Virtual Law Practice

Tag: Practice Management

  • List of Products that Facilitate Virtual Law Practice

    Updated November 6, 2012 (some items on the list now include iPad or other mobile device apps)

    In the appendix of my book, I mention a list of current SaaS and other cloud computing service providers with products that may be used in the delivery of legal services online.   I’ve posted some of these companies below.  There are more coming out every month, and I welcome suggestions for new ones to add to the list.

    I have not personally used all of these products or services, but have read reviews or taken trial runs or demos for most.  They are in no particular order.  It is also difficult to categorize them perfectly because many contain multiple features or differ in how the classify their products and services in the market.

     

    Time, Billing & Invoicing

    Clio

    Chrometa

    Rocket Matter

    Total Attorneys

    MyCase

    EsquireBilling

    Credit Card Processing

    Law Charge, Inc.

    Electronic Signatures

    Right Signature

    Docusign

    SignMyPadPro

    Encryption Tools

    Truecrypt

    Verisign

    DigiCert

    Case & Client Management

    Advologix

    Clio

    LawRD

    Document Assembly/Automation/Drafting

    Kiiac

    Koncision

    Exari

    Whichdraft.com

    HotDocs User (part of HotDocs Suite 10 out this summer)

    Rapidocs

    WiziLegal

    LegalVane

    Document Management/Storage

    Box.net

    DropBox

    WorldDox

    NetDocuments

    Virtual Law Office Platforms

    DirectLaw

    Total Attorneys

    Litigation/E-Discovery

    Lexbe

    Nextpoint

    PictureitSettled

    TrialPad

    iJuror

    Transcript Pad

    The Deponent App

    Products with Secure Client Portals

    Clio

    DirectLaw

    Total Attorneys

    MyCase

    Research Tools

    LawBox App

    Google Scholar

    LawLibe

    Scrible

    FastCase

    CaseMaker

    Lexis

    Westlaw

    Project Management

    Legal Workspace

    Onit

    PBWorks

    ZOHO Projects

    Online Document storage/Backup

    Mozy

    Carbonite

    Probono Legal Services Support

    A2J

    LSNTAP

    Probono.net

    Remote Access

    Firmex

    LogMeIn

    GoToPC

    Web-Conferencing

    Adobe ConnectNow

    GoToMeeting

    Skype

    FaceTime

    Website Hosting/Management

    HostGator

    GoDaddy

    Password Generators/Tools

    Keepass

    PC Tools Free Password Generator

    LastPass

    Expert System/Decision Making Tools

    Neota Logic

    Fair Outcomes

    Coming Soon: A list of companies marketing directly to consumers that provide platforms for lawyers to delivery online legal services and market their firms. 

  • Lawyerist Guest Post: Receiving a Digital Education

    The following is an excerpt from my recent guest post for the Lawyerist blog discussing a mini-conference on educating the digital lawyer that I attended last week at Harvard Law sponsored by the Berkman Law Lab. 

    Below are a few examples of courses or programs that are successfully working to provide a digital education.  Some of them have links to resources for the course or to online publications by the educator.  …

    I’m happy to say that the following examples are just skimming the surface of what seems to be a long overdue evolution in legal education. Thankfully several of the advancements are multidisciplinary with a strong emphasis on innovation in delivery of legal services through entrepreneurship.  No matter how far removed you may be from your law school days, the quality of digital education available for current students impacts our entire profession and is worth our support.

    – The Berkman Center’s Law Lab – Check out the Digital LLC project and Cloud Law.

    – Prof. Clark Cunningham, Georgia State University – Uses Clio to introduce students to cloud-based practice management.

    – International Forum on Teaching Legal Ethics and Professionalism – open to explore or register and post content, teaching materials, etc. (in beta)

    – Prof. Paul Maharg,University of Northumbria Law School – Check out the slideshare presentations.   In this open source learning and teaching environment, law students enter a virtual world to conduct simulated legal transactions.

    – Prof. Brian Donnelly, Columbia University – Lawyering in the Digital Age Clinic

    – Prof. Ronald Staudt, University of Chicago-Kent School of Law – Justice and Technology Practicum

    – Prof. Oliver Goodenough, Vermont Law School – Digital Drafting course. Video or audio of the Berkman Center’s session with John Clippinger and Oliver Goodenough on Cloud Law, Finance 3.0, and Digital Institutions.

  • Law Society of British Columbia Comments on Virtual Law Practice

    The fall issue of the Law Society of British Columbia’s Benchers’ Bulletin published an article entitled “The real world of virtual law firms.”   Quotes from practice management advisers from the Law Society of British Columbia (LSBC) contain misleading assumptions about elawyering and virtual law firms.  A lack of education about how virtual law firms are operating seems to be replaced with fear tactics. Unfortunately, this leads to misunderstanding and confusion for the practitioner attempting to deliver legal services online.

    Nicole Garton-Jones, owner of Heritage Law BC, a virtual law firm in Canada, wrote a blog post on slaw.ca last week taking note of the most egregious misstatements from the article.  (more…)

  • Review of PA Ethics Opinion on Virtual Law Offices

    Entitled “Ethical Obligations on Maintaining a Virtual Office for the Practice of Law in Pennsylvania”, the PA Bar Association Committee on Legal Ethics and Professional Responsibility published its FEO 2010-200 this month.  The opinion is in stark contrast to the out-dated thinking in the ethics opinion discussing virtual law offices published this past spring by its neighboring state of New Jersey.

    FEO 2010-200 defines virtual law office (VLO) as

    “a law office that exists without a traditional physical counterpart, in which attorneys primarily or exclusively access client and other information online, and where most client communications are conducted electronically, e.g., by email, etc.”  

    The opinion recognizes that there are different forms of virtual law practice and specifically states that it is not addressing issues related to “client portals” or cloud computing because both traditional and virtual offices may use these. 

    There are several questions that the 14 page opinion addresses including the following: 1) whether an attorney may operate a VLO in the state, 2) using a VLO to work from home or or in locations outside PA, 3) listing a physical address in ads for the VLO or letterhead, 4) using a PO box as the address, 5) if a geographic location must be given to the client letting them know where the attorney will handle the services or meet with them, 6) for a multiple attorney firm, if it is necessary to disclose all of the cities and states from which those attorneys are performing their services, 7) if the firm or attorney with a VLO can claim that fees are lower than a traditional law office, 8 ) compliance with the duty of confidentiality, 9) if the attorney does not meet face to face with clients, if there are other steps required to confirm client identity and handle issues such as diminished capacity.   In clear format, the opinion then lists the direct answers to each of these issues before jumping into its analysis of the PA rules of professional conduct as applied to VLOs. (more…)

  • ELawyering and the Future of Legal Work CLE

    The ABA eLawyering Task Force will be presenting a CLE at American University Washington College of Law on October 21, 2010 from noon – 1:20pm, entitled “ELawyering and the Future of Legal Work“.  I will be joining co-panelists Blair Janis, Marc Lauritsen and Ronald Staudt in a discussion of elawyering and its impact on the future of law practice.  The program is free and open to law students and practicing attorneys (it costs a little if you need the CLE credit).  If you are in the D.C. area, please join us.  The question and answer sessions at the end of these presentations are always fun and a great opportunity to hear from local attorneys about how they may be using virtual law practice and other elawyering methods to deliver legal services.

  • Pennsylvania Ethics Opinion on Virtual Law Offices

    Pennsylvania Bar Association Committee on Legal Ethics and Professional Responsibility has published an ethics opinion, FEO 2010-200, which from this Lawyers USA news snip-it apparently approves of virtual law offices.   The ethics opinions accessible online through the PA State Bar site are for members only.  If anyone licensed in PA would care to share this opinion with the rest of us, it would be greatly appreciated. 

    There are so few opinions out there that discuss virtual law practice that it’s important that we all share perspectives on the subject for a full understanding of how the profession is using technology to deliver legal services online.  Especially in a world of multijurisdictional virtual law firms, keeping an ethics opinion on virtual law offices hidden may not be in anyone’s best interests.

  • A Legal Rebel

    The ABA Journal has turned its attention to solo practitioners for this year’s group of “Legal Rebels.”   I am pleased to announce that the Journal has bestowed this title upon me for my virtual law office.  The article written by Stephanie Ward for my profile gets to the heart of why I started my virtual law office several years ago.  I’m honored to be on this year’s list with fellow solos, Carolyn Elefant and Bruce Cameron, both of whom I have gotten to know online over the past few years through our common concerns as busy solo practitioners. 

    I wasn’t intending to rebel against anything when I started my virtual law office – it was more a matter of necessity being the mother of invention.  As I realized the potential of virtual law practice to be one solution to the lack of access to justice in our country as well as a more family friendly legal career path, I became more determined to spread the concept to the legal profession and to study ways in which the technology could be used ethically to serve the public and legal profession.  But I’m just getting going…..

  • Video: Leverage the Internet to Serve Your Clients and Grow Your Practice

    At the ABA Annual Meeting last month I participated in the ABA Journal’s Legal Rebel‘s program, “10 Ways to Build Your Perfect Practice & Career” hosted by Matt Homann. The presentation requirement was that I cover 20 slides in 6 minutes. I had a lot of fun preparing for this one. It’s not as easy as you might think to get all of your ideas out in 6 minutes as the slides progress whether you are ready to move on or not.

    Here is the video of my presentation:

  • Book Release — Virtual Law Practice: How to Deliver Legal Services Online

    I’m pleased to announce the publication of my book Virtual Law Practice: How to Deliver Legal Services Online through the ABA LPM Publishing.  The book was written to be a practical, how-to manual for attorneys who want to deliver legal services online by creating a virtual law office. It addresses virtual law practice that is either completely web-based or where a firm has integrated a virtual law office into a traditional practice management structure.   

    The goal of the book is to guide anyone interested in the concept of virtual law practice through the different management structures, technology options, ethics and malpractice issues, marketing methods, daily management, and really serves as a how-to guide for practical implementation.  The book is full of case studies from attorneys engaged in virtual law practice and elawyering as well as advice from practice management advisors, IT & security professionals, and marketing and business professionals among others.  The book includes an glossary of terms related to virtual law practice and an appendix of state-by-state ethics rules and opinions and other resources related to virtual law practice.  Because the technology involved in creating and maintaining a virtual law office changes so frequently, I intend to update the information in the book on this blog as necessary. 

    Please check out the book at the ABA Bookstore and check back here for updates on the topic. Thanks to everyone who supported me in this endeavor, and my gratitude especially goes out to those attorneys who took the risk in forging ahead with virtual law practice in its various forms over the years!

  • Virtual Law Pratice at ILTA

    This past week’s ILTA conference was full of great insight about disruptive technologies, virtual law practice and the changes that are expected in practice management as a result.  I wasn’t able to attend the conference in person, but I managed to collect materials and information presented at key sessions.  Here’s what I picked up without the travel expenses and jet lag.

    The Legal Current blog posted about an ILTA session entitled “A New View of the Automated Law Firm.”  The session explained how the commoditization of legal services is leading to the need for automation of the workflow in law practices.  Document assembly and automation will help to streamline the delivery of legal services to meet the consumer demand for legal services based on a fixed fee model.  Here are the slides from that presentation.

    Darryl Mountain, expert on disruptive technologies and document automation, and Marc Lauritsen, co-chair of the ABA elawyering task force and author of The Lawyer’s Guide to Working Smarter With Knowledge Tools, presented a session entitled “Harnessing Disruptive Technologies”.  The slides for that presentation are here.  They covered the nature of disruptive technologies and look at technologies that can be used to create “substantive legal work.”  The presentation slides cover document assembly, web-based document automation and virtual law practice.  Lauritsen covered choiceboxing, an interactive decision support system which has multiple potential forms of application in elawyering and choice management.  The slides also list two stumbling blocks to the use of disruptive technologies in law practice: “1. the knowledge acquisition bottleneck and 2. ethical rules of the legal profession.” (more…)

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