Virtual Law Practice

Tag: online clients

  • “In the Meantime…” — Temporary Operation of a Virtual Law Office

    Over the past year I’ve spoken with attorneys who have been laid off from Biglaw firms and are seeking new positions or attorneys who have just passed the bar and are having trouble finding a position to launch their legal careers.  Both groups of individuals are working hard to establish or reinvent themselves within the legal profession and are seeking my advice about using a virtual law practice as a way to do this. They want to operate a solo virtual law practice “in the meantime.”

    Solo virtual law practice is not for everyone, and while I love the independence that it provides me, I recognize that other attorneys have different goals for their legal careers. Therefore, I try to give useful advice that would apply to the attorney’s individual goals and circumstances.

    Can a virtual law practice be used effectively in between phases in an attorney’s career — from firm to firm?  Will the attorney be able to take the virtual law practice with him or her when that dream legal job comes along?  Will it pay the bills if the attorney is only going to be delivering legal services online on a temporary basis?  If the attorney is a newly graduated attorney can he or she work online and learn an entirely new practice area of law without having worked in an actual law office? 

    These are difficult, but critical questions for attorneys in such situations to ask before embarking on a virtual law practice. I’ve combined some of my responses to these questions below. (more…)

  • Susskind Predicts: “Disaster Ahead for Lawyers Unwilling to Change”

    Richard Susskind, author of The End of Lawyers? Rethinking the Nature of Legal Services, has written a guest post for the Legal Rebels blog entitled “Disaster Ahead for Lawyers Unwilling to Change.”

    Susskind looks at changes in the profession as well as the impact that the economic recession has had on our clients.  He mentions disruptive technologies as another factor that will force legal professionals to find more innovative ways to provide legal services or face the consequences of losing their practices to the competition who will find ways to embrace the circumstances.  

    In my opinion, his arguments are supportive of virtual law practices.  A virtual law practice is a practical way for attorneys to meet the demands of the public for the online delivery of legal services while finding creative ways to collaborate with other attorneys, pool resources and streamline the delivery of legal services online. 

    Here is the comment that I posted to the article:  The changes are going to be consumer-driven. As the owner of a web-based virtual law office for going on almost four years, I have gotten significant feedback from the public indicating that they expect more affordable and accessible legal services from attorneys. The technology is available to allow legal professionals to step up and meet this consumer demand in a way that is ethical, avoids malpractice risks and provides quality legal services similar to what has been provided in a traditional brick & mortar practice. 

    I agree that in order to remain competitive attorneys will need to find ways to provide services to the public that acknowledges that most clients now have access to a wealth of legal information online.  We have to find responsible methods of educating the public that our services are important and that cutting and pasting sample online legal forms or going with cheap online forms without attorney review is not in their best interest.

    Attorneys should seize these changes as a great opportunity to revive the respect for the profession through innovation and entrepreneurship that serves the public as well as the legal professional. 

    If you are considering virtual law practice, whether as a solo or working with other attorneys to form a virtual law firm, you should read this article.  It’s definitely motivational.

  • Online Drafting Resources for your Virtual Law Practice

    One of the most useful methods of teaching yourself how to draft legal documents is to read a variety of samples.  If you’re a virtual solo, you may not have had the previous experience of a traditional firm’s files to learn from.  And let’s face the truth — your client has most likely gone online and searched through a variety of free online forms first to figure out 1) how hard it would be to do themselves, or 2) to compare the pricing of the many cheap, online legal forms for sale without attorney review.  With a virtual law practice, you will be better equipped than most traditional attorneys to compete with these companies, but it’s always good to know what your clients are investigating as alternatives to your services.

    I’m posting below a short list of sites that provide samples of legal documents.  It’s always an option to purchase state-specific documents for use in your own virtual law practice.  However, as we all know, not every client’s legal situation is going to be the same so learning to build on those drafting skills is key. 

    Once you have drafted a collection of legal forms and documents, you can keep them in your virtual law office for future editing and use with new clients who have similar legal matters.  This helps to streamline the delivery of legal services online.

    As another option to collecting samples, many state bar associations will have practice area specific or GP/Solo/Small Firm online forums to help you connect with mentors.  Just ask on the listserv if anyone is willing to share a sample legal document and see what you can collect. 

    Listed below are several online resources that let you access and review sample legal documents.  When I first opened my virtual law practice, I used some of these sites to find items, such as client intake forms, sample engagement letters and different small business contracts.  The best samples are not the blank forms, but the many business legal documents that have been made public. 

    I’m absolutely not saying you should copy and paste any of these free legal documents to create your own, but it does help the drafting process if you have the chance to read a variety of different samples and get a feel for the language used with different legal circumstances.   

    JD Supra:  Part marketing and networking opportunity, part repository of form documents.  JD Supra hosts thousands of legal documents submitted by the lawyers who drafted them.

    Legal OnRamp:  This is a lawyer networking site where attorneys contribute content and participate in online forums and groups. 

    OneCLE:  This is a great site for reviewing sample business contracts.  Contracts that have been made public are posted and categorized by area of business law.

    Findlaw’s Free Sample Legal Documents

    Get Free Legal Forms site

  • Online Document Signing for Your Virtual Law Practice

    One of the questions I hear regularly about virtual law practice is related to the execution of legal documents and how that process can be handled through a virtual law office.  I’ve written before on this blog about the establishment of the attorney/client relationship online and how an attorney may rely on a clickwrap agreement to ensure that the client has read and accepted all of the terms and conditions and the scope of the legal representation that will be conducted online. 

    I use a clickwrap to serve as the engagement letter for my virtual law office.  Other attorneys will use the clickwrap in addition to uploading a traditional engagement letter for the online client to sign, scan and upload back to the virtual law office.  There are many other examples of when an attorney may need to have his or her client sign a document.  Having the client give the attorney a Power of Attorney to act on the client’s behalf is one of those situations. 

    Enter Right Signature.  This application provides a way to obtain a legally enforceable digital signature on a document without your online client having to own a scanner or having to go to the trouble of printing it, signing it and uploading it back to you on your virtual law office.  (Many thanks to Lee Rosen of the Rosen Law Firm for pointing this product out during our recent CLE presentation). 

    You can try Right Signature for free to see if it would work for your virtual law practice.  It has authentication and security technology that make the digital signatures binding and legally enforceable.  The product is a SaaS hosted application so the documents and the digital signatures are stored on a secure server.  The process is really simple for your clients to execute so it may actually be faster to get them to sign digitally online than requiring them to upload a traditional, scanned-in signature on a document.  As a useful tool for your virtual law practice, I’d say this one is worth the monthly $14 fee if you need your clients’ signatures on a regular basis or don’t want to rely on the clickwrap agreement alone.

  • LexisNexis® Estate Practice & Elder Law Center Podcast

    This past month I gave a podcast interview for the LexisNexis® Estate Practice & Elder Law Center about my virtual law office. The session discusses how I provide estate planning services to my clients online as well as how other attorneys are using the web-based technology to deliver legal services in other states. Here is the link to the podcast.

  • Podcast Interview on The Virtual Paralegal

    Interested in using a virtual paralegal for your virtual law practice?  I was one of the interviewees for a recent podcast for The Virtual Paralegal on Legal Talk Network discussing virtual law firms.   The co-hosts, Lynne DeVenny and Vicki Voisin, asked great questions covering security and confidentiality issues involved in working with virtual paralegals in a virtual law practice.  This would be a useful podcast to listen to for both attorneys thinking about hiring a VA for their practice and paralegals interested in learning what an attorney would look for in hiring someone to work in a virtual law office.

  • Mid-Year Review – Virtual Law Practice in the News

    Virtual law practice has been a hot topic in the press repeatedly over the first half of 2009.  There have been articles about virtual law practices in its many different forms, from web-based solo practices to remote BigLaw attorney collaboration.  The use of software as a service (SaaS) technology and talk of practicing law “in the cloud” have been discussed in legal blogs and other publications.

    Companies such as Rocket Matter, Clio, Directlaw, Lexbe, VLOTech and others are encouraging the legal profession to consider the use of technology to deliver legal services online or to take a portion of their law practice management virtual.  The efficiency and cost-savings to both the attorneys using the technology and to the general public is showing as the popularity of virtual law practice in its various forms increases.   The ethics and malpractice risks associated with practicing law online are also being discussed as the legal profession learns to adopt to the changes that are taking place.  It’s an exciting time to be involved in law practice management and to operate a virtual law practice.

    As a resource, I’ve compiled links to articles that have come out in the past six months or so regarding virtual law practice.  These are in no particular order and I’m sure there are more out there.  Please drop me a comment to share.

    Does the Future Belong to Virtual Law Firms?, The American Lawyer, Law.com, Legal Technology, August 3, 2009

    How Virtual Lawyers Are Weathering the Recession, The Times, July 30, 2009

    Virtual Law Partners Hires Four Attorneys, JDJournal, Jun 30, 2009

    Virtual Law Firms Going Viral, by Carolyn Elefant, June 26, 2009, Law.com Legal Blog Watch

    Virtual Law Practice: A Passing Trend or the Wave of the Future?, by Aviva Culyer and Nicole Black, GP Solo Magazine, Volume 26, Number 4, June 2009

    More virtual law firms sprout up, by Mitch Kowalski, National Post, June 26, 2009
    Law firms boost their image and client base by going social, Long Island Business News, July 9, 2009

    The Nuts and Bolts of a Virtual Law Office, by Chuck Newton, Texas Bar Journal, June 2009

    More legal issues when working in the cloud, by Carolyn Elefant, Law.com Legal Blog Watch, July 8, 2009
    Best  Practices for Virtual Law Firms, by Richard Granat, eLawyering Blog, January 10, 2009
    Virtual Law Firms Stay Afloat in Tough Times, Fulton County Daily Report, Law.com, Legal Technology, May 6, 2009
    Richard Susskind’s keynote presentation at the April 2009 ABA TECHSHOW discussed disruptive technology changing the face of the legal profession.
    Law Firm Websites that Work, “Virtuality”, ABA Journal, April 2009
    Virtual Courthouse Wins 2009 ABA Brown Award for Legal Access
    Law Practice Management in the Cloud, by Nicole Black, Practicing Law in the 21st Century Blog, May 12, 2009
    Practicing Law with SaaS, by By Luigi Benetton, Canadian Bar Association’s National Magazine, Winter 2009
    Cloud  Cover: Software as a Service enables virtual law practice management, by Luigi Benetton, Canadian Bar Association’s National Magazine, June 2009
    Why Going Home To Go To Work May Be Just What Your Client Wants,by Susan Cartier Liebel, Build a Solo Practice, LLC, June 22, 2009
    The Cloud Explained, by Larry Port of Rocket Matter, Findlaw Legal Tech Center, 2009
    Lawyers find meaning floating on the Tag Cloud, by David Bilinski, Thoughtful Legal Management Blog, June 9, 2009

  • Transitioning with a Virtual Law Practice

    Over the past couple weeks I have spoken with two or three attorneys who have been  laid off from their positions at large law firms.  A couple of them knew that the practices of their BigLaw firms were not sustainable in this economic environment and had the foresight to pad their savings.  Now they are considering opening virtual law practices as a way of transitioning from a large law practice into the next phase in their legal career.

    The trend of opening a virtual law practice as a method of career transition seems to  be growing.  Previously I had been working with attorneys who wanted to use a virtual law office (VLO) to generate additional online client revenue for their existing law practices or who wanted to go completely web-based for the flexibility and better work/life balance.  Transitioning with a virtual law practice is another use of the technology to consider.

    A VLO could be a great way of keeping an attorney’s resume up to date and allow them to continue practicing law while they transition from one phase of their legal career to the next or perhaps phase into retirement, taking only the online clients they want to continue to handle.  Maybe an attorney needs to move with their spouse to another state but  has yet to sit for another state’s bar exam.  They could continue to practice law of the state they are licensed in through a VLO while studying and moving to another jurisdiction.

    The technology is flexible so that conflicts of interest checks can be run against any previous law practice contacts and export features would allow an attorney to export the data contained in a VLO into another law practice management system once the attorney had completed the transition in their career.  If the transitional VLO took off, generating a steady online client base, then the attorney would have the option of keeping their virtual doors open and operating a completely  web-based VLO or adding it to whatever practice of law they join or open for themselves.

    Or an attorney transitioning into retirement and closing the doors to their traditional law practice might use a VLO to retain a select number of clients to work with on the side online while enjoying their retirement by traveling and not being tied down to a physical law office.  They could even use a VLO to transition out of a practice by using it to communicate and work online with their partners and associates in the traditional law office while they cruise around on a yacht or go hiking in the mountains.  As long as they could carry their iPhone or Blackberry around with them and get wireless access, they could transition gracefully out of the firm remotely.

    These are just a couple ideas about how to use a virtual law practice to transition through phases of a legal career.  I’ve written before about how both men and women in the legal profession could use a VLO to take time off to care for their families and transition in and out of a traditional law office using the technology for that purpose.  Let me know your thoughts on other ways that legal professionals could use a virtual law practice to transition between phases in their lives and careers.

  • Article Notes Rise in Virtual Law Firms

    Today’s Legal Technology section over at Law.com has an article about the increasing number of solo practitioners who are profiting from going virtual.  As I’ve blogged about in the fall of last year, operating a virtual law office is a great way for a solo or small law firm to compete in this difficult economy.  The general public, our clients, are seeking more affordable legal services and they want the convenience of using technology to acquire those services.  After all, being able to take care of your legal needs at 1am without having to take time off of work or arrange for child care saves money as much as a reduced legal fee.

    I have noticed an increase in my virtual law practice since last October and many of my online clients are forthright about why they decided to come to my VLO instead of going to a traditional law firm.  My clients are scattered across the state so at the same time that I am helping my clients, I am also helping my law practice by being able to expand my client base and compete with traditional solo practices in my state.

    Working with VLOTech to set up other attorneys with virtual law practices and seeing the increase in interest in the web-based technology assures me this is a trend that is not going anywhere anytime soon.  Check out some of the newest VLOs in my links to the right.

    The Law.com article talks about virtual law practices that communicate through email (usually unencrypted and not secure), phone and Internet but does not really give us the details on what technologies these virtual law practices are using.  The focus is also on collaboration virtually between attorneys rather than online attorney and client communication.  Let’s hope data security is a primary concern for these practices with whatever technologies they are using to deliver legal services.  Expect to see future articles that focus more on attorney/client online communication to deliver legal services online.

  • Twitter and the Virtual Law Office

    I’ve been using Twitter on almost a daily basis since last summer as @StephKimbro.  I started using it out of curiosity and am at over 1400 updates.  I have met many new people both in the legal profession and in other industries through Twitter.  Like anything else online, it requires savvy filtering skills.  I use TweetDeck to help search and filter tweets. 

    Many blog posts have gone up about attorneys using Twitter for networking, marketing and client development.  I’ll list a few below for reference.  Since my virtual law office clients are online and more likely to be using Twitter themselves I wanted to give the application more time before blogging about it to see how it could have an impact on a virtual law practice.

    So far, no new online clients as a direct result of using Twitter.  The difficulty is in narrowing in on my online client base here in North Carolina.  My Twitter network knows no jurisdictional boundaries which I am held to by my law license.  While I have a good number of North Carolina followers, the number of Twitter users is still not touching the general public enough that my posts about my law practice are reaching potential consumers of the online legal services that I provide.  Of course, I am not directly advertising my services through tweets, just posting about what I am working on at the time on my VLO.  I use other forms of online advertising that are targeted more towards my NC client base, but Twitter is just not able to tap into that base as easily— not yet.  

    That said, if I were able to connect with a prospective client through Twitter, I would immediately have to send them to my VLO to continue online communication.  Even the use of direct messages through Twitter conveys via unencrypted email and would not be a secure method of conveying sensitive attorney/client communications.  I would worry that a less sophisticated client might send a tweet with confidential information to me and the rest of the online world before I would have the chance to warn them.  I know other attorneys have written about these concerns and some refuse to use Twitter at all for that reason, but I still think the benefits for the legal professional outweigh any risks.  I’m keeping my eye out for a state bar ethics or advisory opinion to specifically discuss the use of Twitter.  Clue me in if you’ve read one.

    The value of Twitter for the virtual law practice is obvious — connecting with a network of other legal professionals on a closer level.  I have gotten to know many attorneys, virtual assistants, legal software providers and law practice management advisers through Twitter. Sure, I have a LinkedIn, Facebook and other social and legal networking accounts, but Twitter lets me get a glimpse into the daily lives of these people and likewise, they occasionally see tweets about my family and my daily musings.  Tweets help to humanize the online networking process.  

    For some attorneys operating a virtual law practice may seem isolating if they are working from a home office or other remote location on their VLO.  Twitter helps them stay connected to legal news and the opinions of other legal professionals across the world.  I have asked my Twitter followers for general advice on law practice management in the past and received useful insights.  Likewise, I have been able to share tips about VLOs and virtual law practice with others. 

    The network of virtual attorneys and virtual law firms on Twitter is growing which is helping to spread the word about VLOs and the delivery of legal services online.  Here are some VLOs on Twitter:

    @Olea_LLP

    @TimFerraris

    @FrameLegal

    @PattiSpencer

    @Debrina

    In conclusion, I don’t think using Twitter has much of a benefit of pulling in clients directly to a VLO.  However, it is a great tool to use for networking and learning from other legal professionals and a way to continue to grow the online presence of a virtual law practice.  As more of the general public joins Twitter, it is possible that the general advertising of a VLO website and services through tweets will over time help an attorney to grow his or her online client base.  

    Here are a list of some popular blog posts that have gone up about the use of Twitter by legal professionals:

    Twitter 101 For Lawyers, Nicole Black (@nikiblack)

    145 Lawyers (and Legal Professionals) to Follow on Twitter, Adrian Lurssen (@jdtwitt)

    Lawyer Marketing with Twitter, Steve Mathews (@stevematthews)

    Lawyer Marketing with Twitter has Arrived, Kevin O’Keefe (@kevinokeefe)

    How to Use Twitter as a Lawyer, Grant Griffiths (@grantgriffiths)

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