Virtual Law Practice

Tag: software as a service

  • Technology eReport: Setting Up a Web-Based Virtual Law Office

    Check out my article in the November issue of the ABA GP/Solo & Small Firm Technology eReport: Setting Up a Web-based Virtual Law Office.  From the article:

    Consumers are actively seeking more affordable and convenient access to legal services over the Internet. Due to the cost of traditional legal services, they are turning to cutting and pasting together sample online legal documents or purchasing cheap legal forms online without the benefit of attorney review. The economic recession has further hastened this trend. To address consumer demand, more attorneys are opening web-based virtual law offices (VLOs) or adding a VLO to an existing traditional law firm structure to deliver legal services to clients online.

    There are different ways to define and structure a virtual law practice. Simply put, a virtual law practice is a professional law practice where an attorney is able to work with clients over the Internet through a secure portal from the establishment of the attorney/client relationship through to the payment of and final rendering of legal services. The technology used to create and maintain a VLO is a software as a service (SaaS) hosted system, often referred to as practicing law “in the cloud.” To set up a virtual law practice, an attorney should be aware of a number of practical and ethical considerations discussed below.

  • 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

  • Setting Guidelines for Virtual Law Best Practices

    A small group of companies providing software as a service (SaaS) products to legal professionals will begin meeting to discuss the use of SaaS technology in law practice management.  The group also hopes to discuss among other things a set of minimum security requirements for SaaS products used by attorneys.  As a co-owner of VLOTech, I am excited to be included in this group of innovators and entrepreneurs when they meet for the first time next week. 

    Last week, the ABA’s eLawyering Task Force held a conference call which I was able to join in on.  Over the next several months the Task Force will be working to establish a set of malpractice standards or guidelines for attorneys using technology to deliver legal services.  The Task Force plans to meet at least once a month to discuss these malpractice standards among other issues.  The goal would be to establish a set of guidelines that could be approved by the ABA’s Law Practice Management Section and posted on the ABA’s website.  Attorneys interested in establishing virtual law practices or in using technology to practice law in any form would be able to refer to these standards and present them to their state bars in support of their virtual practice methods.  

    Hopefully input from both the SaaS group and the Task Force will be combined in the final version of any guidelines, and that these guidelines will address both the needs of the legal professional as well as the general public’s need for more affordable and convenient legal services.

  • 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.

  • How Will Virtual BigLaw Affect Solo/Small Firm VLOs?

    It was predictable that BigLaw would find a way into the world of virtual law practice. This week’s most popular legal news article was the introduction of Venture Law Group’s new law firm concept, Virtual Law Partner. This new virtual law firm has the goal of becoming BigLaw for the virtual practitioner and boasts of creating partners out of firm members who will have the flexibility to set their own rates and work their own hours. They will receive 85% of what they are billed under this scheme.

    The question: How will the launch of Virtual BigLaw affect solo and small firm virtual law practitioners?

    The answer may depend on the marketing techniques of the Venture Law Group both in luring newly licensed attorneys and bringing in clients for each individual partner’s virtual practice. One question is whether the partners in this virtual BigLaw firm are responsible for retaining their own clients or whether the firm assists their individual efforts. 

    The affect of Virtual BigLaw on solos and small firm VLOs may also depend on the company’s ability to influence the ABA and other State Bars as far as standardizing rules of professionalism in virtual law practice. It is certainly something I intend to follow closely in the coming months. 

    While the Venture Law Group’s Virtual BigLaw Firm does not appear to seek clientele out of lower & middle income America, if other Virtual BigLaw Firms crop up, then this could have an impact on solo and small firm VLOs.  One of the benefits of operating a VLO as a solo practitioner is that it allows me to compete on some level with the larger firms who are able to set up shop in just about every small town in my state. My VLO allows me to expand my client base and provide services to more lower and middle income individuals who might otherwise not go to a traditional law office for a variety of reasons (billable hour, intimidation, inconvenience, etc.).

    One of my hopes in starting my own VLO and in forming VLOTech was that I could work towards changing the bad opinions that many in the public have about attorneys. Sure, I want to have a successful career and make a good living, but I also want to show the world that there are alternative ways of practicing law that make legal services more affordable and accessible to the public. I wonder what impression Virtual BigLaw will make.

    Personally & professionally, I found it annoying that the head of this venture spoke in several interviews as if he invented virtual law practice and the idea of better work/life balance for attorneys through technology. He may have some major connections in the VC funding and legal world, but he did not invent virtual law practice or elawyering. My thanks to Carolyn Elefant for pointing this out in her Legal Blog Watch post “Are Virtual Law Firms Really a New Idea?”

    Attorneys have been practicing law online for years with different combinations of the technology available at the time. Web-based, software as a service (SaaS) business models are fairly recent to the mix. In my mind, virtual law practice is a collaborative effort of many individuals in the legal profession and the IT field. We learn from each other and create various methods of virtual law practice.

    Every attorney seeking to practice law online will need to decide which form of virtual law office they want to join or if they want to hang their own virtual shingle. Some attorneys may want to focus on form-generated legal documents while others may want to combine a VLO with a traditional litigation practice.   The type of VLO, the services it offers and how it operates, depends on how the attorney wants to set it up.  And now attorneys who want to join a Virtual BigLaw as a partner may have that elawyering option as well.

  • A Primer on Virtual Law Practice Terminology

    Update: The appendix to the book Delivering Legal Services Online, contains a much more in-depth definition section covering elaywering, virtual law practice, cloud computing and other technology terms related to the online delivery of legal services.

    Virtual Law Practice Terminology for Beginners

    Given the rapid development of Web 2.0 applications to provide online legal services, I decided to create this mini-primer which will have to be updated regularly. Feel free to contact me with suggestions and additions. I’ve noticed a lot of confusion of terminology regarding online legal services so I thought this resource might be useful.

    eLawyering —  The term means the practice of law online and includes everything from form-generated documents for sale and purchase to emailing your clients from unencrypted “contact us” forms on attorney websites. The ABA has an eLawyering Taskforce that covers these issues.  Virtual law practice is one form of elawyering.  

    Virtual Law Practice — A professional law practice that exists online through a secure portal and is accessible to the client and the attorney anywhere the parties may access the Internet.

    Virtual Law Office (VLO) — A web-based law office which allows for the attorney and his or her clients to securely discuss legal matters online, download and upload documents for review and handle other business matters in a secure digital environment, including all of the backend management functions of a traditional law office. A VLO may be the sole software used by the virtual attorney or may be used in conjunction with a traditional law office to provide online legal services to clients.

    Virtual Lawyer — A licensed professional providing legal services through a virtual law office to online clients.

    Virtual Legal Assistant — A professional legal assistant who accesses the virtual law office and assists the virtual lawyer remotely. See Virtual Assistance for a Virtual Law Practice.

    Mobile Lawyering/Mobile Attorney — An attorney who makes use of mobile devices to practice law either with a virtual law office or in conjunction with a traditional law office.

    Web-based Law Practice Management Tools — Web-based, software as a service (SaaS) applications used in conjunction with other law office software to conduct administrative and management tasks, such as billing and time management, online.

    Paperless Law Office (also termed a “Green Law Office”) — A law practice that attempts through the use of technology to reduce or eliminate the amount of paper and law office waste that it generates.

    Virtual Reality Law (also termed Virtual Law) — This refers to the development of law in virtual reality worlds, such as the Second Life Bar Association.

    Virtual or Online Attorney Collaboration — Attorneys using technology to collaborate on legal cases or to network and share resources within the legal profession. Some online collaboration communities include VLOTech, JDSupra, Lexpertise, LawLink. The Lawyer’s Guide to Collaboration Tools and Technologies by Dennis Kennedy and Tom Mighell is a good resource.

  • Screenshots of VLOTech Client Side

    I posted the manual for the client side of the VLOTech software on the VLOTech blog here. I am excited to share the new format with my own online clients. The software has everything that I have been using to practice law online for the past couple years at my own virtual law practice, but it also has some additional features that I think will make my virtual practice run smoother for me and my clients.

    One of the great things about the software-as-a-service model is that the software doesn’t require installs for every different version or patch. VLOTech can get input from the attorneys using the product to decide what aspects of the technology to develop next. Updates to the software are then just added to the existing clients’ systems. It’s development guided by the users which just makes good sense.

    We have a test site up and running for our first group of innovative attorneys to try out before they go live with their virtual law practices. The goal is to get an online demo on the VLOTech blog so that it’s available for everyone. For now, the focus is on supporting our first e-laywering pioneers. We now have attorneys from 21 different states who have expressed an interest in opening a web-based virtual law practice with VLOTech. There’s clearly something going on here.

  • Work/Life Balance Reform and the Virtual Law Office

    The following is a post I wrote for MsJD about how a virtual law practice could be used as a way to provide attorneys with more flexible work/life balance. The essay was in response to an essay contest hosted by The Project for Attorney Retention and MsJD.

    Stephanie Kimbro, Kimbro Legal Services A small part of the work/life balance reform in the legal profession is taking place quietly through the use of secure, web-based technology. Virtual law offices provide an alternative method of practicing law that permit flexible work hours and can be used to create a better work/life balance for legal professionals. I chose this alternative and for the past two and a half years I have practiced law from home with a completely virtual law office powered by Virtual Law Office Technology, LLC (VLOTech).

    In the interest of full disclosure, VLOTech is a company that my husband and I founded based on the positive response we received from other legal professionals nationwide to the concept of a completely virtual law office and the flexibility it offers. The technology is a secure, web-based, software as a service (SaaS) hosted program that generates online client development and permits an attorney to practice law anywhere he or she may access the Internet. The technology assists legal professionals so that they may build a better work/life balance for themselves by modifying their practice to fit personal and family needs.

    Finding a better work/life balance was my motivation to start a completely virtual law practice. I chose to practice law from home so that I could spend my days caring for my young child but still continue to build my career as an attorney. To provide a brief description of my virtual office, my client files, data, billing, invoices, accounts receivable, other accounting and administrative tools, calendars and data management tools are located in the backend of the virtual office online. I have a central point in the virtual law office where all of my cases are organized and it shows me the status and priority for better time management.

    On my client’s side, they have access to their own homepages through my virtual law office where they may view all of our online communications, pay me online, download and upload documents, and update client data, among other features. I have 24 hour policy of responding to my clients online. My clients are located across the state, most of them I’ve never met or spoken with in person. My flexible work hours include the time during my child’s nap, in the early morning and evenings or whenever else it is convenient for me and my clients to get work completed. My clients appreciate that I am available to them during non-business hours because that is often more convenient for them as well.

    Through the use of VLOTech, blogs and other web-based technologies, the legal professional today may create alternative working arrangements that can be adjusted and refined as circumstances in his or her personal life require. I have used these to fashion a work/life balance that meets my current needs as a parent, a wife, a daughter and an attorney. I have found wonderful mentors online through law blogs, the ABA’s Solosez and my state bar’s practice group listservs. In five years from now, my work and family life needs will be different, but an effective use of web-based technology will allow me to adjust the hours which I devote to my law practice and return to a more traditional attorney work schedule.

    Many baby boomer law partners will realize the importance of work/family life balance as they begin to care for their aging and elderly parents. At some point in our lives, most of us will be contributing to the care of a family member, either financially or with our time and either by chose or imposition. Legal professionals of both sexes are not immune to this fact of life. Recognizing this, rather than fighting against it, would benefit the legal profession with both higher retention rates among young attorneys and with peers who were less vulnerable to depression and alcohol abuse.

    Other attorneys who are adopting these technologies in their law practices have seen the potential for the virtual law office concept to reform the work/life balance in the legal profession. Its usefulness is not limited to young female attorneys who want to take the time out to raise a family and continue to have a career. The technology could be used by more experienced attorneys who need to take a couple months or a year off from a firm to care for an elderly parent or ill spouse. Apply the same concept to legal assistants and paralegals who could use the technology from their homes or other remote location in conjunction with a traditional law office and continue to be productive members to their employers while managing law office administrative tasks, client intake, accounting and other functions found in the virtual law office software. The web-based technology permits the attorney to control his or her law practice in a more flexible manner that maintains productivity and makes the management of clients and a law office more efficient.

    VLOTech and other web based, software as a service technologies that are available today should be put to work to help the legal profession reform the work/life balance. If the level of productivity remains high, quality legal work is produced and client development is strong, then there should be no reason why virtual law office technology should not be considered to implement a better work/life balance and improve attorney retention.

    The crux of the divide between baby boomer attorneys and fresh law school graduates is not about “putting in the time.” It’s about letting someone else other than your law firm control how you allocate your time and prioritize the people in your life. Technology is quietly allowing legal professionals to arrange their lives and their careers so that at different times in their lives they may adjust to meet a careful balance that changes a little for each of us, each year of our lives. I’m excited to be a part of this quiet reform and I hope that it continues to spread and provide more unique law practice alternatives for the members of our profession.

  • SaaS and the Virtual Law Office

    There has been an interesting dicussion on the ABA’s SOLOSEZ listserv lately about web-based legal software. Some of it has been a tad hostile with a couple members completely opposed to web-based software and others hailing it as the future of legal software. There have been two fairly recent web-based legal software releases: Rocket Matters and TrialManager. Ken Obel of Nextpoint wrote a guest post on The Inspired Solo this week addressing some of the objections to SaaS. I’m guessing it’s the release of these applications that have started the discussions about SaaS, how it works, and all the pros and cons of a web-based application.

    I’ll have to take the middle road on this discussion. I believe SaaS can be a cost-effective tool that attorneys can use to manage their legal cases (TrialManager) and even operate their law practices online (VLOTech). However, I’m not sure that SaaS is the end-all-be-all for the management of every solo or small firm practice. It doesn’t have to be the sole legal software product used by an attorney. It can be effective as a complementary software as well. The web-based product(s) an attorney choses depends on what he or she needs for the individual law practice and on his or her comfort level with SaaS and the company providing the service.

    My advice: Before you chose to go with a web-based application, check into the company that will be providing the service and handling your valuable data. If they won’t be upfront about all the “what if” situations and if they don’t have policies in place to protect their customers, then I wouldn’t go with them.

    My mind is on this a lot lately because I’ve been working with Ben Norman, co-founder of VLOTech, to create the content for the company’s website which is being professionally re-done. We are drafting a Faqs page that goes into all of the questions we think the customers might have about the Virtual Law Office Technology, SaaS and web-based applications in general. VLOTech really wants the customers to be educated on the topic and to feel like the company is being upfront from the beginning. I think that’s the best approach to take with a web-based legal software application because attorneys are in general very skeptical of new products. It will be interesting to get feedback and see if I’m right about this.

  • WSJ Mentions Virtual Offices – Software as a Service to Replace Software

    Software as a Service (SaaS) is starting to replace software that you install on your PC. It’s simpler to use and more cost effective for the user because they do not individually have to worry about keeping up to date on security or backing up their data. The company that provides the SaaS does this for the user.

    Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce.com, Inc., a company that makes online services that aid salespeople in keeping track ot their customers, told WSJ reporters in the Business Technology section of Tuesday’s paper that “I think the big news is that there will be no office. The office is becoming more virtual every day, and the technology that’s making that happen is the huge wave of mobility….”

    Software as a Service is what my virtual practice runs on. Virtual Law Office Technology is SaaS. I don’t have to be a computer whiz or keep current on every security patch that is needed for software on my PC. Instead I can spend that time building my practice. I was thrilled to read this article in the WSJ about the “future built on platforms.” Lexis and Westlaw, take note.

    Consider the time and money an attorney could save using SaaS to run a virtual practice rather than having to keep up on security updates, hardware for backups and storage of critical data.

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