Virtual Law Practice

Month: November 2012

  • Slides: Final Social Media in Law Practice for Digital Lawyering Program

    This is the slide deck from our final online session in Social Media in Law Practice, part of the Univ. of Dayton School of Law Digital Lawyering Program. It covers time management, the future of social media, its application to the legal profession, and our deliverable for the session.

    The students were asked to create a social media policy for a law practice to prove competency in the subject matter. In the course, we covered blogging, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, Pinterest, and Twitter as the core platforms, reviewed management and analytic tools, privacy and security settings, ethics rules and opinions, use of social media in litigation, integration with a larger online marketing strategy, and more.

    In order to teach this session I was forced to go back through all of my own personal and professional uses of social media which was a daunting task at times. I gave the students walkthroughs of the different applications, privacy and account settings, and other features using my own accounts, excluding any confidential or private information. I refered to several practical books from the ABA LPM’s ____in One Hour for Lawyer’s Series for each social media method as well as Niki Black and Carolyn Elefant’s book, Social Media for Lawyers. We also looked across industries to see how other professions and businesses are using social media for client development and professional networking.

    Several interesting questions were raised by the students regarding their transition from student to licensed lawyer and how this should be handled in their existing social media use. For example, upon passing the bar, should they notify friends and family that going forward their use of these applications will be x, or should they post a one-time disclaimer reminding followers that now that they are licensed lawyers, friends should not post any confidential legal questions on public sites? These are real concerns for young lawyers. Hopefully this session provided them with the skills they need to navigate, keep up with, and regularly modify their use of social media in their careers.

     

  • Slides: Delivering Unbundled Legal Services Over the Internet

    These are slides from the ABA Annual 2012 presentation by Will Hornsby, Richard Granat, and myself.

     

  • Final Slides from Law Practice Management Class

    These are the slides from my final session for a Wake Forest Law School course on law practice management this fall. I taught the course online and used a virtual law firm simulation to teach ethics and other best practices for unbundling legal services and online delivery.

    As the slide content makes obvious, the students were asked to read Susskind’s End of Lawyers? and my book on virtual law practice as well as many other articles, videos, and ethics opinions related to both traditional firm management and the integration of technology in practice management. This is just the last slide deck from the series of 14.

    In our final class, we looked at how the legal industry is changing and how the students may adapt to these changes as new associates in law firms or as solo practitioners. We had some interesting discussions in this course because the students came from such diverse backgrounds and with many different plans for their legal careers. Several were even a tad argumentative or resistant at first even to the idea that these changes might affect the way they had thought they would practice law upon passing the bar.

    I hope by the end of this course rather than depressing the students, I gave them some new ideas about how to direct their legal careers within a law firm or how to create their own unique business models.

     

  • Updated List of Products that Facilitate Virtual Law Practice

    I have finally updated the list of products and services used by virtual law firms whether its for direct online delivery of legal services to clients or for remote lawyering in general.

    This fall I taught a course on technology in law practice which required that I research and update myself on all of the new products and services out there, including iPad and other mobile device apps that could be used in practice management for a virtual law firm. The updated list is here. As always, suggestions are welcome.

  • WSJ Covers Virtual Lawyers

    The Wall Street Journal has finally covered virtual law practice in a brief article in the Smart Money section last night. The article focuses on online legal guidance that is limited to unbundled legal advice for fixed fees and delivered through a technology platform owned by a third-party company marketing directly to the consumer. These services are provided by a lawyer who is part of the company’s network. The article does not cover other forms of online legal assistance, such as those provided by a virtual law firm owned and operated by a licensed lawyer.

    One of the concerns mentioned in the article is the qualification of online attorneys, especially those collaborating with third-party providers. This is exactly the topic of my third book which focuses on how lawyers may work with companies providing technology to deliver legal services to the public while maintaining best practices and high quality legal work.

    Virtual lawyers need to be aware of how to ethically provide limited scope representation and use the technology to delivery the services. These best practices and ethics concerns are all things that I have written about in my books and on my blog. The ABA eLawyering Task Force has addressed these concerns for many years as well.

    While I was hoping the first coverage in the WSJ of virtual law practice would be more comprehensive of the different models for lawyers to adopt and the potential to increase access to justice, this is a good starting point. As more nonlawyer legal service companies develop platforms for online delivery, we will see lawyers both traditional and virtual looking to work with them as part of client development and their marketing strategy.

    The articles states:

    Solid data on the online-legal field is hard to come by, but supporters and detractors agree the business model is gaining steam. Already, many traditional law firms have extended their practices to the Web, where they offer services like will preparation and document review for lower fees than what they charge in person.

    I hope the next article on virtual law practice that appears in the WSJ is one that is more in-depth about the impact that this form of legal service delivery is going to have on the solo and small firm practitioners (the profession’s fastest growing firm “type”) and the public seeking affordable online legal assistance.

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