Virtual Law Practice

Tag: Law Practice Management

  • Top Five Planning Questions for Online Legal Service Delivery

    checklistIn order for a law firm to begin the process of deciding what type of model for online delivery it needs and how to integrate online legal services, it must first take a step back and look at its existing practice areas and the services it currently provides to clients in a traditional manner.

    The firm should start with one practice area at a time and analyze the typical intake and management procedure for the case through to the termination of the relationship with a client. Noting which individuals at the firm are responsible at each step and stage in a case is also important as well as what technology, if any, is used at each stage.

    The following list of questions may be a useful starting point:

    1. What are the processes and procedures for the creation of new cases?
    2. What is the client intake process and how is data collected from the client regarding the matter?
    3. Who in the firm works with the client first and how is the matter processed through to the work with associates and partners in the firm?
    4. What technology platforms or systems are used with the matter? For example, does the firm rely on a document automation and assembly technology system or use a document management system to pull similar legal documents out for repurposing by the firm?
    5. What is the process for meeting with the client? Is this done in the office, by phone, video conferencing, or through a combination of communication methods? With matters such as complex litigation, this task may take more time and be more complicated.

    After the firm has answered these questions and gone through this analysis, it will have a better handle on what type of technology, support staff, training, and additional administrative procedures will be needed to add online legal services to the firm’s existing operations.

    [This is an excerpt from Chapter One of Online Legal Services for the Client-Centric Law Firm, by Stephanie Kimbro, Published by Managing Partner, Ark Group, 2013]

  • Speaking: Innovations in the Law: Science and Technology

    I will be speaking at the District of Oregon Conference entitled, Innovations in the Law: Science and Technology, on Friday of this week at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry in Portland. Speakers for the event will have 6-12 minutes to present on a number of topics including “improving the delivery of legal services, innovations in the courts, gaps in the law, and how the public’s use of technology impacts law enforcement.” Many of the speakers on the roster were involved in the ReInvent Law event in Silicon Valley last spring. I will be giving my 6 minute Ignite style talk on the consumer law revolution and how lawyers can collaborate with branded networks to increase access and delivery. If you are in Portland on Friday, consider registering for the event.

  • Chapter from New International Report on Online Legal Services

    CoverImageThis summer I wrote a report for Managing Partner, a UK-based publishing company focused on law firm management. The report is for lawyers who are interested in learning about and possibly adding online legal services to their law firms. Here is the Executive Summary and Chapter One.

    This is not intended to be an academic report so there are few citations and more checklists and recommendations for analysis and implementation. It is written for lawyers who want to focus on client-development and customer service for existing clients by adding online services in their firms. The case studies I reviewed are law firms that are successfully doing this. For example, Brilliant Law in the UK and Slater & Gordon in Australia. I’m not focusing on branded networks or companies in this report.

    The chapter I wish they would have given me to share is the final one where I take a look at why online legal service delivery by firms have not been as quickly adopted or as successful as many had hoped and what I think needs to be done to see it evolve and really increase access to legal services for the public. I will try to make this the subject of a blog post soon because I think there are definitely some lessons to be learned from this research that need to be shared. You can purchase a copy of the full report here.

    This report was international in scope, but I had difficulty finding firms in some areas that were marketing and delivering their services online. Some areas I neglected to write about simply because I couldn’t find anything there (Africa, South America, China, Japan, Russia, and others). I’m sure there must be some innovation in online delivery happening there, but to what extent? Already, since turning in the proofs last month, I’ve learned about a new company in Germany that is focused on online delivery. That’s the nature of this topic and why I should only write easily editable ebooks!

    As always, feedback, comments, and connections to others innovating in this space, are gratefully encouraged.

  • Infographic: Technology in Legal Education

    This was my first attempt at creating an infographic using Piktochart. Any feedback is welcome! It’s challenging for a writer to think in terms of graphic design, but I’m trying!

  • Less Law School + More Practical Training

    Two fingers upI have been enjoying the debates that have ensued after President Obama’s recommendation to cut law school down to two years. I agree with it personally, but only with the requirement of some form of mentorship or residency program added on. Actually, this practical skills requirement should be in place even with a three year schedule.

    My concern is that if the law school length were cut down to only two years, more of the practical courses that do exist in the curriculum would have to be cut. If the bar exam isn’t changing any time soon, then students would still be hard pressed to take all the substantive bar courses and the practice areas they are interested in only in two years. That might push the practical skills, legal writing, law practice management courses, incubators, clinics, mock trial, law review and many other extras further to the side.

    However, law schools could start looking at outside solutions to provide their students with this form of practical education. This is emerging in the form of certificate courses and supplemental programs for law students and young lawyers.

    I announced a couple weeks ago that Richard Granat and I are now co-directors of the Center for Law Practice Technology. This is our intention: to provide law students and, at some point, private practitioners with the practical business and technology knowledge that they need to practice law in the 21st Century. It is essentially a certificate program. The students will graduate with proof for themselves and prospective employers that they have real-world business and technology skills to practice law or work in any other capacity in our profession.

    Obviously, I believe this type of program is a good solution for law schools to consider – regardless of whether they ever go down to a two-year degree. It will help our law students and those currently practicing to get up to speed. I am excited to see what kind of innovation we can come up with in the way that this learning experience is delivered. We are currently working on course design for our project and thinking about user design and experience in how each course is laid out and taught both in lectures, prerecordings, podcasts, videos and other materials.

    When I read the discussions around President Obama’s statement, I got very excited that maybe this time the proponents of this two-year concept would be taken more seriously.

    To share some of our ideas about teaching this material, here is the online copy of the law review paper Richard and I co-authored. This provides a blueprint for a curriculum for such a program.

  • Collaborating with Branded Networks on LXBN TV

    This is the video of my brief interview with Colin O’Keefe about the topic of my presentation for Avvo’s Lawyernomics Conference next week in Las Vegas.

  • List of Must-Reads Related to Law and Tech

    Here is some spring reading. Every six months for the past couple of years, I publish a post that lists the top updates in virtual law practice and links out to the news, events and articles over that time period. Well, virtual law practice has gone more mainstream and curating all of that content is way more time consuming and difficult to narrow down.

    So instead, here are the top articles that have come out in the past six months that I think any virtual practitioner should read. Most deal with the future of law practice, but others are practical advice on security and tech issues. I use Twitter as my reader these days so I know I’ve missed a few. They are in no particular order. I’m purposefully not putting the great law school reform/legal jobs debate in here.

    – Jordan Furlong, The Evolution of the Legal Services Market, five part series on Law21.

    – V. Mary Abraham, What Technologists Can Teach Lawyers on Legal Technology Today.

    – David R. Johnson, Serving Justice with Conversational Law,  for the World Future Society

    – Ron Friedmann, A New Model Law Firm: A Closer Look at Clearspire, two part post on Prism Legal.

    – Ron Friedmann, The Current State and Future of Big Law Online Legal Services , on Prism Legal.

    – Richard Susskind, Tomorrow’s Lawyers: An Introduction to Your Future, Oxford Press (2013).

    – Dan Katz recaps the coverage of the ReInvent Law Conference in Silicon Valley on his Computational Legal Studies blog. Hopefully videos of the talks will be posted soon.

    – Dan Katz, Quantitative Legal Prediction – or – How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Start Preparing for the Data Driven Future of the Legal Services Industry, Emory Law Journal, Vol. 62, 2013 on SSRN.

    -Law Society of British Columbia’s Cloud Computing Checklist

    – Sharon Nelson and John Simek, Through a Glass, Darkly: The Future of Court Technology, on Slaw.

    – John Gregory, Crowdsourced Online Dispute Resolution on Slaw.

    – Dave Einstein, Big Data in Law: Cloud Challenge, Analytics Opportunity, on Forbes.

    – Pam Woldow, What Law Firms Can Learn from Hotels: Perspectives on Service

    – V. Mary Abraham, Improve Your Legal Practice Through Gamification, in Law Technology Today

    – Donna Seyle, eLawyering in an Age of Accelerating Technology, ABA GP/Solo Report (January 2013)

    – Using Technology to Enhance Access to Justice, Harvard Journal of Law & Technology, Volume 26, Number 1 Fall 2012

    – Dennis Kennedy, Thirteen Mobile Collaboration Tips for 2013, Law Practice Today (January 2013)

     

  • Following the Virtual Lawyer Mindset

    Jay Fleischman has a thought-provoking post up on his blog entitled “Being a Virtual Lawyer is all Mindset, Not Technology.”  You can read my comment below the post.

    Jay writes that regardless of the form of technology you use to operate a virtual law office, the key is having the right attitude to go with it.  He’s right.  To take advantage of the benefits that the technology gives us to make our professional lives more flexible, we have to be able to change our work habits and know when to unplug. 

    However, I would add that the choice of technology is a factor in coming to this mindset and is going to differ depending on the comfort level of the attorney.  Some attorneys are more tech-savvy and experienced working online than others.  What is easy for one attorney to set up and work with clients is not going to be easy for another attorney with less experience.  That will affect their ability to enjoy the benefits of operating a virtual law practice. (more…)

  • ABA eLawyering Task Force Conference Call

    The ABA’s eLawyering Task Force will hold a conference call next week on January 9th at 10:00am Eastern time.  The website has an incorrect date on it as the meeting had to be rescheduled for the first of the new year.  If anyone is interested in discussing the delivery of legal services using technology, you might want to consider joining the group’s listserv and taking part in the conference call.  Participants must also be a member of the ABA’s Law Practice Management Section in order to join the Task Force.

    One of the eLawyering Task Force’s goals will be to discuss setting standards for the use of technology to deliver legal services.  This will be my first conference call with the group so I’m looking forward to speaking with some of the individuals I’ve been reading about and emailing over the past year or so.  Anyone operating a virtual law office or considering hanging a virtual shingle should take an interest in this group’s activities. 

    If you are reading Richard Susskind’s new book, The End of Lawyers?, you will know why I think this group is going to have growing relevance for the ABA and the legal profession in general.  For anyone who can’t join in on the conference call, I’ll try to post a summary of the meeting in the near future.

  • In a Slowing Economy – Benefits of A Virtual Law Practice

    Kevin O’Keefe over at Real Lawyers Have Blogs summarized Dennis Kennedy’s suggestions for how attorneys can cut costs in the slowing economy.

    At the top of the list was find technology that cuts costs for your law practice. Maybe it should also read: cut out the legal software that was supposed to save you time. Instead, find a more efficient way to accomplish the same law practice management and client development tasks by looking at technologies that other businesses besides attorneys are using to cut costs and raise client revenue.

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