Virtual Law Practice

Tag: online clients

  • ABA Journal Article on Virtual Practice

    cloudThe ABA Journal published an article entitled “Lawyers’ definitions of virtual practice vary, but not when it comes to finding success“.  The article runs through the different definitions of virtual law practice and the wide variety of ways that lawyers are choosing to deliver legal services online. The debate over the definition of the term (which the online legal community hashed out in multiple debates over the past eight years) does not matter as much as the use of the technology to serve clients, increase access to legal services, and provide lawyers with flexibility in their business models.

    The most valuable content in this lengthy article is the second half that goes into the ethics issues and the value of a virtual practice and how that might differ from a traditional law firm. The article references the ABA eLawyering Task Force’s the Best Practice Guidelines for Legal Information Web Site Providers and recommendations for working with cloud-based providers.

    The ABA LPD has asked me to write a second edition of my Virtual Law Practice book which was published in 2010. I’ll be working on that over the next couple of months. I’m expecting to need to re-write the majority of the book. So much has changed in only a few years in the area of online legal service delivery.

  • Five Tips for Lawyers Purchasing Online Lead Gen Services

    Lead-Generation-ROIFive Tips for Lawyers Purchasing Online Lead Generation Services

    1.   Find out how much traffic the branded network’s site generates. Check with a company like Quantcast, which provides an estimate of the traffic generated to a single website.

    2.   Find out where the company pulls in the leads. An unscrupulous company might be purchasing low-quality leads to funnel to their lawyer network.

    3.  Find out how the service operates. For example, does it focus on generating the traffic by purchasing Google AdWords? What is the strategy for generating leads to push to the lawyer network? The cost of the service to your firm is going to depend on its costs to generate the leads to forward to you.

    4.   Note how tailored the lead generation service is to your specific practice area and jurisdiction. Some companies may restrict their own marketing to particular states or regions to generate leads for the areas where they have the most lawyer members in their network.

    • If the service is attempting to generate leads from landing pages that are too broad, this is going to mean fewer warm leads for you.
    • Are you in a jurisdiction where the company has focused its marketing to the public, or will you be one of only a handful of lawyers in your jurisdiction using the service?

    5.   Do a cost/benefit analysis based on the return you would get from each lead and how much the company is charging for leads.

    • If the service is performance based, then find out if you must pay for leads even if they are not warm leads or if you are unable to convert a lead to a paying client. Most performance-based services will define a qualifying lead as any individual sent to you with a legal need that you have told the company you will handle.
    • Factor in the amount that you would charge that client for services and make sure the cost to acquire the client in the first place is the most effective use of that money.
    • Some companies with these services offer lead monitoring and tracking tools as well as other forms of support to help the lawyer with lead conversion.

    What Is Online Lawyer Lead Generation? (more…)

  • Client Portal Matrix

    Last week I gave a presentation with Chad Burton at the ABA LPM Spring meeting about the eLawyering Task Force‘s newest project, the Client Portal Matrix, formally titled as the “Comparative Evaluation of Web-based Practice Management Software with Client Portal Applications for Solos and Small Law Firms.” Donna Seyle, who did most of the work gathering data for the matrix, was unable to make the meeting so I filled in to discuss some of the practical uses of a client portal in law practice and the best practices and ethics issues that might come up.

    The matrix will be posted on the eLawyering website in the near future. It is a work in progress, but is already a useful tool and starting point for lawyers considering virtual practice. It was designed primarily for solo and small firm practitioners. The matrix focuses on cloud-based, SaaS solutions and specifically excludes the online client portals and tools provided by branded networks, such as Rocket Lawyer. The focus of this project was on client-facing technology so also excluded were systems that focused on other administrative tasks, such as time and billing, calendaring, or matter management among others. There are fourteen companies with client-facing features on the matrix so far.

    It makes me think back to eight years ago when I opened my solo virtual law office and co-founded the system that is now Total Attorney’s platform with client-facing features. At the time, there weren’t any SaaS options out there for a practitioner. Now there are choices and more most likely in the works. Expect to hear more clients asking their lawyers and firms for online access to their legal accounts. If you don’t have a client portal or any client facing features in the technology you use for your firm, you need to consider in the near future how you will add it to the mix. This is going to be the case whether you are delivering legal services online with a virtual law office or operating a traditional law firm without online delivery options. It’s about client access and good customer service which should apply in any firm structure.

    http://www.flickr.com/photos/surfstyle/
    http://www.flickr.com/photos/surfstyle/

  • Slides – Consumer Law Revolution: Online Marketing Tools for Lawyers

    These are the slides from my part of the panel presentation from the College of Law Practice Management (COLPM) Futures Conference last Friday at Georgetown Law Center in D.C. Some of this talk included research from my forthcoming book on the subject.

    I think Michael Mills, who was on the panel with myself, Marc Lauritsen and Tanina Rostain, made a wonderful point when he asked whether our profession’s reluctance to use available technologies that make legal knowledge available to a larger majority of the public is actually “immoral.” It is certainly malpractice to not use it, but I think he is right, if it’s available and can be implemented by law firms or at least made accessible through legal services organizations to increase access to justice, then yes, it borders on being immoral.

    I tried to argue that some of these companies creating new platforms to deliver legal services might collaborate with  private practitioners as well as legal aid services  to increase alternatives available but also help lawyers to build their online brand and market their full-service or unbundled legal service offerings. I’m not sure about what reception these ideas had because it was the end of the day and that always limits attendee questions.  Would love the feedback.

  • Speaking at the International Legal Ethics Conference

    This week I will be attending the International Legal Ethics Conference (ILEC) in Banff, Alberta. I am taking part in a panel discussion with John Browning, Darrel Pink and Victoria Rees, entitled “The Challenges of Virtual Law Practice and Social Media.”

    Several tracks run throughout the two-day conference: Culture, Ethics & Society; Empirical Approaches to Legal Ethics; Regulation of the Profession/Ethics and Education; and Philosophy and Legal Ethics. My session falls under the Regulation of the Profession track. This will include discussion about changing regulatory models, regulation of lawyers and other legal service providers, and ethics education for lawyers and in law schools. I’ve submitted my paper on regulatory barriers to multijurisdictional virtual law practice for this session and will talk about some of the newer ethics opinions that have come out which are related to virtual law practice.

    I am most excited about meeting some of the individuals I have worked online with over the past year on different projects. Several individuals from the Law Without Walls team will be attending as well as more than a few of the speakers who participated in this month’s successful LawTechCamp London. I’m a huge fan of some of the legal technologists and educators who will be speaking in Banff so I will have to restrain myself from acting like a giddy teenager at a Justin Bieber sighting.

    I expect to return home with a new perspective on how other countries are addressing ethics and regulatory issues in the legal profession and hopefully will come away inspired to continue my own education on these issues as they pertain to unbundling and the online delivery of legal services. I will make an effort to tweet while at the event or at least follow up with a blog post in the near future.

     

  • Online Legal Services – Updated List for Big Law

    Ron Friedmann over at his Prism Legal Blog has posted an updated list of big law firms delivering online legal services. Neota Logic sponsored the updated list and most likely provides the technology that facilitates the online delivery process for some of the listed firms. (I am a fan of Neota Logic and have been sharing how it works and its potential with the law students I teach.)

    I share some of Ron’s thoughts about the direction that online services are heading at least in the Big Law arena. It’s difficult to see how the changes affecting the legal profession in the UK under the Legal Services Act with its encouragement of alternative business structures is not going to eventually trickle over to the US. In the process that will encourage technology companies and innovative law firms to adapt to alternative forms of legal service delivery, including online and those that rely on decision-making and document assembly and automation systems.

    It’s also interesting to see that financial services are the primary online service for most of these firms. I would hope that as the technology becomes more affordable to customize, firms will see the potential in adding other practice areas. They might consider adding those services in practice areas that are transactions-based and delivered online to supplement other unbundled or full-service offerings that are delivered traditionally. If you are keeping track of the development of online delivery, Ron’s post is a good resource.

  • Paper on Regulatory Barriers to Multijurisdictional Virtual Law Firms

    Most of my earlier writing on this blog was geared towards the solo practitioner or small firm finding ways to deliver legal services online. But I would also get questions from practitioners in larger law firms and from practitioners who were licensed in multiple states and wanted to understand how they could use innovations in technology to work with clients across the country and internationally. Some lawyers were living overseas and were licensed in several states in the U.S. or they lived in one State here but were licensed in multiple jurisdictions and wanted to make sure they were in compliance with the rules of professional responsibility.

    So I wrote this paper “Regulatory Barriers to the Growth of Multijurisdictional Virtual Law Firms and Potential First Steps to their Removal” which the North Caroline Journal of Law and Technology at UNC-Chapel Hill Law School was kind enough to publish in their recent issue. As it turned out, I could have written a short book on this topic so I had to exclude almost everything related to international regulatory barriers and just focus on the U.S.  Saving my international research for another project I guess.

    If you have time to read nothing else, I’d recommend the first half with the background on virtual firms which provides several case studies and models of multijurisdictional virtual practices and what technology and methods of online delivery or collaboration that they are using. I’ve mentioned the following firms:

    – VLP Law Group

    – FSB FisherBroyles Legal

    – Heritage Law

    – Rimon Law

    – Axiom Law

    – Clearspire

    – Valorem Law

    – Burton Law

    – Hargrove Madden

    – McGrath & Spielberger, PLLC

    – Frame Legal

    – Harrill Law Firm

    Fair warning, most of the model rules I discuss in this paper will probably be at least a little modified by the ABA Annual Meeting in August. But hopefully some of my proposals at the end will strike a cord with someone out there. Comments always welcome.

    Abstract:

    The spread of disruptive technologies to the legal profession is changing the dynamic of how law firms are structured as well as  the value propositions associated with the delivery of legal  services.  The number of law firms with a national presence has grown due to the cost benefits  and efficiency of using cloud  computing.  New models for  expansion across jurisdictional
    boundaries are increasing.  However, the regulatory barriers to  create these new firm structures are numerous and costly.  This
    paper reviews the evolution of technology in multijurisdictional  firms and examines the primary regulatory barriers to their further  development.  A starting point for standardization of regulations is  proposed as well as potential first-steps to removing barriers to the  growth of multijurisdictional virtual law firms.

    The rest is here.  

     

  • Who Does the Technology Replace?

    Last month, I spoke at the annual conference for the IP Paralegal Institute in Cary, NC. The topic of my presentation was how to create an “eOffice” – to move away from paper and go digital. I started the talk with an overview of the legal marketplace for unbundled and online legal services and ended it with a look at where the profession will be in the next five years. I discussed decision-making systems like Neota Logic and document assembly and automation technologies as well as online case and client management systems that automate many of the functions of a law office.

    The final question from the attendees afterwards was a new one for me in the  Q&A, probably because it was the first time I had spoken to a room of paralegals rather than lawyers: “With all this technology, how many human bodies do you think it will replace in the law firm?” I guess my presentation had made a few of them nervous about their job security in the future. Likewise, when I spoke at Stanford Law a few weeks later I was asked at the end of my talk what I thought the make-up of a law firm would be five to ten years from now.

    Where do paralegals and other support staff fit into these new law firm models? (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?

  • Potential New Regulation of Online Advertising Will Negatively Impact Solo and Small Firm Virtual Law Offices

    There are two weeks left to submit comments to the ABA Ethics Commission 20/20 regarding its two issues papers related to cloud computing and online marketing.  I wrote about the cloud computing issues paper here, but as several fellow virtual law practitioners have pointed out to me, it is the second issues paper on the use of Internet-based client development tools that we need to be more concerned with. 

    I use most of the web-based “tools” that the paper addresses, including blogging, websites, and social and professional networking services.  I do not use pay-per-click advertising for my virtual law office.  I tried Google AdWords early on and found that I did not have the advertising budget to make it work effectively for my practice.  But without these other methods, I’m sure I would not have a virtual law office today.  At this point in my practice development, I use most of these methods to network with other legal professionals more than as a client development tool, but at what point does building a reputation for your practice turn into client development? 

    How could the virtual law practitioner possibly compete without using online marketing methods?  It would not be possible.  BigLaw firms setting up a virtual law office would have the financial resources to accomplish this, but certainly not a solo, small or even mid-sized firm.   LegalZoom, USLegal Forms and other online legal service companies are allowed to drop millions on aggressive, direct online advertising to the public.  Yet, online networking by attorneys is the big public threat?

    As a small business owner it seems absolutely ridiculous to me that I would be not be able to use the most current and effect methods of marketing my services.  I have been and always will be aware of and in compliance with my state bar’s rules and regulations regarding attorney advertising.  They are necessary, and I’m glad there are there because these rules set a high standard for advertising for professionals by ensuring that unscrupulous attorneys do not mislead or take advantage of the public.  It’s part of what sets us apart as a profession with a responsibility to the public we serve.  (more…)

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