Virtual Law Practice

Tag: Marketing

  • Consumer Law Revolution Ebook

    ConsumerLawEbookCoverI’ve created a new page on this blog for my new ebook: Consumer Law Revolution.

    This ebook is the precursor to my full book that should be published by the ABA LPM sometime later this year. The ebook provides an introduction to the concept of branded networks and online marketing tools for lawyers.

    For the book, I researched almost all of the legal tech startups and branded networks from both the lawyer and consumer perspective. These case studies are in the full book as are all of the important ethics issues surrounding lawyer collaboration with these companies to engage with and provide legal services to the public.

    I wanted to make the best practices portion of this material free and available to practitioners because I don’t know of any other resources out there like this and it’s needed. As most of you know by now from my writing, I believe that the legal profession should find ways to collaborate with companies providing legal services online. It will be a significant way to increase access to justice for certain legal services. Not for all services, not for all clients, and not for all lawyers – see my book on unbundling or that ebook for reasons why not. However, it will be significant for large segments of the public needing basic legal services and may lead to other forms of collaboration and innovation in the delivery of legal services that could expand access in ways we can’t see right now.

    For those who are venturing into this area of lawyer advertising/delivering legal services online in their law practice, this ebook and the full book to come should be a helpful guide.

    As always, I welcome feedback.

  • Progress on New Book – Online Marketing Tools

    I wanted to provide a quick update of what I’ve been working on and what I will hopefully be sharing more of on this blog in the near future. I have been finishing up a new book on the topic of online marketing tools for lawyers. If all goes well, it should be out by the spring.

    In the course of researching for this project, I’ve studied and registered for accounts with companies that provide online legal services to the public and seek to collaborate with lawyers. This process has only increased my excitement and optimism about the future of online delivery. The book covers the many ethics questions that come up with respects to these models and provides best practices for lawyers to follow. However, the focus is on lawyer collaboration with the new models of online delivery.

    These companies have found ways to engage with the public in a larger online conversation about the law and legal services in a way that the legal profession has not succeeded in doing. Our existing rules of advertising and different state restrictions on various online models of advertising have caused many lawyers to continue to stay out of the online conversation.

    This is not good for the public because it limits their awareness of and ability to find qualified legal assistance, and it keep our profession isolated from understanding the needs of our clients. The book looks at how lawyers may create a different kind of marketing strategy by working with rather than ignoring or trying to compete with these third-party platforms for legal service delivery. This strategy will generate leads for a lawyer’s practice, giving them a competitive edge over firms that do not engage with the public online. But it may also serve the purpose of improving public opinion about lawyers and the legal profession. (more…)

  • Virginia Disciplinary Case on Misleading Lawyer Advertising

    A recent disciplinary case out of Virginia addresses the issue of a lawyer’s use of misleading online advertising and references “virtual” law offices. In fact, the objectionable actions taken by the lawyer are those that could apply to any lawyer or law firm that has a website or any online presence. It is not in fact related to the online delivery of legal services, but to lawyer advertising in general.

    The practitioner’s website and other forms of advertising stated that the firm included multiple attorneys, one  devoted to each practice area. These attorneys were actually independent contractors of the firm and each listed that they covered multiple practice areas. At the request of the Bar, the lawyer made changes to his agreements with the lawyers to make them full employees of the firm and amended the lawyer’s profiles on his website to correctly state all of the areas of law that they handled. Other advertisements stated that the firm had six offices in Virginia as well as in other states. Five of those offices were temporary, leased office space.

    The case does not go into detail about the firm’s practice management system, but states that the lawyer claims the client files are “secured electronically” which indicates they are using a cloud-based system to coordinate work among the lawyers in the firm. The lawyer also amended his website to explain the nature of the temporary, leased office space as “client meeting location” rather than permanent offices.

    Of all of the above grievances that were noted and responded to by the lawyer, the court in this case found that the lawyer was in violation of Virginia Rule of Professional Conduct 7.4 regarding communication of the fields of practice and certification, which requires compliance with 7.1 (related to misleading advertising). He was given public reprimand without terms for the violation.

    This disciplinary action raises interesting questions about law firms that outsource legal work to temporary lawyers for hire. Axiom is an example of a practice that leases lawyers to other firms to handle specific work. May these temporary, virtual practitioners be used by the firm for advertising purposes to hold out to the public that the firm provides legal assistance covering more practice areas than their permanent employees may cover? Or that the firm covers jurisdictions where those temporary lawyers are licensed but the primary law firm members are not?

    The Commission on Ethics 20/20 has asked for feedback regarding changes to Model Rule 5.5 and whether any are needed to address the concept of “virtual presence” under the UPL rule. How does the use of temporary virtual lawyers factor into this analysis?

    I am currently writing a book for the ABA/LPM on the topic of online marketing tools for lawyers and am researching the topic of how lawyers must comply with Model Rule 7.1 when using online forms of advertising. My opinion is that if you are going to be using temporary, outsourced lawyers and leased office space in multiple states, that it would be a violation of the Rules to misstate the nature of this law firm structure to the public in any advertising, online or traditional.

    But “misleading” is one thing and “giving them more info than they need to know” is another. Where do we draw the line in notifying the public about our business decisions and the business structures of our law firms?  How do we measure the potential harm to a public that is empowered to search online for alternative sources for legal assistance? [For the record, I am not disagreeing with the Virginia decision referenced above. I am merely posing a general question about the nuances of the term “misleading” in MR 7.1.]

    I think the core question is what is misleading to the public under Rule 7.1? It sounds like such a simple question, but lawyers love to complicate things so this won’t be the last time we will hear about these issues. (In fact, North Carolina recently published a draft ethics opinion discussing some of the these same issues related to false advertising of a lawyer’s law firm location and size.)

    Again, while virtual law firms obviously need to be hyper aware of online lawyer advertising restrictions, these new trends in law firm staffing, remote workers, and the use of cloud computing to connect practitioners across jurisdictions is applicable to all law firms, not just those that are delivering their legal services online to clients.

    [Thanks to Brock Rutter for sharing the Legal Profession Blog post about this with the elawyering task force listserv. Also, check out Bob Ambrogi’s post on this case on his LawSites blog.]

  • NC Proposed Ethics Opinion – Use of Leased Time-Shared Office Address

    There is a proposed North Carolina ethics opinion that may affect virtual practitioners who use leased time-shared offices or PO Boxes as addresses because they work from home or only need to meet with clients infrequently.

    Proposed 2012 Formal Ethics Opinion 6 “Use of  Leased Time-Shared Office Address or Post Office Address on Letterhead and Advertising” was considered by the NC State Bar Ethics Committee at their meeting on July 19, 2012. The proposed opinion will be published in the next issue of the State Bar’s Journal and public comments will be accepted. Depending on the feedback received, the Committee will either adopt the opinion or decide whether to drop or revise it before meeting again.

    For those of you familiar with the “bona fide office” rules of some states, the questions raised in the proposed opinion will ring a bell. (more…)

  • Launch of Unbundling Book at ABA Techshow

    Last week at the ABA Techshow in Chicago, I was pleased to launch the publication of my new book on unbundling.

    Writing a book on limited scope services seemed like a logical next step in the process of reevaluating how the legal profession can adapt to the changes it faces as a result of disruptive technology, economic recession, Internet-empowered consumers and other factors that I discuss in the book. In my opinion, unbundling is a concept that underlies and works with all of the changes that legal visionaries like Richard Susskind, Jordan Furlong and others have been preaching to us for the past several years. I was grateful to Jordan Furlong for writing a wonderful Foreward for the book.

    The goal of this book is to educate lawyers and law firms on the processes they should to go through to responsibly add limited scope services as part of restructuring their delivery methods to adapt to changes in our legal marketplace. Whereas my other book on virtual law practice was geared more towards solos and firms that were interested primarily in online delivery methods, this book on unbundling is applicable to almost every firm structure from traditional to a hybrid virtual law firm, from solos to large firms and in-house counsel.

    It is not only individuals of lower to moderate means who are seeking limited scope services from law firms, but many more sophisticated client bases are keen on finding law firms that provide this. Accordingly, there is a great potential here for increased revenue for law firms as well as for the public to receive alternative forms of legal service delivery, increasing access to justice across the board. Naturally, the book covers the many ethics rules, best practices, and sometimes complex process of determining when unbundling is appropriate and when full-service is necessary. (more…)

  • Update on the Ethics of Performance-Based Marketing

    Most lawyers who have researched ethics opinions related to online advertising are familiar with the Total Attorneys ethics matter, which began in April, 2009 when a single Connecticut lawyer filed an ethics complaint with the state bar disciplinary counsel in 47 states. The complaints targeted not just the company, but also more than 500 of its bankruptcy law firm customers. Here’s the final update on how this played out along with my thoughts on the significance of this process.

    Established in 2002, Total Attorneys is a cloud-based technology and marketing company that is the country’s oldest and largest performance-based lead generation provider to small law firms. As some of you probably know, this is the company that acquired VLOTech, the software that I co-created and use for my virtual practice. For those not familiar with advertising terminology (after all, we don’t typically receive business education in law school), a “lead” for a law firm would be a “prospective” client. (more…)

  • Standing Committee Recommends Deletion of Problematic Advertising Rule

    Remember how I wrote that virtual practitioners may need to collaborate with “branded network concepts” when updating their marketing strategies?  I also argue that this is necessary in the conclusion of my new book on unbundling because it’s a major component in increasing overall access to justice. Apparently I’m not the only one who sees the potential benefits to the public and the profession from the availability of newer online lawyer advertising methods.

    The ABA Standing Committee on the Delivery of Legal Services has written a letter to the Commission on Ethics 20/20 providing its recommendations regarding lawyer advertising rules. In an interesting move, the Committee has recommended the deletion of Model Rule 7.2(b).

    For those of us in virtual practices who depend on online advertising methods perhaps moreso than traditional law firms, this would be a potentially revolutionary change to the rules. Model Rule 7.2(b) is the rule that prohibits a lawyer from giving anything of value for recommendation for his or her services with four exceptions. It is these exceptions and the speed at which online advertising methods have developed that has caused confusion and controversy over the past few years.

    The Committee’s letter provides a background on how changes in online advertising methods have impacted the options available to the public seeking legal services. Because one of the primary goals of the Committee is to increase access to justice for individuals of moderate income levels, they are quick to point out that these new online methods actually allow for individuals of all income levels to find both the lawyers that they could work with as well as other resources that empower them to make educated decisions about the legal services they might need. (more…)

  • Updating the Marketing Strategy for a Virtual Law Practice

     

    This Saturday I’m giving a live lecture focused on virtual law practice marketing strategy for my students in Concord Law School’s Small Business LLM program. I’m having the students slowly add in components of a business plan with each assignment so that by the end of the semester they have a complete and ready-to-implement business plan for a virtual law practice. Some of them are going to have completely web-based, unbundled practices and others are adding a virtual law office to their traditional, full-service offerings. Each form of virtual practice will require a unique marketing strategy based on their approach to providing unbundled services online and the state of their existing brand development.

    I’ve written about marketing issues in virtual practice on this blog before. But because marketing a virtual practice is so dependant upon web-based forms of marketing which changes at a crazy pace, your strategy has to be regularly re-evaluated and revised.

    Below are some bulleted tips and things to consider. Be warned, I am not even touching how social media plays into your strategy (which should be a major part) and for once, I’m not going to harp on ethical issues other than to tell you to check with your state bar and use some common sense.

    Start out by asking: (more…)

  • Online “Daily Deals” on Legal Services

    South Carolina has published a new Formal Ethics Opinion 11-05 about attorney’s using services, such as Groupon, to offer discounts and deals on their legal services.

    To my knowledge, the ethics opinion is the first from a state bar that is specifically related to this topic. The question posed in the opinion is:

    Does a lawyer violate the Rules of Professional Conduct by contracting with a website to offer vouchers that can be purchased from the website and then subsequently redeemed for discounted legal services such as the preparation of wills?

    The opinion says a lawyer does not violate the Rules as long as the method used complies with attorney ethics rules for advertising (7.1 – 7.2) and the rule on sharing of legal fees (Rule 5.4(a)).  There are other potential risks to avoid that include clearly defining the scope of representation that is covered in the “deal”, making sure payments are routed to the trust account if required, and the duty to prospective clients. The opinion concludes that whether this online client development strategy violates the Rules or not depends on the way that the attorney has set up the procedure within the online service and manages it in accordance with the other Rules.

    The question posed the SC Ethics Committee specifically mentions using the service for estate planning. In fact, it’s difficult to think of what other practice areas it might be possible to do this in. It would work best with an unbundled or limited scope representation service.  More often when people are seeking legal services online it’s because there is a pressing legal need.  The motivating factor to retain an attorney is not the discount on services.  But you never know these days. I’ve heard tales from family law attorneys claiming that the recession has prospective clients delaying major legal needs, including divorce, until they can afford it.  So maybe if your firm was the one offering a “daily deal” on that service, you might be selected above another firm.

    A virtual lawyer providing unbundled services online could connect the daily deal service to their virtual law office to potentially send prospective online clients straight from the deal into the registration process to purchase the requested unbundled legal service online.

    Are any other state bars addressing the use this service in online client development by lawyers?  Anyone know of a law firm using Groupon or another service for this purpose?

  • Online Bidding for Clients

    Today’s Wall Street Journal published an article on Shpoonkle, an online auction site similar to eBay where lawyers can bid on clients.  Both Susan Cartier Liebel and Scott Greenfield had blogged about this site in the past month.  Robert Ambrogi even chimed in that the concept is old news and will hopefully fall to its demise sooner rather than later.

    Should we really consider this a new method of online delivery of legal services or is it just another form of online lawyer marketing?  

    My interest here as a virtual lawyer is in the potential online delivery of legal services to clients.  It doesn’t seem that Shpoonkle provides the registering attorneys with client portals or any other way of actually working with the clients online.  Once an attorney “wins” a bid, the parties move back to a more traditional attorney/client relationship.  However, I can see this form of bidding taking the next step where the attorney whose bid is chosen uses some form of secure workspace provided through the site to unbundle legal services online to the client.  Think about how Elance.com operates.  (more…)

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