Virtual Law Practice

Tag: Practice Management

  • Call for eLawyering Solos to Innovate

    Jordan Furlong over at Law21 has published a post describing the 21st-century solo practitioner and announced a competition to drive innovation.

    Furlong lists what he sees are four characteristics of the new solo lawyer.  One of these characteristics is the ability to innovate.  Solos may have more flexibility to take the risks necessary to come up with truly unique methods of delivering legal services and operating a law practice.  Just as the rest of the legal marketplace is having to adapt to changes in the use of technology to practice law, solos are in an ideal situation to take advantage of these trends to give themselves a competitive advantage.

    Furlong calls to solos to come up with new ways to deliver legal services and ends his post with the announcement that he is giving away five scholarships to Solo Practice University to “five current or soon-to-be solos or small-firm lawyers who are now engaging, or are ready to engage, in 21st-century sole practice.”

    Those of you who are solos engaged in elawyering, virtual law practice or are coming up with ways to use cloud computing in your practice, get in the running for one of these scholarships.  I’ve been on the faculty at SPU teaching a course in virtual law practice since it launched a couple years ago.  It’s a wonderful community of entrepreneurial solos with awesome online access to great mentors and teachers.  I’m looking forward to reading about the innovations that come out of this competition and hope at least a few of them involve the online delivery of legal services.

  • Virginia & the Ethics of Cloud Computing in Law Practice

    James M. McCauley, ethics counsel for the Virginia State Bar, has written an article for the February issue of the Virginia Lawyer Magazine, entitled “Cloud Computing — A Silver Lining or Ethical Thunderstorm for Lawyers?”

    Even if you aren’t licensed to practice in Virginia, I would recommend reading this well-balanced article on cloud computing.  

    McCauley summarizes the benefits of the technology for practice management, but spends the majority of the article answering the questions I’m sure he and other ethics counsel hear all the time from attorneys trying to figure out how to implement cloud computing in their practices.  He starts out by stating that “there is no basis in the Virginia Rules of Professional Conduct for an unqualified prohibition of lawyers managing their office software applications and client data using cloud computing.”   And then explains how Rule 1.6(a) gives attorneys an ethical duty to protect our clients’ confidential information.  From there the discussion moves to concerns about security and reliability of cloud computing.  (more…)

  • Outsourcing and the Virtual Law Office

    A virtual law office relies on a third-party provider to operate.  A legal SaaS provider maintains my virtual law office and the data is hosted on a server that is maintained by another third-party company that has leased its servers to my SaaS provider.  

    By using this form of technology to practice law online, am I “outsourcing” as governed by ABA Formal Ethics Opinion 08-451?  Does my use of a third-party technology provider fall under supervision of “non-lawyers” in Model Rule 5.3? 

    *open can of worms*

    The ABA Ethics Commission 20/20 has raised the question of whether cloud computing should be classified as a form of outsourcing.  This can be found in the issues paper entitled “Client Confidentiality and Lawyers’ Use of Technology.”  ABA Formal Ethics Opinion 08-451 describes a lawyer’s obligations when outsourcing work to lawyers and non-lawyers.  One comment to Rule 5.3 states that the duty to supervise non-lawyers extends to those who serve as independent contractors.

    My position:  Selecting a cloud-based technology solution for practice managment is not outsourcing.  It is a business method, a form of delivery.  Rules 1.6 (duty of confidentiality) and 1.15 (safe-guarding client property) require that attorneys use reasonable care in protecting the confidentiality of their client’s property.  To comply, attorneys must do their due diligence in researching and selecting their SaaS provider and any other third-party services.  This requirement provides adequate regulation for the use of a cloud-based technology in law practice management. State bars may provide their members with guidelines and education about how to handle the selection of technology providers or larger firms may decide to hire IT consultants to help them with these decisions.  (more…)

  • Animated Movie Intro for a Virtual Law Office

    An attorney operating a virtual law office relies more on online marketing and social media to develop their reputation and an online client base.  Some virtual law offices are creating YouTube tutorial videos that will walk prospective online clients through their virtual law office registration process and explain how legal services are delivered online.

    Below is my experiment using animated movies to introduce a virtual law office.   Check out this Wall Street Journal article from last week about the use of animated movies. A movie like this could be placed on an attorney’s website and then circulated on different social media networks.  It was simple to put together and took less than a half hour.  The dialogue for the avatar in the movie comes straight from the text you provide.  Many of us could cut and paste the text from existing law office marketing materials and just adjust it with the avatar’s facial expressions and motions to make it less stiff.  There are many different characters and backgrounds to choose from.

    As the ABA and other state bars analyze the use of the Internet as a tool for client development, here is yet another example of a technology that they will have to factor into their research on the topic. 

    This type of video could be used to market the online delivery of legal services of a virtual law office or used to educate the general public about basic legal issues, but in a fun format.  While you might think it would appeal only to a select target client base, most likely younger or tech-savvy clients, I think that to rule out a larger audience interested in watching an animated movie would be ignoring the value of novelty.  Much of the public gathers their information from the television screen or movie. Maybe those of us wanting to provide a basic legal education to the public are not using the correct form of media to reach them. 

    What do you think?  Does this format have potential in elawyering?  Could we use this to market our virtual law offices?  Could we create educational movies using animated characters – one an attorney and one a client – to explain how unbundled legal services are delivered online or walk prospective clients through limited scope representation legal issues?

  • ABA Ethics 20/20 Addresses Choice of Law Issue in Virtual Law Practice

    Virtual lawyers and multijurisdictional virtual law firms take note: The ABA Commission on Ethics 20/20 has released yet another issues paper proposing changes to ethics rules that could affect the delivery of legal services online.  This newest paper comes from the Working Group on Uniformity, Choice of Law, and Conflicts of Interest and is entitled “Choice of Law in Cross-Border Practice.”  It even includes a sample scenario for the virtual law practice which I’ve posted below.

    With lawyers and clients more frequently not located in the same geographic location and many of them communicating and receiving legal services online, this raises the question of which jurisdiction’s ethics laws apply.  The Commission recognizes the need for guidance and greater clarity for a growing number of lawyer and law firms faced with questions about choice of ethics law. (more…)

  • Upcoming Events Related to ELawyering, Virtual Law Practice

    – University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s School of Law presentation on virtual law offices, next Thursday, February 10th at noon. 

    – Unbundling Legal Services: Ethics and Best Practices, ALI-ABA Teleconference, February 24, noon-1:30pm EST.

    – AVVO webinar on unbundling legal services which will also discuss the use of technology to unbundle and deliver legal services.   Thursday March 10th at 10:00 am PT.

    – ABA/LPM Meet the Author Series Podcast, 1pm

    – ABA TECHSHOW, Chicago

                     – April 11, 10:30-11:30am, “Expanding Your Practice with an Online Office”, co-presented with Catherine Sanders Reach

                      -April 12, 8:00- 9:00am, Meet the Author, “Virtual Law Practice: How to Deliver Legal Services Online”

                                      10:00 – 11:00am, “Popular Cloud Services for Lawyers”, co-presented with Tom Mighell

                                       7:00pm, Hosting Taste of Techshow Dinner with an “elawyering theme”

  • Death, Succession Planning & the Virtual Law Office

    Death.  The issue recently crept up in a presentation I gave about virtual law practice.  Then, the question that most of us like to avoid came up again on a personal level when in December I needed open surgery myself and in preparation started questioning what would happen to my virtual law office if I weren’t around to handle things. 

    What happens to a completely virtual law office upon the death of a solo, virtual practitioner? 

    All lawyers are aware that they need to have some form of succession planning in place.  In fact, some would argue that it is unethical practice not to have a plan in place that protects your clients and their property that is entrusted into your care.  

    ABA Formal Opinion 92-369 provides that “[t]he sole practitioner should have a [succession] plan in place.” For solo practitioners this issue is even more critical because there may not be anyone else involved in the day to day practice that would know how to notify clients of the death of their lawyer or even how to access the client’s files in order to return their property.  For a virtual law office that is completely web-based, the other issue is that the law office data is hosted in the cloud.  Without some plan in place, how does the SaaS provider know how to proceed?

    A sample scenario: An attorney who operates a completely web-based virtual law office dies unexpectedly without a plan in place.  The SaaS provider sends the attorney’s invoice for the service each month as usual and then follows up with late notices when it does not receive any payment or response from the attorney.  The attorney’s clients are still able to access their secure homepages on the virtual law office, but are not receiving any online responses from the attorney.  (more…)

  • Welcome Competition – Pushing Virtual Law Practice Into the Mainstream

    Be prepared this year to see major changes in new legal SaaS products that promote the online delivery of legal services.  Also expect to see greater acceptance of virtual law practice by the mainstream legal profession as legal SaaS vendors band together to set standards for the industry.  Larger players in the legal technology industry are diving into offering web-based case and client management applications and new investments are being made in innovations focused on web-based delivery of legal services.

    First, Total Attorneys, the company that acquired VLOTech, the start-up tech company that I co-founded, announced last week that it received growth capital investment from BIA Digital Partners II LP.  With this new funding, the company will be able to take their virtual law office platform to a new level of development.  (more…)

  • WebJD: Online Self-Diagnosis of Legal Ailments?

    I’ll confess that I use WebMD’s symptom checker way more than I should.  Sometime it’s to reassure myself that the situation does not warrant a trip to the doctor’s office.  I like the user interface – the fact that I don’t have to come up with a multitude of keywords for symptoms, but can just scroll over the photo of the adult or child and pinpoint the source of my worries. I like that from that point I can use a process of elimination and in a few steps have a list of possible ailments with descriptions of them and suggestions for proceeding with care.

    When the alternative is spending half a day in a doctor’s waiting room, I will take the online self-diagnosis any day.  Sometimes the answers I get just lead to more questions and I actually do end up making that appointment.  But, for the most part, this web advisor answers my question, eases my worry, and I wait and see what happens. 

    Could the legal profession provide something similar for the public?  A “WebJD” webadvisor that helps you figure out what area of law your need is in and what the different types of solutions you might need for that issue?   There are a ton of legal referral sites and directories, but if I were the client I’d want to run a self-diagnosis before I started shopping online for an attorney. 

    I’m familiar with the AJ2 Author and how it walks the client through a process of answering questions until the end where the final legal document is completed with instructions.  There is a similar concept that Foundrs.com has perfected which has virtual incorporation for business ideas and startups to handle the business planning and create unbundled legal documents with online assistance before taking them in to an attorney’s office.  See TechCrunch’s article on FairSoftware.  I’m thinking of something different though; a web advisor that’s even simpler and for lower-level legal guidance without even the document assembly component.  (more…)

  • CA Ethics Opinion: Duty of Confidentiality & Use of Wireless

    The California State Bar has published its newest ethics opinion, FEO 2010-179, related to the use of technology in law practice, specifically addressing the attorney’s duty of confidentiality to clients when using technology that may be accessed by a third-party.  Given the wording of the opinion, this could include everything from an attorney using wireless to connect to the Internet to any cloud computing application used to store or transmit law office data. 

    The specific scenario that the opinion poses will be familiar to those of us engaging in virtual law practice and who deliver legal services online:  The attorney takes his or her firm-provided laptop to a cafe and accesses the public wireless to transmit information to the client and to conduct legal research on a case. The attorney in the scenario also takes his or her work laptop home and conducts work using a personal home wireless connections.  What does the attorney have to do to ensure that he or she is upholding the duty of confidentiality and competence to the client? 

    The opinion was published in December 2010 after an extended period of review and specifically phrases the issue as:

    Does an attorney violate the duties of confidentiality and competence he or she owes to a client by using technology to transmit or store confidential client information when the technology may be susceptible to unauthorized access by third parties?

    (more…)

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