Virtual Law Practice

Month: February 2011

  • Practicing Law Without An Office Address: Law Review Article Published

    Below is a law review article I wrote recently for the University of Dayton Law Review, Volume 36:1, entitled “Practicing Law Without an Office Address: How the Bona Fide Office Requirement Affects Virtual Law Practice.” 


    PRACTICING LAW WITHOUT AN OFFICE - From the law review article (see citations in full version above):

    This Article will examine virtual law practice as a necessary and inevitable solution to the globalization of law firms and the lack of access to justice in our country, and it will consider how bona fide office requirements in some states may work against this practice management method. Recent changes to the legal profession due to the globalization of law firms, trends in outsourcing of legal services, and the public demand for online legal services all indicate the need for a wider variety of law practice management structures with continued accountability and connection between the legal practitioner and the state bar. (more…)

  • Outsourcing and the Virtual Law Office

    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 I “outsourcing” as governed by ABA Formal Ethics Opinion 08-451?  Does my use of a third-party technology provider fall under supervision of “non-lawyers” in Model Rule 5.3? 

    *open can of worms*

    The ABA Ethics Commission 20/20 has raised the question of whether cloud computing should be classified as a form of outsourcing.  This can be found in the issues paper entitled “Client Confidentiality and Lawyers’ Use of Technology.”  ABA Formal Ethics Opinion 08-451 describes a lawyer’s obligations when outsourcing work to lawyers and non-lawyers.  One comment to Rule 5.3 states that the duty to supervise non-lawyers extends to those who serve as independent contractors.

    My position:  Selecting a cloud-based technology solution for practice managment is not outsourcing.  It is a business method, a form of delivery.  Rules 1.6 (duty of confidentiality) and 1.15 (safe-guarding client property) require that attorneys use reasonable care in protecting the confidentiality of their client’s property.  To comply, attorneys must do their due diligence in researching and selecting their SaaS provider and any other third-party services.  This requirement provides adequate regulation for the use of a cloud-based technology in law practice management. State bars may provide their members with guidelines and education about how to handle the selection of technology providers or larger firms may decide to hire IT consultants to help them with these decisions.  (more…)

  • Animated Movie Intro for a Virtual Law Office

    An attorney operating a virtual law office relies more on online marketing and social media to develop their reputation and an online client base.  Some virtual law offices are creating YouTube tutorial videos that will walk prospective online clients through their virtual law office registration process and explain how legal services are delivered online.

    Below is my experiment using animated movies to introduce a virtual law office.   Check out this Wall Street Journal article from last week about the use of animated movies. A movie like this could be placed on an attorney’s website and then circulated on different social media networks.  It was simple to put together and took less than a half hour.  The dialogue for the avatar in the movie comes straight from the text you provide.  Many of us could cut and paste the text from existing law office marketing materials and just adjust it with the avatar’s facial expressions and motions to make it less stiff.  There are many different characters and backgrounds to choose from.

    As the ABA and other state bars analyze the use of the Internet as a tool for client development, here is yet another example of a technology that they will have to factor into their research on the topic. 

    This type of video could be used to market the online delivery of legal services of a virtual law office or used to educate the general public about basic legal issues, but in a fun format.  While you might think it would appeal only to a select target client base, most likely younger or tech-savvy clients, I think that to rule out a larger audience interested in watching an animated movie would be ignoring the value of novelty.  Much of the public gathers their information from the television screen or movie. Maybe those of us wanting to provide a basic legal education to the public are not using the correct form of media to reach them. 

    What do you think?  Does this format have potential in elawyering?  Could we use this to market our virtual law offices?  Could we create educational movies using animated characters – one an attorney and one a client – to explain how unbundled legal services are delivered online or walk prospective clients through limited scope representation legal issues?

  • ABA Ethics 20/20 Addresses Choice of Law Issue in Virtual Law Practice

    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 Law in Cross-Border Practice.”  It even includes a sample scenario for the virtual law practice which I’ve posted below.

    With lawyers and clients more frequently not located in the same geographic location and many of them communicating and receiving legal services online, this raises the question of which jurisdiction’s ethics laws apply.  The Commission recognizes the need for guidance and greater clarity for a growing number of lawyer and law firms faced with questions about choice of ethics law. (more…)

  • Upcoming Events Related to ELawyering, Virtual Law Practice

    – 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 legal services.   Thursday March 10th at 10:00 am PT.

    – ABA/LPM Meet the Author Series Podcast, 1pm

    – ABA TECHSHOW, Chicago

                     – April 11, 10:30-11:30am, “Expanding Your Practice with an Online Office”, co-presented with Catherine Sanders Reach

                      -April 12, 8:00- 9:00am, Meet the Author, “Virtual Law Practice: How to Deliver Legal Services Online”

                                      10:00 – 11:00am, “Popular Cloud Services for Lawyers”, co-presented with Tom Mighell

                                       7:00pm, Hosting Taste of Techshow Dinner with an “elawyering theme”

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