Virtual Law Practice

Tag: Richard Susskind

  • 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.

  • Spring Virtual Law Office Update

    By now the word has circulated that the ABA Techshow website has posted the audio file from Richard Susskind’s keynote presentation at the ABA Techshow in Chicago earlier this month.  I wasn’t able to attend the event and accept the Keane Memorial Award for Excellence in Elawyering.  However, my husband, the programmer who designed my virtual law office software, attended to accept the award on my behalf.  The presentation came with a lovely plaque that I will hang in my home office.  Of course none of my online clients will get to see it, but I will have to find a way to “decorate” my VLO with some mention of the award.

    Thanks to all of the Twitterers in the audience, I followed the presentation from home and got a good overview of the speech from tweets.  Today I finally had time to listen to the ABA audio file of Susskind’s speech.  He’s a very dynamic speaker which is something that you just can’t get from following a speaker on Twitter.  I was also happy to hear that at the end they included the ABA Task Force’s presentation of the award to my VLO and my husband’s acceptance speech.  Since I wasn’t there to accept it in person, it was nice to hear how it went.

    In other news, my VLO received the Family Favorite Attorney Award for the third year in a row from the Wilmington Parent Magazine, a local parenting publication that many of my online clients read.  This award means a lot of me because it comes from some of the individuals and families that I work with online.  It has helped each year to build my confidence in my virtual elawyering skills and to generate additional client referrals.  A couple articles were also published about my VLO in the NC Lawyer’s Weekly and other law-related publications.  Hopefully all the attention will generate additional interest in virtual law practice and the delivery of legal services using technology.

    Aside from my own virtual law practice, my company, VLOTech, received the 2009 Coastal Entrepreneur Award and was invited to meet with a panel of business experts to discuss the company.  It was a great opportunity to learn from other entrepreneurs who have taken their dreams, accepted the risks and made it happen.

    This spring has been a busy one both personally and professionally.  My goal is to return to blogging more about actual virtual law practice in the summer months as things settle down a bit.

  • Top Ten 2008 Developments in Virtual Law Practice

    Happy New Year!  The following is my list of the top ten developments in the delivery of legal services using technology that have happened in the past year.  Please feel free to expand on this list in the comments.  I’m also including at the end my predictions for virtual law practice in the new year.

    1.  Richard Susskind’s book, The End of Lawyers? Rethinking the Nature of Legal Services, is published.  The book discusses “disruptive technologies” that allow attorneys to provide legal services online.  Susskind predicts that attorneys who adopt rather than resist these changes in the technology used to deliver legal services will prosper as the profession adapts to marketplace changes.  The public’s need for affordable and accessible legal services will drive the legal profession’s use of technology to meet this demand.

    2.  State bars and other professional legal organizations offer CLEs and sessions geared at teaching attorneys best practices and security standards for using technology in their law practices.  Popular topics include email security, online backup solutions for law office data, minimizing metadata and using scanners to decrease the use of paper.  See the ABA’s Legal Technology Resource Center’s website for a list of 2008 articles.  In addition to increased law and technology management education in the profession, several state bars provide specific ethics decisions with approval for virtual law offices (VLOs) and/or allow for attorneys to provide unbundled legal services online.

    3.  More attorneys turn to piecemeal technologies and free online apps to collaborate with each other and their clients online.  Basecamp, Google Docs, Adobe ConnectNow, Webex, GoToMeeting, and Dimdim are a few of the popular web-based tools.  

    4.  New web-based, software as a service (SaaS) law practice management products launch, including Rocket Matter and Clio.  Popular legal blogs and listservs discuss the pros and cons involved in the use of “cloud computing.”  The discussions center on the security and backup concerns with a hosted system.

    5.  VLOTech sets up web-based, virtual law offices (VLOs) in Alabama, Maryland, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia with more VLOs planned in Alaska, New York, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and North Carolina for the upcoming year.  The technology aims to provide attorneys with the flexibility to operate a completely online law office or to combine the technology with a traditional law practice and offer unbundled legal services online.  “VLO” becomes a more recognized term for a web-based virtual law practice and elawyering.

    6.  Virtual Law Partners opens its doors as the newest example of BigLaw using technology to allow its attorneys to work remotely and collaborate on legal cases.

    7.  LegalZoom comes under fire over filing fees that the legal document service company charges to online clients, in particular in relation to the filing of trademark applications with the USPTO.  Critics of invention submission companies and of companies that provide form-generated legal documents in general spoke out about what they saw as the potential misleading of the public by online companies offering legal services where an attorney was not involved in reviewing the final legal product. 

    8.  With more attorneys practicing law using mobile devices and relying on electronic forms of communication with clients and other attorneys, management of electronically stored information (ESI) became more of a concern.  Solos and small firms are expected to understand e-discovery and ESI management in their daily practices.  Check out the archives of the EDD Blog co-authored by Bob Krantz and Jeffery Fehrman.

    9. Larger numbers of attorneys adopted popular online social networking tools to meet up with others in the legal profession.  Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Legal OnRamp, JD Supra and other sites connect attorneys with each other and prospective clients. 

    10. Some useful law and tech/practice management blogs came online this year, including Law 21, Above and Beyond KM, 3 Geeks and a Law Blog, and Law Practice Matters, among others.  Blogging continues to grow as an attorney marketing tool and is used as a method of providing the public with basic legal information and resources. Law blogs remain a method for attorneys to educate themselves and network in their individual practice areas.  The Louisiana State Bar’s proposed rules of professional conduct touch on attorney blogging, social networking and other forms of online attorney communication causing some concern and originating in a lawsuit from attorneys in that state. 

    My predictions for virtual law practice in 2009:

    1.  Attorneys will continue to question web-based, hosted software providing law practice management tools. However, companies providing SaaS legal products will band together to establish standards regarding the security of their products for the benefit of the legal profession and the reputation of the companies and the saas business model. 

    2.  The ABA will move forward with proposing standards or policies for the delivery of legal services online. The eLawyering Task Force as well as the Standing Committee on the Delivery of Legal Services will both play a critical role in establishing these guidelines.

    3.   Attorneys hit hard by the downward economy will seek out ways to minimize their law practice overhead using technology.  Some will use piecemeal software solutions to minimize overhead in law office administrative tasks. Others will consider opening completely web-based VLOs to get rid of the law office lease and expand their client base statewide or nationwide depending on their practice areas.  

    4.   More attorneys will realize that customer service is the key to growing a successful practice and that the public is demanding more efficient and convenient legal services through the use of technology.  This will prompt more attorneys to provide unbundled legal services online to clients either as the sole form of virtual law practice or in addition to their traditional law office practice.

  • ABA eLawyering Task Force Conference Call

    The ABA’s eLawyering Task Force will hold a conference call next week on January 9th at 10:00am Eastern time.  The website has an incorrect date on it as the meeting had to be rescheduled for the first of the new year.  If anyone is interested in discussing the delivery of legal services using technology, you might want to consider joining the group’s listserv and taking part in the conference call.  Participants must also be a member of the ABA’s Law Practice Management Section in order to join the Task Force.

    One of the eLawyering Task Force’s goals will be to discuss setting standards for the use of technology to deliver legal services.  This will be my first conference call with the group so I’m looking forward to speaking with some of the individuals I’ve been reading about and emailing over the past year or so.  Anyone operating a virtual law office or considering hanging a virtual shingle should take an interest in this group’s activities. 

    If you are reading Richard Susskind’s new book, The End of Lawyers?, you will know why I think this group is going to have growing relevance for the ABA and the legal profession in general.  For anyone who can’t join in on the conference call, I’ll try to post a summary of the meeting in the near future.

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