Practice

Month: January 2009

  • Congrats to the Virtual Courthouse

    Congratulations goes out to the Virtual Courthouse for receiving the 2009 ABA Louis M. Brown Award for Legal Access.  Each year the ABA gives out the Brown Award to recognize projects or programs that have addressed the need for legal services to members of the public who are in the middle class or of moderate means.  The project must not only have exhibited an innovative solution to delivering legal services to the public but also be replicable for others in the legal profession.  Since this year’s winner provides an unique virtual solution to a specific area of law practice, I thought I’d share it with this blog’s readers.

    The Virtual Courthouse provides an online method of dispute resolution. According to its website the Virtual Courthouse “enables parties to submit disputed claims, responses and supporting material in digital form for resolution by a neutral provider of Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) services. These ADR services can include arbitration, mediation, neutral case evaluation or a settlement conference by members of a panel of neutrals.”  There are screenshots of the technology on the website, but not many details regarding data security or the actual technology behind the solution.

    This company is a good example of how attorneys are finding ways to integrate different forms of virtual law practice into their traditional practice methods to provide the public with access to more affordable and convenient legal services.  If your practice includes ADR and you have considered adding a virtual component to your practice, then you may want to check this out.

    The ABA Standing Committee on the Delivery of Legal Services also recognized Heisler, Feldman, McCormick & Garrow, PC and Have Justice Will Travel for their law practice methods.

  • Update to Virtual Law Practice eBook

    Please check out the latest, updated version of my free eBook, Practicing Law Online: Creating a Web-based Virtual Law Office.  Because the technology behind virtual law practice is changing at a rapid rate and because new state bar advisory opinions on the topic are starting to emerge, I plan on updating the eBook at least every six months.

    For this latest update, I conducted some additional research online through the Cornell University Law School’s American Legal Ethics Library which has a great state-by-state comparative analysis of the ABA’s Model Code.  There were some new state bar advisory opinions that related to third-party service providers, online backup and retention of law office data, email, online advertising and other technology related topics.  I included these in the different sections of the eBook relating to ethics and malpractice issues in virtual law practice.  I’m sure there are more formal and informal opinions from state bars out there that I did not find.

    Please share if you have any experience presenting technology-related law practice management questions or formal advisory opinions to your state bar.  I’ll post them on the blog and add the information to the eBook — with a hat tip to the sharer, of course.

  • Setting Guidelines for Virtual Law Best Practices

    A small group of companies providing software as a service (SaaS) products to legal professionals will begin meeting to discuss the use of SaaS technology in law practice management.  The group also hopes to discuss among other things a set of minimum security requirements for SaaS products used by attorneys.  As a co-owner of VLOTech, I am excited to be included in this group of innovators and entrepreneurs when they meet for the first time next week. 

    Last week, the ABA’s eLawyering Task Force held a conference call which I was able to join in on.  Over the next several months the Task Force will be working to establish a set of malpractice standards or guidelines for attorneys using technology to deliver legal services.  The Task Force plans to meet at least once a month to discuss these malpractice standards among other issues.  The goal would be to establish a set of guidelines that could be approved by the ABA’s Law Practice Management Section and posted on the ABA’s website.  Attorneys interested in establishing virtual law practices or in using technology to practice law in any form would be able to refer to these standards and present them to their state bars in support of their virtual practice methods.  

    Hopefully input from both the SaaS group and the Task Force will be combined in the final version of any guidelines, and that these guidelines will address both the needs of the legal professional as well as the general public’s need for more affordable and convenient legal services.

  • Podcast Interview about Virtual Law Offices

    Check out the podcast interview of me that was recorded recently by Ed Poll of the LawBiz Blog.  Ed is an expert in law practice management, and his blog is a wealth of useful knowledge and resources.  On the podcast, he and I discussed virtual law practice, VLOs, and how attorneys are using the technology to deliver legal services to clients online. 

    Ed brought up a good point at the end of our discussion that I thought was worth expanding on in a future post on this blog.  He suggested that virtual law offices might be another possible method of transition for an attorney who is looking to wind down their legal career or sell their traditional law practice.  It’s certainly something to think about as many attorney in our profession are nearing retirement age and are looking for more flexibility in the way that they practice law. 

    Thank you to Ed and LawBiz for giving me the opportunity to share my experience in virtual law practice with others in the profession.

  • Top Ten 2008 Developments in Virtual Law Practice

    Happy New Year!  The following is my list of the top ten developments in the delivery of legal services using technology that have happened in the past year.  Please feel free to expand on this list in the comments.  I’m also including at the end my predictions for virtual law practice in the new year.

    1.  Richard Susskind’s book, The End of Lawyers? Rethinking the Nature of Legal Services, is published.  The book discusses “disruptive technologies” that allow attorneys to provide legal services online.  Susskind predicts that attorneys who adopt rather than resist these changes in the technology used to deliver legal services will prosper as the profession adapts to marketplace changes.  The public’s need for affordable and accessible legal services will drive the legal profession’s use of technology to meet this demand.

    2.  State bars and other professional legal organizations offer CLEs and sessions geared at teaching attorneys best practices and security standards for using technology in their law practices.  Popular topics include email security, online backup solutions for law office data, minimizing metadata and using scanners to decrease the use of paper.  See the ABA’s Legal Technology Resource Center’s website for a list of 2008 articles.  In addition to increased law and technology management education in the profession, several state bars provide specific ethics decisions with approval for virtual law offices (VLOs) and/or allow for attorneys to provide unbundled legal services online.

    3.  More attorneys turn to piecemeal technologies and free online apps to collaborate with each other and their clients online.  Basecamp, Google Docs, Adobe ConnectNow, Webex, GoToMeeting, and Dimdim are a few of the popular web-based tools.  

    4.  New web-based, software as a service (SaaS) law practice management products launch, including Rocket Matter and Clio.  Popular legal blogs and listservs discuss the pros and cons involved in the use of “cloud computing.”  The discussions center on the security and backup concerns with a hosted system.

    5.  VLOTech sets up web-based, virtual law offices (VLOs) in Alabama, Maryland, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia with more VLOs planned in Alaska, New York, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and North Carolina for the upcoming year.  The technology aims to provide attorneys with the flexibility to operate a completely online law office or to combine the technology with a traditional law practice and offer unbundled legal services online.  “VLO” becomes a more recognized term for a web-based virtual law practice and elawyering.

    6.  Virtual Law Partners opens its doors as the newest example of BigLaw using technology to allow its attorneys to work remotely and collaborate on legal cases.

    7.  LegalZoom comes under fire over filing fees that the legal document service company charges to online clients, in particular in relation to the filing of trademark applications with the USPTO.  Critics of invention submission companies and of companies that provide form-generated legal documents in general spoke out about what they saw as the potential misleading of the public by online companies offering legal services where an attorney was not involved in reviewing the final legal product. 

    8.  With more attorneys practicing law using mobile devices and relying on electronic forms of communication with clients and other attorneys, management of electronically stored information (ESI) became more of a concern.  Solos and small firms are expected to understand e-discovery and ESI management in their daily practices.  Check out the archives of the EDD Blog co-authored by Bob Krantz and Jeffery Fehrman.

    9. Larger numbers of attorneys adopted popular online social networking tools to meet up with others in the legal profession.  Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Legal OnRamp, JD Supra and other sites connect attorneys with each other and prospective clients. 

    10. Some useful law and tech/practice management blogs came online this year, including Law 21, Above and Beyond KM, 3 Geeks and a Law Blog, and Law Practice Matters, among others.  Blogging continues to grow as an attorney marketing tool and is used as a method of providing the public with basic legal information and resources. Law blogs remain a method for attorneys to educate themselves and network in their individual practice areas.  The Louisiana State Bar’s proposed rules of professional conduct touch on attorney blogging, social networking and other forms of online attorney communication causing some concern and originating in a lawsuit from attorneys in that state. 

    My predictions for virtual law practice in 2009:

    1.  Attorneys will continue to question web-based, hosted software providing law practice management tools. However, companies providing SaaS legal products will band together to establish standards regarding the security of their products for the benefit of the legal profession and the reputation of the companies and the saas business model. 

    2.  The ABA will move forward with proposing standards or policies for the delivery of legal services online. The eLawyering Task Force as well as the Standing Committee on the Delivery of Legal Services will both play a critical role in establishing these guidelines.

    3.   Attorneys hit hard by the downward economy will seek out ways to minimize their law practice overhead using technology.  Some will use piecemeal software solutions to minimize overhead in law office administrative tasks. Others will consider opening completely web-based VLOs to get rid of the law office lease and expand their client base statewide or nationwide depending on their practice areas.  

    4.   More attorneys will realize that customer service is the key to growing a successful practice and that the public is demanding more efficient and convenient legal services through the use of technology.  This will prompt more attorneys to provide unbundled legal services online to clients either as the sole form of virtual law practice or in addition to their traditional law office practice.

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