Virtual Law Practice

Month: August 2011

  • 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.)

     

  • Speaking about Virtual Lawyering at SC Solo & Small Firm CLE

    If you will happen to be in or near Columbia, South Carolina on September 23rd, please consider joining me for the SC Bar’s 2011 Solo & Small Firm CLE and Annual Meeting entitled “Exploring the Business Side of Law Firms.”

    There will simultaneous tracks on law office technology and practice management, with sessions ranging from cloud computing and paperless law offices to handling court appointments. Two plenary sessions will bookend the day: “How Not to Commit Malpractice with Your Computer” and “60 Tips for Small Firm Lawyers in 60 Minutes.”

    There will be six ABA TECHSHOW speakers on the faculty, including three from South Carolina. Other faculty include lawyers from across South Carolina. Just like TECHSHOW, there will be social events and exhibits. 15 vendors in law office technology and related products will fill the exhibit space.

    I will be speaking at two sessions entitled “Take to the Cloud: Virtual Law Offices and Cloud Computing” and “Marketing Tips: From Analog to Digital.” If you are interested in joining us, you can register and get the full schedule here.

  • 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…)

  • Using the iPad with My Virtual Law Office

    After co-presenting a cloud computing session at ABA TECHSHOW with Tom Mighell, author of iPad for Lawyers, I was finally convinced to integrate a tablet into my virtual law practice.

    Most of my hardware is mobile except for a larger monitor in my home office which I hook up to my laptop when I work at night. (Dual monitors are awesome for multitasking.) I have a little 4G Verizon hotspot that I carry around to keep me online wherever I go and for backup Internet when the DSL is down.

    I still type faster on a traditional, solid keyboard so I’m not at the point where I can generate a lot of written content using my iPad and the touch screen. Most of the keyboards I’ve seen that work with it are too flimsy for what I would put them through daily. So I’m using the iPad primarily for the portability and the applications.

    Security on mobile devices is still a concern of mine. I’m probably more conservative in my use of the iPad than most, but then again, the majority of my communications with my clients online are handled through a system with end-to-end encryption of the data. I’m striving here to find the
    responsible balance between security and cost and time savings. It’s that risk/benefit analysis that constantly changes as the technology and software evolves.

    After several months of working the iPad into my daily grind, here are the apps I’m currently using:

    SignMyPad Pro (by Autriv Software Development) –  I was really impressed with this app. It allows me to sign any document from my iPad.  For example, if someone emails me a form, I save it as a PDF and open it up in SignMyPad.  I can then add text, signatures, fill in a check box, add radio buttons or add the date.  The Pro version of the app tags the GPS location and date/time stamp in the metadata of the PDF when it’s saved. So if I need to collect someone’s signature, I will also have where he or she signed it and at what time and date. When you add a signature you can use either a stylus or your finger to sign in black, blue or red. The signed and locked document can then be uploaded to the virtual law office or otherwise sent where it needs to go.

    QuickOffice – This has turned out to be a necessity for getting any work done with an iPad.  A lot of my work involving writing so I need to be able to jot down ideas or notes and I prefer to do that in this app.  Then I can email it to myself or send to DropBox (if it does not contain confidential information). (more…)

  • LSBC Cloud Computing Working Group Recommendations

    Last week The Law Society of British Columbia’s Cloud Computing Working Group published online a report with recommendations regarding the use of cloud computing by legal professionals.

    Recommendations included in the report include:

    1)      Guidelines to help lawyers conduct due diligence in researching a technology providers and cloud-based solution.  (The report refers to “third party service providers” which includes cloud computing but is much broader in scope.)

    2)       Review of potential changes in the Law Society Rules to ensure that its regulatory functions are kept up to date with the changes in technology.  (Canadian legal professionals are subject to audits of law office records by their governing body whereas most state bars in the United States do not have this investigatory function.)

    3)      Methods that lawyers and law students might be educated to improve understanding of their responsibilities when using technology.

    The report advocates that clear guidelines are needed to assist lawyers in making the decision about what type of technology to use and which providers to trust.  Here is a brief overview of what the Report recommends. Even if you are not practicing law in Canada, these are good recommendations to consider as you conduct your “due diligence” in researching any tech-related practice management decision. (more…)

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