This is a running debate that gets pretty heated in the game industry. The best known example is the “Gamification is Bullshit” position statement given by scholar Dr. Ian Bogost at the Wharton Gamification Symposium. He has since been featured in several pieces explaining his position that have been published in Wired, The Atlantic, and Kotaku. If you want a good book on gamification, one written by a couple of lawyers even, check out For the Win: How Game Thinking Can Revolutionize your Business, by Dan Hunter and Kevin Werbach. And if you are into that, just re-read Drive by Daniel Pink and you’ll notice how ridiculously connected those books are to each other. (There are also some wonderfully brilliant presentations by designer Sebastian Deterding which help explain what is going wrong currently with gamification efforts in the business world.)

Again, that’s not what I’m doing with my game. Although concepts of internal and external motivation discussed in Drive hang around when we think about the game design and what will motivate better and recurring game play, but those concepts were around in game design long before Pink’s book. In fact, he references the same American psychologist and creator of the concept of “flow”, Mihaly Csikszentmialyi, that Jane McGonigal (of the “games” camp) writes about in her book, Reality is Broken.  Here is Csikszentmialyi’s TED Talk on flow. Really worth your time. There is overlap here.

When games cross over into the area of “games for social good” they get classified as “serious games” and that throws them into this semantics debate. If you are trying to do good with your game, such as educate people about their rights, then is it a game if there is an agenda built into it? It seems to come down to the design goal and the game mechanics.

If you are taking existing process, such as the business of delivering legal services, law firm operations, the judicial process, rules of civil procedure, the process for a criminal or tort case, and adding game elements to those processes to help people learn about them or to encourage them to be handled in a different way, then that is gamification.

Most of the existing “games” around the law or legal services fall into this camp. They tend to be card games, simulations, text-based walkthroughs or quizzes. Most of them have the goal of teaching civics, legal procedures and basic law practice skills to citizens and law students. Here are a few of the better known ones:

Margaret Hagan’s LawDojo Apps and Citizen U content quizzes

iCivics

Redistricting

ICED

Do I have a right?

DO TANK projects at New York Law School

State of Play Academy at New York Law School

Is the primary design goal that the player have fun or is it there another purpose? Can you combine the two effectively? Do you even want to?

When I met with my game designer we decided that the best approach for the target players are building the game for was going to be making a FUN game, a game that the player would want to play regardless of any external rewards related to legal services that it offered. So that is what we are up to – developing a fun game that people will want to play. That’s the priority and I’m giving my designer free reign to be as creative as she can be with the constraints of the subject matter of which I’ve worked hard to give her as many examples and scenarios as possible to run with.

Humor is going to be used to present a challenge that must be solved. Through the game play to get to the next level, the player is learning something in an off-hand way, about their rights and the law related to a specific practice area. But they are playing it because it’s a game they can share with their friends and family and it’s fun to play. More specifics to come, but I thought since I’m reading so much about the whole gamification vs. games debate, I would share my opinion on the subject. I will write a follow up post later about why the difference matters in terms of bringing legal education to the public and connecting them with online legal services.

Bitcoin is digital currency and it’s not managed by any central authority but the transactions occur through Bitcoin miners which is basically a server that communicates and confirms the transaction and records it on a ledger. They can be transferred by mobile devices. Recent articles have suggested that eBay and Paypal may open up their sites to the use of Bitcoin.

There is criticism around Bitcoin that the exchange rate is too volatile. A Twitter follower in response to my posing of this question replied: “Would you accept bearer bonds?” There are also potential security issues. The best article I’ve read on that subject was in Wired by an author who had tried to break Bitcoin and failed. And then there are the questions about IOLTA and trust accounting rules and compliance. There is a Bitcoin Foundation which supports the standardization of Bitcoin and claims to support the software design and cryptography behind it.

I could find only one other instance where anyone in the legal profession was offering payment by Bitcoin. A law firm in Albuquerque called Law 4 Small Business published a press release announcing their offering of payments via digital currency.

For a virtual law practice, adding Bitcoin to possible online payment methods might make sense. I’m still thinking through this one. Anyone else have any reactions?

The opinion is more related to lawyer advertising than virtual law offices, but it affects advertising for virtual, traditional and hybrid delivery models. The opinion was prompted by an inquiry from a lawyer who delivers immigration law services primarily online. Like many lawyers with virtual law offices, the lawyer rarely meets with clients in person and communicates using video conferencing and other digital methods of communication. Working from home, the opinion explains that the lawyer did not want to have clients coming to her home office. Accordingly, she preferred to use a PO Box or other mailbox service than providing her home address.

We have seen this question in other states. NC’s proposed ethics opinion on the use of leased time-shared office addresses ran through a similar scenario and inquiry. Virginia’s recent disciplinary case with a lawyer who claimed to have a state-wide virtual law firm in his misleading advertising also raised the issue. So how did NY decide to respond? Hint: I think they had a BYOB pow-wow with the NJ ethics folks.

Here are the two questions posed in this opinion:

- May a lawyer use a commercial mailbox service address as the only office address listed in advertisements, omitting the address of her physical office?

- May a lawyer use a commercial mailbox service address as the only office address listed on business cards and letterhead, omitting the address of her physical office?

The conclusions in the opinion to each are as follows:

1. The street address of a principal law office is required in any advertising. In 2002 the Committee had stated in another opinion (N.Y. State 756) that lawyer advertising  “may not list a website or email address as the sole address, but must also include the street address of the lawyer’s office.”  They seem to think a law office is “where the lawyers were present and available for contact, and where personal service or delivery of legal papers could be effected.”

Wow. Must have been quite the pow-wow. “How do you effect your legal papers, Jim?” “Well, Bob, my secretary types them up on her shiny Corona. That contact paper sure is swell. Then I have my intern file it away in the cabinets. The clients love visiting my office to pick the original effected papers!”

Question I have: Does this mean a principal law office in NY can include a temporary office address? So a lawyer could work from home but pay a company to use their physical street address? I don’t think the opinion permits this because it says you would have to be present and available for contact at that temporary space. But….

2. “A lawyer’s business or professional cards and letterhead may use a mail drop as the sole address, provided they are not being used as advertising and use of the mail address is not misleading.” O.k. I doubt the lawyer in this situation is buying boxes of business or professional cards (is there a distinction between these two things?) in the first place if she has a virtual law office because why would she spend money on that? Her primary methods of advertising should be online: her website and then an online marketing strategy. But we’ll pretend she’s into paper advertising methods and go with it.

So I clearly have some thoughts on this and rather than just write “SERIOUSLY???” and give up in frustration, I’ll attempt to explain why I feel like I’m missing something here.

Let’s take what should be this opinion’s guidance and apply it to the future generation of law practices: be clear and transparent in your lawyer advertising. Don’t lie and mislead in what you put on your website. Be clear that you are BY APPOINTMENT ONLY and provide ONLINE legal services so no one gets the wrong idea. That is what the NC and Virginia opinions basically came down to. That makes perfectly good sense and it’s advice that does get OUTDATED.

So why does NY appear to mimic NJ’s bona fide office opinion and hearken back to this need for a principal office address? I get providing a street address to the state bar and to local courts if you handle matters in person there. (Remember a significant portion of legal needs do not require a courthouse and there is that whole nifty unbundling services concept!). But I don’t get this as it applies to lawyer advertising.

I’ll not address the assumption here that consumers who are and have been for years now empowered by the Internet can’t figure out where you are really located or how you deliver legal services on their own. A virtual lawyer’s clients tend to be ones who can Google proficiently and find numerous online legal service options. They are smart enough to figure out that this is how you operate. And even if they aren’t, won’t that information be in your engagement agreement before any relationship is entered into? I can’t imagine a client who searches for me online, finds my website that says “virtual law office,” but then after seeing that really wants to drive to my house to meet me in person. That doesn’t happen. They want a virtual law office because they don’t have to go to an office. They have OTHER WAYS, modern methods, secure methods, of communicating with the lawyer. They don’t need a physical office address to get legal assistance. My legal papers may be effected in other ways.

But my biggest gripe is that this issue, even outside of this opinion, is presented as an issue of consumer protection and I don’t think that’s the case at all. I think that opinions like this could have a negative effect of restricting alternative methods of legal service delivery and alternative forms of law practice. If you look at the legal marketplace right now you can see where the public is turning for assistance. Why would we want to discourage licensed professionals from jumping in there and serving the public where it makes sense to do so? Do these alternative online methods of delivery apply for all client needs and all practice areas? No. But they do for a significant segment of the public. (I’m not talking criminal defense cases or complex litigation here. There’s tons of other legal effecting to be done out there.)

Additionally, you have large number of new lawyers who are being forced to jump into solo or small firm practices because they cannot find jobs at traditional law firms. The amount of their law school debt does not allow them to own or even lease traditional law office space. Being able to work from a home office and provide basic legal services through online delivery provides them with a way to get started in the legal profession. There are obvious security reasons for not wanting to give out your home address. My clients have 21st Century access to me, and frankly, that’s way more prompt and personal than your traditional 9-5pm street address and snailmail.

Lawyers, especially young lawyers in NY, are going to read this opinion and wonder how to apply this to forms of online advertising. For example, when the lawyer joins a branded network and creates a profile, this is advertising. Does that mean the lawyer has to provide a physical office street address or will a link to their website where an address is listed suffice? What about a website that just indicates “online legal services and by appointment only?”

What happens when we keep having these states come up with different lawyer advertising rules regarding this office address issue? It restricts the growth of multijurisdictional virtual law firms. It reeks of protectionism, but unfortunately not for the public we are supposed to be serving.

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UPDATE: After reading a couple comments about this post on Twitter, it seems to me a valid concern here is enforcement. How does the state bar monitor and enforce these rules. Yes, they have access to licensed lawyer’s contact information and some states do random auditing. Maybe the better discussion we should be having that hangs over all of these different tech-related ethics opinions is “How do we help the states to enforce the rules in an age where it’s easier for unethical lawyers (and those not even licensed to practice) to use the tech to hide and cover up the evidence?”  Part of this may be providing education to the state agencies handling enforcement about how the technology works and how to use it to handle online auditing and to track down folks who aren’t following the rules. This would be a worthwhile conversation.

I’ve been asked about work-life balance since I launched my virtual law office in 2006. (Yes. I am a mom to two young children and sure, that adds a layer of challenge to life, but I get things done and the kids don’t seem to be deprived or permanently scarred for life, yet.) Many assume that trying to achieve work-life balance is a motivating factor for anyone to set up a virtual law practice. It is certainly one of the reasons why I chose this form of practice, but not the only one. I’ve got a long-term side mission running to increase access to justice and online delivery and tech in law practice is a part of that.

Many of the lawyers that I help to set up virtual law firms, from web-based unbundled delivery to hybrid firms with both traditional and online delivery, want the flexibility that virtual practice provides. It’s great that the technology is available to allow us all to make choices that provide more flexibility, but it’s got to be a choice based on what’s right for us and our clients, and that may not be what works for another lawyer and their practice, their clients or their personal lives.

Anyway, here’s my thought on the exhausting work-life balance debate that Laura Bellow, current Pres. of the ABA re-raised earlier this year, as quoted in the article:

Balance is possible, but it’s BALANCE based on choices that we have made in our personal and professional lives. It doesn’t guarantee happiness. I think it’s a way of coping with the phases we all go through in life. Even with the best of examples and role models, I don’t believe a 20-something man or woman in law school has any idea what his or her 30- or 40-something self is going to want or need. So we make decisions because we have to, without fully understanding the consequences or what will have to be sacrificed personally and professionally later on down the line. That’s just a fact of life. Work-life balance is an attempt to adjust to those decisions based on where we are currently in our lives. And that means different things get sacrificed at different times—in both personal and professional spheres—to make the most people and ourselves happy. That’s the balance.

The eLawyering Task Force is working on a project to identify law schools that are adequately preparing their students to enter practice with practical skills related to the use of technology. The Task Force is currently reviewing the programs and courses offered at different law school and has identified ten that meet the criteria discussed in the post.

What is your law school doing on this front? Is it enough?

For the past six months, I’ve researched the idea of creating a game that would engage and empower the public to learn legal issues surrounding personal legal services.

Why am I doing this? When I was ten years old, I didn’t dream of being a lawyer, I dreamed of being this woman, a well-known computer game designer. When I went to college, computer science as a major was in its infancy and a class in game design was unheard of. Life happens. About six months ago, a friend pulled me back into gaming as a hobby – something I had sacrificed to give attention to my children when they were babies. Now back into gaming full force, I remembered how powerful it is as a tool of engagement. That made me start thinking about how cool it would be if we could use games to engage the public to learn about their rights and the law in a way that would help them prevent legal needs before they occur.

I starting researching the use of games for social good. Yes. There is a small segment of the game industry that develops games that will have an impact on society. It’s not all about first person shooters and role playing games. There is even a Games for Change Festival that showcases these games and those who work to create them. I read Jane McGonigal’s book Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better nad How They Can Change the World. Watch her impressive TED talk video if you don’t have time to read the book.

I also have immersed myself in game design and theory, exploring a ”playcentric” approach to design which emphasizes playtesting and user experience before hard core development even begins. I also started exploring the tutorials on different game engines, including Unity, LiveCode (big thanks to the brilliant David Johnson for this one and for the brainstorming sessions), and MIT’s Scratch and using Code.org to start learning JavaScript, HTML, and CSS. I also started researching and understanding the marketplace for games (the legal services marketplace I think I know pretty well by now) and the different platforms for publication.

What has been done so far surrounding legal services is focused more on educating school children on the legal process or it is geared towards law students. There are a few others that are focused on educating the public, but they tend to be heavily text-based, and frankly, I got pretty bored playing them.

Here is an example of a game for social good. In March, a game called Half the Sky Movement was launched as a Facebook game to help end world hunger. The game play is a compelling story about empowering women, and allows the user to donate to a variety of causes as he or she plays through. The game allows the user to unlock free rewards. For example, one of these might be that a real world book would be mailed to a girl in India from a foundation which donated to the nonprofit, Room to Read Foundation. While learning about a social situation, the player is rewarded by connecting with real-world individuals. There is a sharing component and multiple layers of engagement throughout the game.

This, and games like it, inspired me to think that what we really need for legal services is increased ENGAGEMENT – before a legal need arises. That is exactly what games provide when they are done right. The game we are creating isn’t going to be an iCivics or any courtroom-based legal education game. It isn’t going to be preachy or overly full of text. It is going to be a game you would want to play and it will have an unique connection between the legal services marketplace and the players. That’s teasing. I’ll reveal more as I go along.

I’ve started building my team around my central game idea, and I’ve found the game designer who can help me make this game the way that I envision it. She has a background in UX/UI design. I am also building out a development team and graphic artist. The business plan is roughly in place. Going to take this to Kickstarter – another first I think for something law-related. I’m not giving up the writing, speaking, consulting or teaching either. Just giving up more sleep. Been there, done that. Totally ready to do it again.

I have no doubt there will be skeptics. There were plenty of those when I did the virtual law office launch back in 2006. I’m going to ignore them this time too. At least now I know I have some strong supporters who get what I am trying to do and why it is important. I’ve been blessed with some wonderful people, lawyers who game themselves, who have already brainstormed ideas with me and have promised to support me in making this happen. Hopefully bootstrapping will not be as difficult the second time around!

Most startups are told to keep their progress confidential, but I’ve never been a fan of that philosophy. Sharing gets us all further along. Someone with connections and money is always waiting at a launch to take your idea and make it faster and better. But if the end product is intended to serve the public, then bring on the competition! It will only push forward the development of games for the legal industry.

Soon I’ll start sharing more details, including some of my early game ideas and why it is particularly difficult to translate legal concepts into game play. Even if you are not interested in games, it should be interesting to read about the process of breaking down legal subject matters into goals, decisions, outcomes, etc. and putting the concepts into layman’s terms.

As always, I’m grateful for any feedback on my ideas. I also have a Facebook group for lawyers who game (whether it’s tabletop, console, PC, or otherwise) so anyone who is interested in joining us, just let me know.

Game on!

Yes. Lawyers can use very similar techniques on their websites to draw prospective clients. Lawyers can create web calculators, provide free legal forms and resource libraries, use real-time chat and video to hold initial free consultations, and provide a way for prospective clients to register to request legal assistance directly on their website. These are all things that many virtual law offices include in their website design. These lawyers add various “calls to action”, create landing pages, and connect the resources provided on their site with the sharing components of their different social media account activities. They share and put their valuable content out there for the public. It builds and expands their firm’s online brand and reputation. Lawyers may use different tools to run analytics on their site and their different marketing campaigns and refine them as needed. However, it is still difficult to use all of these same techniques as branded networks and compete effectively. It’s just not enough was the message I had for them.

Why is it not enough? Because the companies marketing direct to consumer are not restricted by any lawyer rules of professional conduct, whether it’s advertising rules or the lovely Rule 5.4 that restricts fee sharing and protects the “independence of the lawyer.” Branded networks are not small business owners, but companies who typically have sizable marketing budgets devoted solely to the purpose of D2C marketing. They can pour a lot of that money into building their brand and spreading it to particular target markets for online, personal legal services. In terms of competing with these companies for purchasing Google AdWords or keywords in any search engine, it is going to be very difficult for any solo, small or medium sized firm to do for a long enough period of time for it to have an impact on client development.

I was honest with this audience. I told them that seven years ago it had been easier to be a solo virtual lawyer, such as myself, to market my online unbundled services using online marketing and social media engagement. However, as the years went by and the options for online offerings increased, especially in personal legal services such as estate planning and family law, it became increasingly difficult to compete in the search engine rankings without investing a significant amount of marketing dollars on online campaigns. What could have been done before 2007 on almost zero cost other than my time and energy and consistency, now takes a significant monetary investment.

That was the reality I shared with these attendees and asked them to look at the future development of this trend in the online delivery of personal legal services as an opportunity for collaboration rather than as a threat to their law firm model. Clearly, virtual law offices that are completely web-based without a traditional law office are going to be the most threatened. But it’s also even more important that these practices learn how to ethically use online marketing tools provided by branded networks and engage in their lawyer networks in a way that helps them build and expand their brand and push traffic and prospective clients back to their firm’s site rather than just exert all their energy providing free content and value to the branded network.

Developing best practices and a law firm policy for using the online marketing platforms provided by branded networks is going to be a key component in the future of lawyer advertising – whether you have a virtual law practice or a traditional one.

I have had a couple years of teaching online courses for different law schools and providing guest lectures on various legal tech related subjects. I am working on a post about distance education in law school from my unique perspective as an adjunct.