Virtual Law Practice

Tag: SaaS

  • 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.

  • New Version of NC SaaS Ethics Opinion

     

    The NC Bar has published the revised version of it proposed ethics opinion entitled “Subscribing to Software as a Service While Fulfilling the Duties of Confidentiality and Preservation of Client Property”, 2011 FEO 6 on the website. It will also be published in the next issue of the NC State Bar Journal. 

    You can read some of the history of this opinion in this post.  After a year or more of subcommittee review and revision, this latest version will hopefully be the final one that the Ethics Committee recommends for adoption by the Council at their January meeting.

    The subcommittee removed the list of minimum requirements for the selection of a technology vendor. Many of the items on the list had raised concern as detailed here by myself and others. The new version of the opinion sticks with the “reasonable care” standard requiring the attorney to do his or her due diligence in researching the technology and any third-party provider. The proposed opinion states:

    …a law firm may use SaaS if reasonable care is taken to minimize the risks of inadvertent disclosure of confidential information and to protect the security of client information and client files. A lawyer must fulfill the duties to protect confidential client information and to safeguard client files by applying the same diligence and competency to manage the risks of SaaS that the lawyer is required to apply when representing clients.

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  • Top Ten Basic Security Practices for a Virtual Law Office

    I love SaaS.  I depend on SaaS to operate my virtual law office.  I support an attorney’s right to choose their own practice management tools and make their own business decisions whether it’s in the cloud or in a filing cabinet.  But there are responsibilities that come along with choosing any practice management system and that means sticking to your own security policies and best practices.

    I’m a solo virtual lawyer, so the burden is on me alone.  Larger practices can designate an associate or hire an IT consultant to keep them up to date and to make any necessary security policies and safeguards.  Regardless of where you are engaging in virtual law practice, it’s always good be reminded of some basic security practices for delivering legal services online.  Here is my list of the top ten basic security practices for a virtual law office:

    1) Keep up to date on the security issues. Read Lifehacker, Slashdot, TechCrunch, etc.

    2)  If you use wireless networking, ensure that all wireless traffic is encrypted with WPA2.

    3)  Keep antivirus software and all software patches updated and turn on the software firewall for the computer.

    4) Use a safer browser, such as Mozilla with the NoScript add-on installed.  Or use another pop-up blocker. Do not use free Wi-Fi hotspots when using any cloud computing application remotely.  Use a cellular phone modem adapter instead.  I just got the 4G wireless hotspot which I highly recommend.  This also serves as backup internet access in my home office as well.

    5)  Never write down usernames and passwords.  Create strong passwords and change them regularly.  Use Keepass or other password management tool and generator.

    6) Go straight to privacy/account settings in any cloud-based application immediately after you register for and change the defaults for better protection.  Then check back occasionally to make sure they haven’t changed their privacy setting options again.

    7) Watch your back when you work in a public place to make sure the person behind you isn’t able to watch your screen as you enter your username and password or your client’s social security number.

    8) Encrypt your hard drive with Truecrypt, free open source encryption software.  Easy to use, free, protects you if your laptop is stolen.  Backup daily with an external hard drive with Truecrypt on it in addition to regular cloud-based backups.

    9) Make sure that the applications you are using to store and transmit confidential law office data are encrypted.  Look for HTTPS in the URL before proceeding.  Don’t enter data unless you know it will be encrypted.

    10) This isn’t going to be a popular one, but be wary of doing a lot of confidential work on your iPad with just any app.  With my virtual law office, I can open the browser and work in https, but other apps, especially iPad and other mobile device apps, do not have this level of security.  Unencrypted email is permitted by the state bars as exercising reasonable care, but most of us know better.  Text messaging your client is not a wise idea for a lot of reasons.

     

  • 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…)

  • 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…)

  • Update on Proposed NC Ethics Opinion on Cloud Computing

    I was notified this past week that the NC Bar Ethics Committee met at the end of July and decided to send the proposed ethics opinion, 2010 FEO 7 “Subscribing to Software as a Service While Fulfilling Confidentiality and Preservation of Client Property” to a subcommittee for further study.  They will be providing an update on the status of the opinion again after the Ethics Committee’s meeting in October. 

    Is anyone aware of other state bar committees that are reviewing this topic?  I believe that the ABA Center for Professionalism is currently reviewing cloud computing and considering the need to create some form of guidance or regulation related to the use of it in practice management.  The elawyering task force is also working on drafting guidelines for the use of cloud computing.   It would be great to know if there are other state bar initiatives related to SaaS, cloud computing or virtual law practice.

  • Update on Ethics Inquiry into Cloud Computing

    UPDATE:  I received an email from the ethics committee with the following information: If you would like to submit a comment on the proposed opinion regarding cloud computing, the deadline is July 9, 2010 and the comment should be directed in writing to Alice Mine at the N.C. State Bar. Further information on the ethics opinions is located on this site. 

    Here is a brief update from the NCBA LPM Council this morning regarding the status of the cloud computing inquiry. 

    Proposed 2010 Formal Ethics Opinion 7The NC Ethics Committee met on April 15th and discussed whether attorneys could use SaaS and still observe the duty of confidentiality owed to clients and the duty to preserve client data.  The Committee voted to publish the opinion for comment.  I’ve posted a copy of NC Bar Proposed 2010 FEO 7 online.

    To summarize, the proposed opinion states that an attorney may contract with a SaaS vendor provided the attorney takes responsible measures to ensure the risk of loss is minimized.  To note, the opinion does not require that the attorney employ “infallible methods” but makes the standard one of “reasonable methods” to reduce risk.  The proposed opinion also provides that the lawyer or law firm should be able to answer a set of questions to ensure that client file information is reasonably safe.  The proposed opinion provides a list of 23 questions some of which include inquiries into the financial information and stability of the vendor. 

    In general, Inquiry #1 of the proposed opinion is positive about the use of SaaS for law practice management.  Inquiry #2 discusses “best practices” for the use of SaaS, and the Committee will most likely refine this before formal publication by sending it to a subcommittee.  After publishing the proposed opinion in the next issue of The State Bar Journal, the Ethics Committee will re-examine the proposed opinion at its July 22nd meeting.

  • NC Bar Ethics Committee Reviews Cloud Computing Inquiry

    For some reason, a firm here in my home state decided it was in their best interest to ask permission of the NC State Bar before using a SaaS product.  *really big sigh*  So now those of us who have been using SaaS applications for years for everything from email, tasks and calendaring to delivering legal services online now have about one week to step forward to provide comments related to the inquiry. 

    The question posed was:  

     Is it within the RPC for an attorney/law firm to use online (“cloud computing”) practice management programs (e.g., the Clio program) as part of the practice of law?  These are instances where the software program is accessed online with a password and is not software installed on a computer within the firm’s office.

    (more…)

  • Technology at Techshow to Enable Online Delivery of Legal Services

    Exhibitor Hall at this year’s ABA Techshow has a number of different web-based technologies that allow  for attorneys to take all or portions of their practice online.  Most of them seem to be practice management applications, and not so much geared towards working online securely with clients. However, there are a few new developments that assist virtual law practice that warrant mention.  

    DirectLaw and VLOTech are again this year the two products intended for the online delivery of legal services. (By way of disclaimer, and as most of my readers know, my husband and I co-founded VLOTech which was acquired by Total Attorneys this past fall).  Both products are SaaS, but with different features and focuses so they will appeal to different types of law practices.  Both products facilitate the unbundling of legal services online and from my exploration of the exhibitors’ booths there are not any other products at the show this year that focus on unbundling legal services for online clients.  DirectLaw has recently launched a new site for members of the public to locate a virtual law firm, MyLawyer.com.  If you operate a virtual law practice, you should see about getting a listing in their directory.  (more…)

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