Virtual Law Practice

Tag: Practice Management

  • 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

  • Spreading the Word about Virtual Law Practice

    Many of you have read the news that VLOTech, the company co-founded by my husband and I, was acquired last week by Total Attorneys (TA), a Chicago-based company providing services and products to legal professionals.  The acquisition is going to be great for clients of VLOTech as well as other attorneys considering virtual law practice.  Check out the post by Richard Granat over at his eLawyering blog about the news.

    Joining forces with TA means that 1) my husband now has the ability to work with other programmers who speak his language and can bounce ideas around with to further develop our vision of the virtual law practice software (I may use the tech but coding is all greek to me), and 2) that I will be able to continue to educate on the topic of virtual law practice and share my experiences and the benefits of this form of law practice management with others.  Over the past couple years, we have gotten wonderful feedback on the VLOTech software and have an exciting development list.  Joining with TA will provide us with the resources to develop the software into the vision that our attorney clients have been and continue to build with us for the software.

    One of the great things about joining up with TA is that they are encouraging me and giving me the freedom to continue writing about virtual law practice and in doing so to continue to remain balanced in the information that I share.  I am writing a book for the ABA’s LPM Section on virtual law practice and will continue to practice law from my NC virtual law office.  In the spring I’m looking forward to attending the Get a Life Conferencefor TA as well as speaking at other state bar association CLE programs.  All of these experiences will help spread the word to the legal profession about online law practice, the delivery of legal services online and the benefits that it provides to attorneys and the general public.

  • 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.

  • 60 Sites in 60 Minutes from Practical Skills CLE

    Last week I had the pleasure of co-presenting the final session for the North Carolina Bar Association’s Practical Skills CLE with Erik Mazzone and Lee Rosen.  The Practical Skills CLE is intended for recent law school graduates and attorneys who are transitioning into new practices or getting ready to hang their own shingle. 

    I’ve spoken with many newly licensed attorneys here in North Carolina but also across the states who still do not have any idea where they will be working.  Finding an entry level job as an associate in this poor economic climate is not an easy task.  This is forcing many new attorneys to open up their own law practices without the benefit of a couple years of mentoring and real-world experience in the legal profession.  This is an opportunity for those of us who have been actively practicing law and running our own businesses to help our colleagues into the profession and to equip them with the skills they need to avoid malpractice risks and succeed in their chosen careers. 

    In the 20 websites that I presented during our Practical Skills 60 Sites in 60 Minutes session, I tried to choose sites that might be useful for an attorney just starting out. I started with Pipes to show how you can efficiently hunt down and organize the wealth of legal resources that are online.  Then I added to the list a number of the blogs that I have been reading for years that provide me with useful knowledge about starting out in law practice or that have links to good resources.  Among the listed blogs are a number of useful apps and a couple just for fun.

    Pipes: A tool that aggregates and mash-ups content from around the web to create a customized feed.  Use simple commands combined together to create more useful, powerful feeds.  Start your morning off reading regular law practice management blogs and other specific practice area blogs for useful practice tips and updates.

    Open Congress: OpenCongress combines official government information with related news and blog coverage.  If you want to find out the story behind a bill or what your representative is doing in office, this is the place to go.

    Cornell American Legal Ethics Library:  This digital library contains state by state codes and rules related to ethics and professional responsibility.  Search by jurisdiction or topic.  If you operate a virtual law practice, this is a great resource for checking out the rules and regulations of other states where you may be practicing law virtually or to help you avoid UPL in other jurisdictions.

    Solo Practice University:  SPU is a web-based educational community for attorneys that teaches the “practice of law” and fills in the gaps that law schools tend to ignore, such as the practical, how-tos of running a law practice.  Specific practice areas are taught as well as marking, ethics and other topics related to law practice.  There is a monthly fee but it provides valuable access to some great mentors and practical knowledge about the profession.

    Google Voice:  Create a Google phone number and route calls to your home, business, or mobile devices.  A useful tool for blocking and screening calls with other features, such as voicemail transcripts, storing, sending and receiving text messages from one device or online to other devices. Rather than calling multiple numbers to reach you, your clients dial one number and it tracks you down to the phone you can answer or takes the call to voice mail.  A great tool for the mobile attorney with a virtual law practice.

    Penzu:   This app is for the attorney who enjoys writing but doesn’t want the world to read it. Start a free, private online journal.  Some law firms are prohibiting their associates from blogging publically.  Use this tool to get your stress relief without exposing your frustrations with the practice or inadvertently sharing your clients’ confidential information.

    Techmeme: This popular website is a resource of technology and trends that can help you run your law practice and your life.  Focusing on the practical application of technology in daily life, it combines the best tech stories of the day into an easy-to-scan page with 24/7 updated content.

    Cloud Ave:   If you want to learn about and keep up to date on cloud computing and SaaS, this blog provides non-biased reviews, news and practical information that can be applied to the use of the tech in a law practice. 

    Divorce Discourse:  This blog was created for the family law practitioner by Lee Rosen and the Rosen Law Firm. Updated regularly with useful content.  Also check out the Stay Happily Married and Divorce Talk Radio.  I’m not even a family law practitioner, but I find the tips in this blog to be useful as well as entertaining.  

    Law 21:  Written by Jordan Furlong, a Canadian lawyer and legal journalist, this blog addresses the changes that are taking place in the legal profession, such as the impact of social media and technology used to practice law.

    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.

    MyShingle:   Written by attorney and author of Solo by Choice, Carolyn Elefant, this blog caters to solo and small law practices.  The site provides useful resources for starting, managing and marketing a solo or small firm practice.  She also has a great resource of links to other sites.

    Seismic:  This company has some great free apps to help you manage your online social media, from video to iPhone to in-browser tools.  Host your law firm videos, share links, text, video and photos from a single screen.  Create lists to separate family, friends and work. 

    Law Practice Matters:  Written by the NCBA Director of Practice Management, Erik Mazzone, this blog is a great resource for law practice management news, tips and tech reviews.   

    Tripit:   This website lets you organize  and share your travel plans by building an online itinerary that you can monitor and receive alerts about travel delays and share with others. 

    eCycling:  A resource for IT asset disposal and electronics recycling.  Use this site to find out the best way to recycle or dispose of your law practice electronics in a secure and eco-friendly way.

    HARO:  Help a Reporter Out (HARO).  Subscribe to these emails & scan them to see if you have a legal expertise that a report needs as a source for their articles.  Is an easy and free law practice marketing method that can pay off if you commit to reviewing it regularly.

    lawtechTalk:   NY attorney and prolific legal blogger, Nicole Black, created lawtechTalk as a resource for reviewing online legal technologies and social media for lawyers. On the website she posts regular screencasts that review and demo legal tech.

    Robert Ambrogi’s LawSites:  Written by Massachusetts attorney, writer and media consultant Robert Ambrogi, this site reviews new and useful website for the legal profession.  Check out his Lawyer2Lawyer podcasts that are also posted on the blog.

    Wolframalpha:  Want to know where the web is headed?  WolframAlpha is a long-term project across all professions based on a new form of knowledge-based computing.  Think of a combination between Google and Wikipedia.  Consider how this may affect legal research, your practice and the public’s ability to access the law.

  • 20 of the 60 Tips in 60 Minutes

    The NC Bar Association held its Law Tech Expo this past week.  Erik Mazzone, the Director for the Center of Practice Management at the Bar, did a great job of reviving the Expo.  I look forward to this being an annual event for our Bar Association and anticipate its growth considering the important role that technology plays in the legal profession today.  It was a pleasure to meet such well-known speakers as Sharon Nelson, John Simek and Britt Lorish Knuttgen at the event.  VLOTech also had a booth in the hall alongside other exhibitors and we were excited to introduce our SaaS product for virtual law practice to the attendees.

    At the Law Tech Expo, I sat in on a panel discussion on practicing law in the cloud and co-presented the 60 Tips in 60 Minutes session with Erik Mazzone and Lee Rosen.

    This would be an amusing story if it weren’t so frustrating at the time:  I protect my netbook by using Truecrypt so that if it were ever stolen, no one would be able to access my law office data.  One of the sites I was presenting was Truecrypt.  Right before our presentation, we all connected our computers out so that the video will show up on the auditorium screen.  The Truecrypt screen comes up asking for the password, but won’t even let me enter it.  Fortunately, I also travel with the portable CD drive and restore CD so it wasn’t a problem once I got back to the hotel.  However, I had to jump over to the Bar Center’s podium computer to present my 20 sites rather than using my netbook.  It’s the perfect example of how one of my 20 tips can be used to protect your law office data — although not exactly the way I had wanted to demonstrate it.

    Snafu aside, the presentation was fun and the audience responsive.  I’m looking forward to presenting another 20 of the 60 Websites in 60 Minutes for the Practical Skills CLE in a couple weeks.

    Here are the 20 tips that I presented from our session with summaries of the sites.

    PrimoPDF:  A free PDF creator allows you to create PDF files from 300+ file types.  For example, turn a Word doc into a PDF and secure with passwords for digital storage, sending to clients, etc.

    Portable Hard Drive:  Easy to use for backup of law office data. Run nightly backups with Truecrypt and Sycntoy for security.  When traveling, it’s easy to take your law practice along with you.

    Truecrypt: Free open source encryption software. Works with PCs & Macs. Multiple uses for this software, especially for the mobile attorney.  Ex.: Encrypt files on your USB key or portable hard drive.

    Zamzar:  Free online file conversion.  Convert files to doc, image, video and music formats.  Useful for working w/clients, other attorneys using different programs to share data.

    ZOHO Projects: Creates a project management space for collaboration that is based on social networking.  Map out projects with a team, assign tasks, schedule meetings, work on documents, hold forum discussions and more.

    Pipes:  A tool that aggregates and mashups up content from around the web to create a customized feed.  Use simple commands combined together to create more useful, powerful feeds.

    Google Voice: Create a Google phone number and route calls to your home, business, or mobile devices.  A useful tool for blocking and screening calls with other features, such as voicemail transcripts, storing, sending and receiving text messages from one device or online to other devices. Rather than calling multiple numbers to reach you, your clients dial one number and it tracks you down to the phone you can answer or takes the call to voice mail.

    Meebo: Communicate in real-time with your contacts across platforms including IM and other social networking apps.  This tool lets you combine all of your contact lists in different apps into one.

    Thunderbird 2:  Thunderbird 2 email application has superior security and privacy features, including phishing protection, industry leading junk mail filters, and support for user privacy and remote image protection.

    Open Office:  Free open source version of Microsoft Office, includes word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, databases and other applications.  It runs on PCs and Macs, has great compatibility with other programs and you don’t have to buy a new version to install each time it has an update.

    Billeo:  A secure tool to manage online transactions, such as payments, passwords, and receipts.  Works in your browser to allow for one-click access.

    Penzu:  This program is for the attorney who enjoys writing but doesn’t want the world to read it. Does your law firm prohibit or discourage you for writing in a public blog?  Start a free, private online journal and keep writing.

    Scribefire:  This is an extension to your Firefox browser that lets you post easily into your blog.  Click and drag, drop formatted text from pages and post it on your blog.

    Glance:  Easy tool for desktop sharing with audio conferencing.  Use for web presentations, conferences, training, or general communicating.  Allows others to take control of your mouse as well as view your desktop.

    iContact: Send clients newsletters and email blasts about your practice and changes in the law without being blacklisted. Use it in conjunction with your blog or website to transfer subscribers to your email updates.

    Skype:  Free skype-to-skype calls with video, text message from Skype; forward calls to your mobile device, etc.  Multiple uses for online communication.

    Iceberg:  A web-based tool to develop your own custom workflow based app for your law practice or for individual projects.  Provides customizable applications to build on.  No code writing experience necessary.

    Virtual Paralegals:  For an attorney practicing law remotely or online, virtual paralegals are a useful resource for transcription, legal research, legal document preparation or other administrative activities.  There are virtual paralegal companies, independent virtual paralegals and virtual assistants that may work in different arrangements, such as on a regular basis for a solo or small firm or as added support on a project basis for a larger firm.

    Firefox Add-ons:  Download these add-ons for extra security for your Firefox browser.  Use no-scripts for safest web-browsing.

    Bing:  Microsoft’s version of the search engine.  Keep an eye on how it will compete with Google because it does use a different formula for ranking sites.  Attorneys should monitor their personal and professional online presence on a regular basis and this is one more search engine to check.

  • NC State Bar Journal Covers the Online Legal Professional

    Attorneys practicing law online and licensed in North Carolina may be interested in checking out the fall issue of the North Carolina State Bar Journal.  Several of the articles in the issue cover topics related to attorneys creating online presences, including avoiding ethical risks for law firm websites and using social networking, such as Facebook, Twitter and blogging. 

    As with most state bar publications covering topics related to technology, at least one of the articles comes with a stern reminder to follow the Rules of Professional Conduct and advises attorneys to consult with the ethics counsel at the State Bar before attempting to use any social networking as a marketing tool.  Wise advice.  I’ll freely admit that I took advantage of the ability to call the ethics hotline a few times both while working at a small firm and when I first went out as a solo with a virtual law practice.  The service is anonymous and a great way to get the reassurance and confidence you might need before taking any action.  There are more formal methods of getting written ethics advisory opinions, but being able to make a quick phone call for small matters, many of which may just be affirmation of good common sense, is a valuable service from the Bar. 

    With the lines between the personal and professional being so thin with many popular forms of online social networking, it’s good to know you can check with someone from the Bar who handles ethics issues on a daily basis.  It’s a “measure twice, cut once” philosophy and serves well for any professional placed in a position of trust by members of  the general public.

  • 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
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