Virtual Law Practice

Tag: Home Office Lawyer

  • List of Sites Containing Tips to Market a Virtual Law Office

    In a recent blog post, I discussed how an attorney with a VLO can attract paying, online clients to a VLO.  As promised, below is a list of websites and blogs that provide useful marketing tips and resources for solo and small firm practitioners.  This list only includes sites that provide marketing resources and tips.  I could build a long list of other services and sites that an attorney could join in order to market his or her virtual law practice,  such as sites that help to raise the SEO of the VLO website or blog.  Hopefully, the sites listed below will point you towards many of these online tricks of the trade. 

    Most of the resources below are geared towards a traditional law practice and some of them are not even related to the legal profession specifically, but with a little creativity the tips found in them could easily be used to market a virtual law office.  If I had oodles of free time, I would love to explain in detail how each of these sites and resources can be useful to a virtual law practice.  Instead, I’m just putting it out there and inviting everyone to explore and use their imaginations.  Or better yet, if you become befuddled, contact the folks that run these blogs in person.  Some of them are really kind, helpful individuals who are attorneys themselves and contain a wealth of valuable information and experience to share.  As always, I welcome suggestions to add to this list.  

    [Tip: Since most of these sites are blogs, it might save time to check out their categories section or run a search on their site specifically for marketing tips.]

    Sites with Tips on Marketing a Virtual Law Office”
    1.  Lisa Solomon’s Legal Research and Writing Pro Website and Blog 

    **Lisa is hosting an upcoming teleseminar, PR 101 for Lawyers: How to Write Direct-to-Consumer Press Releases That the Media Will Also Love.  This will take place on November 18 and will be presented by Joan Stewart, a/k/a the Publicity Hound.  Details for this are on her website.

    2.  The Publicity Hound Blog & Tips of the Week Ezine

    3.  Susan Cartier Liebel’s Build a Solo Practice, LLC

    4.  Grant Griffith’s Home Office Warrior, Home Office Lawyer and Blog for Profit 

    5.  CopyBlogger

    6.  ProBlogger

    7.  Guy Kawasaki’s How to Change the World

    8.  Carolyn Elefant’s My Shingle

    9.  Ed Poll’s LawBiz Blog & Ezine

    10.  Stem Legal – “Building Web Profile for the Legal Industry”

    11.  The PR Lawyer

    12.  Law Marketing Blog 

    13.  Kevin O’Keefe’s Real Lawyers Have Blogs

    14.  Legal Marketing Blog

    15.  Brett Trout’s BlawgIt

    16.  Ben Glass’s Great Legal Marketing blog

    17.  Gary Vaynerchuk‘s blog

    Resource to Join

    Solo Practice University  (Opening soon, this web-based educational community will provide online courses related to marketing law practices.)

  • 60 Websites to Check Out – From the Practical Skills CLE

    Last week I co-presented a CLE session at the NC Bar Center with Lee Rosen, of Rosen Divorce Law fame, and Erik Mazzone, the Director of the Center for Practice Management at the NC Bar. The conference was the Bar’s Annual Practical Skills CLE which is geared towards newly minted attorneys and others wanting to brush up on practical lawyering skills. The presentation was titled 60 Websites in 60 Minutes, and the goal was to share useful websites with the attorneys in the audience along with throwing in some fun, stress-relieving sites.

    My 20 websites focused on open source or shareware applications that could be useful to an attorney opening a solo or small firm practice and wanting to keep their overhead down. I also tried to focus on security for the mobile attorney, such as Truecrypt or PCTool’s free, secure password generator. Here is the list of websites that were presented. I’ve thrown in brief descriptions under the ones that I covered.

    60 Websites in 60 Minutes – 2008 NC Bar Practice Skills CLE

    Google Maps

    Jott

    Truecrypt
    Truecrypt is free, open-source disk encryption software. There are multiple uses for this software, especially for the mobile attorney. For example, create an encrypted drive containing sensitive data and place it and Truecrypt on a USB key. When you use a laptop to practice law remotely, mount the encrypted file as a drive on your temporary computer and use the file system like a normal drive. When you are done, unmount the drive and the only thing visible left on the USB key will be the encypted file. So if you loose your USB key or it is stolen, all they will be able to see is the encrypted file.

    Cornell Legal Research Engine

    iStockPhoto

    Firefox 3+ No Scripts
    Firefox 3 is the safest web browser to use. Add NoScripts to the program and it’s even better. If you are using web-based apps to practice law, I recommend switching from Internet Explorer to Firefox 3 with add-on security.

    VLOTech

    SugarSync

    Thunderbird
    Thunderbird 2 email application has superior security and privacy features, including phishing protection, industry leading junk mail filters, and support for user privacy and remote image protection.

    Grand Central

    PB Wiki

    Open Office
    OpenOffice.org is the free open source version of Microsoft Office. It includes word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, databases and other applications. It runs on PCs and Macs which makes it useful if you are collaborating with others. It has easy to use applications, great compatibility with other programs and you don’t have to buy a new version to install each time it has an update.

    Wakerupper

    Jing

    Zaba Search
    ZabaSearch is a website that provides contact information for just about anyone you are trying to locate. The site claims to contain three times more telephone numbers and addresses than the White Pages Directory. Good for investigating.

    Evernote

    Elance

    PCTool’s Password Generator
    PCTools.com provides a secure password generator. You can specify password length, phonetics, letters, mixed case, numbers and punctuation.

    WordPress

    Google Analytics

    7 Zip
    7-Zip is open source software you can use to compress large files. A useful tool if you need to email or upload a larger file to a client or counsel.

    LinkedIn

    Comodo

    Product Wiki
    Productwiki is a free product review site written by consumers. Includes software, computer, electronics products reviews and more. Shows competing products and pros and cons for each.

    Google Docs

    TinyURL

    DaFont
    Designing a logo or letterhead for your law practice or looking for an eye-catching font to use in a presentation? Dafont.com has a large directory of free fonts for install on your Mac or PC.

    Alltop

    DimDim

    Twitter
    Twitter has become a popular social networking site for attorneys. You can follow individuals as well as different news and business organizations, such as the ABA Journal or Legal Voices, which follows twitter commentary from the legal industry.

    Public Library of Law

    Project Draw

    Second Life Bar Association
    If you are interested in learning about the developing legal system in the virtual reality world, Second Life, or if you just want to meet up with other tech-savvy lawyers from across the world, consider attending a meeting of the SLBA at the Second Life Justice Center. Free CLEs and other legal conferences are being held at the center on a regular basis with speakers who are in the top of the IP and Cyberlaw fields.

    Todoist

    Soocial

    Uncyclopedia
    Strictly for stress relief, Uncyclopedia is a parody of Wikipedia with over 100,000 humorous encyclopedia-style entries created by users. Check out the entries related to the legal profession or feel free to edit an entry for a creative writing break.

    Google Calendar

    37 Signals

    Solo Practice University
    Solo Practice University is a new web-based educational community for attorneys that teaches the “practice of law” and fills in the gaps that law schools tend to ignore, such as the practical, how-tos of running a law practice. Teachers will include law professors and legal professionals and the courses will be a combination of media from web conferences to podcasts and ebooks.

    Goog 411

    Pandora

    Home Office Lawyer
    Home Office Lawyer is a popular law blog written by Grant Griffiths, a Kansas Family Law Attorney, who runs his law practice from a home office. Home Office Lawyer as well as Grant’s other blog, Home Office Warrior, have great information on the latest technology and other law practice management tools that can help an attorney run a home-based law practice or lower their law office overhead.

    Chrome

    Manager Tools

    Legal OnRamp
    Legal OnRamp is a lawyer networking site where attorneys contribute content and participate in online forums and groups. Members may use the site to meet other attorneys worldwide who specialize in a particular area of the law or join in the OnRamp marketplace to find out about new client opportunities.

    Lojack for Laptops

    Duct Tape Marketing

    Adobe Connect Now
    Adobe ConnectNow, currently in Beta, is a great way to interact with other professionals from your computer. The application is free and you may use screen sharing, chat, notes, audio and video to hold online meetings. If you are planning on using a virtual or remote legal assistant, this might be a great way to handle an orientation or training. The security may not yet be there with this application, so I would not recommend using it for communicating with clients at this stage in its development.

    JD Supra

    NewsGator

    Open Congress
    OpenCongress combines official government information with related news and blog coverage. If you want to find out the story behind a bill, this is the place to go.

    Clipperz

    Law Practice Matters

    ABA eLawyering Task Force
    ABA’s Elawyering Task Force is part of the ABA Law Practice Management Section and provides an introduction to the increasingly popular trend of using technology to provide legal services online. Even if all you are doing is setting up a web site for your law office, this is a good site to visit for practice tips.

    Delicious

    Presentation Zen

    Techmeme
    Techmeme is popular website that can keep you up to date with technology and trends that can help you run your law practice and your life. Focusing on the practical application of technology in daily life, it combines the best tech stories of the day into an easy-to-scan page with 24/7 updated content.

    Stay Happily Married

    Kiva

    Major Geeks
    MajorGeeks is a trusted website that provides downloads for your computer that will repair, back-up, and protect your system. Check out the anti-virus and backup downloads.

  • March Update on VLOTech and my Virtual Law Practice

    Sheryl Sisk Schelin, author of The Inspired Solo, invited me to write a guest post for her blog this week. Thank you to Sheryl for the opportunity to share my virtual practice with her readers!

    In other news, VLOTech is having its website professionally designed by G2 Web Media which is owned by Grant Griffiths of Home Office Lawyer fame. The website/blog should be up and running by the end of the month. The VLOTech company website will be a blog so that company updates and software progress can be posted quickly and archived in one spot. We’re also planning on having a faqs section which will address head-on the questions that we predict prospective clients and the public may have about SaaS, web-based applications and vlos in general.

    The Greater Wilmington Business Journal recently published an article about VLOTech and how the company is attracting attention across the nation from attorneys who are interested in setting up Virtual Law Offices.

    I’ve been asked to teach a CLE session at the GP/Solo/Small Firm CLE for the NC Bar Association this summer. My working title is “Virtual Law Practice: Technology and Ethics Considerations.” I’m looking forward to the opportunity to share my experience practicing law online and hopefully encourage more solo and small firm practitioners to look into the different technology options available that can enable them to create vlos or to take their practices remote.

  • KLS Virtual Law Office Fall Update

    This fall I’ve connected with several other attorneys across the nation who have similar goals of using the most current technology to better serve clients and facilitate collaboration between attorneys. Roger Glovsky (The Virtual Lawyer) has a great website, Lexpertise, with the goal of linking attorneys nationwide. Grant Griffiths is an attorney who also runs a home based law practice and is the author of two blogs: Home Office Warrior and Home Office Lawyer. Both of these websites have a wealth of information for anyone wanting to find better ways to strike a better work/life balance.

    With a virtual law office, I sometimes have people who reside in states other than North Carolina who will contact me asking for referrals to attorneys who are licensed to practice law in their state. So, these networks are an important way of serving people who visit my website. Over the past year or so, I’ve built up a decent referral bank for visitors to my website whom I am not able to assist and I’m hoping that will continue to grow.

    As many others have written, the legal profession is quickly changing thanks to the available technology. The most successful practices of the future will be those that have embraced these changes and kept up with the technology. An attorney doesn’t have to be a software programmer or computer expert anymore in order to use and maintain software applications that make his or her law practice run more efficiently.

    I am anxious to introduce the vlotech software to the legal profession. It will not happen overnight, but expect it to happen and expect an impact. The public is ready for something different than prepaid legal plans or fill-in-the form legal document websites like legalzoom. (And for the hundredth time, the virtual law office is not anything like legalzoom or nololaw or prepaid legal. It is my law office with all the administrative, management, accounting, etc. functions right there for me and my clients. All online. No lack of parking spaces, no secretary, no appointments necessary. It sometimes baffles me that the public gets this more easily than some attorneys. Give it less than five years and it will be a different story.)

    As for professional development, I attended the annual Estate Planning and Probate Practice CLE in Greensboro this past October so I feel up to date in this area of the law. I was hoping one of the speakers would go into more details about the recent N.C. law changes to the statutory form Health Care Power of Attorney and Living Will. From what I have learned from speaking with other estate planning practitioners, many of their offices are still using the older versions of the documents because they feel that the newer versions are too complicated and wordy for their clients. Many want to wait and see the application of the changes in practice before switching over. Personally, I find the new Living Will statute to be clearer than the old. It would be interesting to know what medical practitioners think about the application of both revised documents.

    Aside from the home based, online practice, I’ve been asked to speak to several mothers’ groups locally about estate planning. I am also posting an educational thread about estate planning on an online forum for mothers. The material and dialogue online between myself and the other women will be the same as my in-person talks, but the forum will most likely reach a larger number of people and be more accessible for many of them. I’m grateful to have these opportunities.

    What strikes me the most after these talks and the question/answer sessions that follow is that a lot of people do not have any estate planning in place for their young families and many do not understand how it can be important to them at this stage in their lives. Yet, most of them have insurance policies in place for the “what ifs” in life. There is still this strongly held presumption among people in their 30s and 40s that estate planning is only for individuals at the end of their lives and only if they have sizable fortunes. I enjoy sharing what I have learned with these groups, and if nothing else, hopefully it helps them start a productive dialogue with their families.

    Also interesting to report, some skeptical people suggested to me that I would only be able to attract clients to the vlo who were in their 20s and 30s because that demographic is most comfortable with obtaining services online. I’m happy to report that I see a wide mix of clients in their 40s and 50s who use their vlo homepages, download and upload drafts and documents for review and pay me online. I even have had a couple clients in their late 60s this past year. This should say something for the ease of the website. That, and North Carolina has a large number of people who retire down here and need their estate planning updated from another state.

    Adding to the content of my virtual law office and this blog are on the top of my priority list for the upcoming new year so please check back. I’m looking forward to a productive and prosperous new year. I wish anyone reading this the same.

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