Virtual Law Practice

Tag: Practice Management

  • Stanford CodeX Speaker Presentation Video

    Last week I gave a presentation at Stanford Law School entitled “Unbundling and the Future of Legal Service Delivery.” There was a good turnout and we had some great questions from the attendees at the end of the talk which I enjoyed.

    Thanks again to Stanford CodeX and the Stanford Center on the Legal Profession for inviting me out there to share my thoughts on these topics. I am introduced by Tony Lai, one of the founders of LawGives, a legal tech startup working with CodeX and StartX, that I also had the pleasure of spending time with while in Palo Alto. Below is the video from my talk.

  • CodeX Speaker Series Discussion at Stanford Law

    I’ll be giving a presentation at Stanford Law School on May 2nd as a speaker sponored by CodeX: Stanford Center for Computers and the Stanford Program in Law, Science and Technology, and the Stanford Center on the Legal Profession. The title of my presentation will be “Unbundling and the Future of Legal Service Delivery”. You can read more about it here. The event is free and open to the public. I’m looking forward to some challenging and productive discussion.

     

  • 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…)

  • Release of iPad App for Virtual Practice

    Today, the Apple Apps Store has released the Total Attorneys practice management platform’s iPad and iPhone app.  This clean app allows a lawyer to operate a law practice from the iPad and/or iPhone with secure access to the virtual law office platform. Case and client management features are all integrated into the app, and it syncs with the full browser version of the software. It is free for lawyers who have subscribed to the Total Attorney’s platform ($1/month for the service).

    When I logged in for the first time, everything from my virtual law office was pulled in. I can view my tasks, agenda, documents, case files, contacts, leads, and billing. There is a central dashboard to show me recent activities and tasks that are marked due for today. There is also search functionality with filtering by type so that I can quickly find the files or client information that I need. There is also a timer at the top of the app that allows me to track my time. Even though I don’t use the billable hour, it’s still great to be able to record time spend on a web conference with a client or call that can be recorded into their digital file. This is really a clean, beautifully designed app that I will probably end up using more than the full browser version of the system.

    Congratulations to the team at TA who were involved in making this happen (this especially includes my hardworking programmer husband who kept me informed of their progress along the way)!  There has been much discussion about how lawyers need to be careful about using mobile devices for elawyering. I believe a secure system like this that carries over the encryption and other security measures from the full version is the safer way to go if you are a lawyer who intends to work directly with clients and/or with their case files or other lawyers on a cloud-based system.

  • Burton Law Expanding Virtual Firm Model in NC

     

    For awhile now I have been interested in learning about virtual practice models that go beyond the purely web-based model that I operate. Over the past year, I’ve been talking to Chad Burton, the founder of Burton Law, LLC, to understand his firm’s structure and how it uses technology to operate. Burton Law launched at the beginning of 2011 and is based in Ohio. They offer legal services in several practice areas, including business, data privacy, dispute resolution, estate planning and probate and intellectual property.

    What impressed me the most about this virtual law firm was that it does not have the traditional law firm hierarchy. Many of us who are solo practitioners became so because we had less than stellar experiences with the traditional firm structure of partners and associates – not to mention the billable hour requirements and other firm policies that did not allow us the flexibility we needed to serve our clients.

    Burton Law’s virtual firm structure is unique because the attorneys are all “members” of the firm. There is a manager, but no partners. The often
    least-liked aspects of operating a practice are taken care of by the firm, and the lawyers can focus on delivering quality services to their clients. (more…)

  • Ethics of Virtual Practice in South Carolina Lawyer

     

    The March issue of the South Carolina Lawyer features an article I co-wrote with Courtney Kennaday entitled “Ethics of Virtual Law Practice.” The full version of the issue is accessible online.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • Factors Determining “Reasonableness”

    The ABA Commission on Ethics 20/20 published its revised draft resolutions for comment regarding Technology and Confidentiality at the end of last month. Under Comment [16] to Rule 1.6 “Confidentiality of Information”, the revised draft contains a list of factors that determine whether the lawyer has made reasonable efforts to prevent “unauthorized access to, or the inadvertent or unauthorized disclosure of, confidential information.” Comment [16] states:

    Factors to be considered in determining the reasonableness of the lawyer’s efforts include the sensitivity of the information, the
    likelihood of disclosure if additional safeguards are not employed, the cost of employing additional safeguards, the difficulty of implementing the safeguards, and the extent to which the safeguards adversely  affect the lawyer’s ability to represent clients (e.g., by making a device or important piece of software excessively difficult to use). (more…)

  • Law Student Survey Related to Online Legal Services

     

    Please take a minute to fill out this brief survey.  It will help out a team of law students who are researching how people use online services to fill their legal needs.

    This law student team is part of the Law Without Walls program. I’m serving as an Entrepreneur Advisor this year and have been encouraged by the participants and their eagerness to think outside of the box to come up with their “project of worth.”

    Law Without Walls is a great legal education initiative that pulls together academics, entrepreneurs, practitioners, and law students and takes an international and interdisciplinary approach to learning. I’ve met with the team online using Google Hangouts and the sessions for the entire project are held online through Adobe Connect. The program is a strong example of using technology to create new and exciting distance learning opportunities for law students.

    Please help my team out by taking a minute to complete this survey. Thanks!

  • 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…)

  • NC Cloud Computing Opinion Published

     

    At its meeting on January 27, the NC State Bar Council adopted and published the last version of 2011 Formal Ethics 6 “Subscribing to Software as a Service While Fulfilling the Duties of Confidentiality and Preservation of Client Property”.  The last version of this opinion was sent to subcommittee in July 2011, but the discussion over the structure of the opinion has been almost a year and a half-long process. At one point, a draft of the opinion contained a list of minimum requirements for the use of SaaS which raised some concern with NC lawyers as well as others nationwide who are interested in the development of legal technology.

    The final conclusion of the published Opinion:

    a law firm may contract with a vendor of software as a service provided the lawyer uses reasonable care to safeguard confidential client information.

    The ethics subcommittee that reviewed this issue should be commended for the amount of research and thought that they put into this process. They pulled in experts on both sides on the fence on the issue of using SaaS in law practice and really made an effort to understand the broad impact that the opinion would make on NC practitioners in a variety of practices. At one point, experts in online banking, which also relies on strict security standards for the use of SaaS, were called in to provide their perspective.

    Here are some key items to notice in this opinion: (more…)

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