Last month, I spoke at the annual conference for the IP Paralegal Institute in Cary, NC. The topic of my presentation was about 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 managegment systems that automate many of the functions of a law office. The final question from the attendees afterwards was a new one for me, 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?”

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 [...]

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 [...]

This past weekend I presented a CLE session for the North Carolina Association of Women Attorneys (NCAWA) annual meeting on the topic of social media for legal professionals. Anyone involved in virtual law practice needs to understand social media and how it can be used to market a virtual law office, but also about how [...]

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.  [...]

The delivery of legal services online depends on the use of a secure client portal where the attorney and client can interact. This is the key feature of a virtual law practice and what distinguishes it from other online legal services and law firms that claim to be “virtual” by using unencrypted email. I’ve noticed [...]

The second post in my three-part series on virtual law practice has been published on the Massachusetts Law Office Management Assistance Program (LOMAP) blog.  This post discusses how to market a virtual law office while complying with state bar rules and regulations regarding law practice marketing and advertising.  From the post: Marketing a virtual law [...]

A new ethics opinion has been published by the State Bar of Michigan on the topic of unbundling legal services.  This is another example of a State Bar recognizing the need for unbundled legal services as a means of access to justice for the public.  The conclusion from the opinion (entitled RI-347): So long as [...]

If you are keeping up with developments in the bona fide office rules or residency requirements of state bars that govern the practice of law, you might want to read through this recent opinion: In the Matter of the APPLICATION OF CARLTON, No. 10-mc-160 U.S. District Court D. Maryland (April 26, 2010).  I’ve only got the Westlaw citation for [...]

Oh, yet another excuse to not take responsibility for individual action and blame it on the technology instead.  *sigh*  Seriously, this article just annoyed me to no end.  The National Law Journal published an article entitled “Lawyers’ Ethical Stumbles Increase Online” and then proceeded to give the most outrageous example of an incredibly irresponsible attorney using email to share [...]