This week I was honored to provide a plenary presentation at this year’s Legal Services Corporation’s Technology Initiative Grants (TIG) conference in Albuquerque. The title of my talk was “Going Virtual to Expand Access” and my purpose was to provide the attendees with an overview of how private practice lawyers and law firms are using technology to delivery legal services online.

The Association of American Law Schools (AALS) is holding its annual conference in D.C. this week. I’ll be taking part in a panel discussion entitled “Technological Innovation in Practice and Education.”

The State Bar of California has released a draft formal ethics opinion (No. 10-0003) regarding the use of a “virtual law office practice” by an attorney. This seven page ethics opinion was tentatively approved by the State Bar Standing Committee on Professional Responsibility and Conduct on November 5th and has been published for a 90-day public comment period.

Imagine shopping for your groceries and remembering that you needed to check in with your attorney regarding the status of your divorce case. You find a private legal services booth and step inside. You touch a few buttons on the computer tablet attached to the kiosk and a video of a receptionist who works for your law firm comes online to take your request. A few minutes later you chat with your attorney face to face via web conferencing and log off.

  Last week I was honored to give a keynote at the annual Canadian Discipline Administrators Conference in Toronto hosted by the Law Society of Upper Canada. The attendees were the discipline authorities of the different Canadian Bar jurisdictions. After speaking with several of them and based on the Q & A session, I can report that [...]

Here is a blatant redirect to another blog post written by Ron Friedmann who interviewed Bryce Arrowood, co-founder of Clearspire in D.C. When I read about this virtual law firm, my first question was about the technology it used and whether it was solely for in-house communication and collaboration or whether the firm members were going to [...]

I love SaaS.  I depend on SaaS to operate my virtual law office.  I support an attorney’s right to choose their own practice management tools and make their own business decisions whether it’s in the cloud or in a filing cabinet.  But there are responsibilities that come along with choosing any practice management system and [...]

Below is a short and to-the-point article that I drafted for the NC Bar Association’s Technical Advisory Committee after our last meeting discussing the proposed NC Ethics Opinion on SaaS.  I wasn’t critical of the opinion at first, until I spoke with a few SaaS vendors and others who explained their positions in greater detail [...]

Consider adding the books below to your reading list.  They are not new.  They are a piece of history and offer a unique perspective on the digital revolution and how we communicate.  It’s great to look forward, but looking back has its value as well. These authors motivate me to think outside the box and to rely on my own [...]

Below is the comment I submitted this morning to the ABA Ethics 20/20 Commission Working Group on Uniformity, Choice of Law, and Conflicts of Interest in response to their request for feedback on the issues paper on Choice of Law in Cross-Border Practice.  One of the fact patterns in the issues paper specifically referrred to a virtual law office and [...]