Virtual Law Practice

Tag: Technology

  • And Now, For Something Completely Different

    And Now, For Something Completely Different

    And-nowA few years ago I told a friend and colleague that one day I would post this Monty Python reference on my social media accounts and that’s how they’d know I’d stepped away from the legal profession: “And now, for something completely different.” I didn’t know at the time when I would be posting this, but I knew the day would come around given the harried pace at which I’d been going.

    Maybe you’ve seen this popular TED talk called “The Value of Taking a Year Off?”  That’s what I’m up to right now.

    I’ve been suspiciously quiet over the past several months. I stopped posting on social media as much as I used to and am no longer providing talks to legal organizations. Speaking at the ABA Techshow in the spring after the release of the second edition of my Virtual Law Practice book was my last speaking gig for awhile. (Bowing out to a standing-room only talk is not a bad way to go.) I completed my one year fellowship at Stanford Law in June and produced a couple of research papers related to the use of gamification in law.  Unfortunately, Biglaw is not ready for this yet and legal services organizations lack the funding to support it. I am finishing up a final semester teaching online classes in social media and law practice management and tech for law students and the occasional auditing lawyer.

    I have written, researched, co-founded, created, evangelized, volunteered, taught, and counseled lawyers and others in the legal profession in various forms and mostly for free or petty amounts for the past ten years.

    So what’s the deal now? Why stop?

    I was originally motivated in my work by the idea that I could make an impact on the legal profession, educate lawyers to use technology to improve the delivery of legal services, and that I could help increase access to justice. At the core, I wanted to help people who couldn’t afford a traditional lawyer to get the help they needed. After fighting up-hill battles, winning a small handful of victories, and still seeing the pace of adoption and attitude change go at a snail’s pace, I’ve decided to stop trying, at least for awhile. I’m not helpful to anyone (lawyers or the people in our country who deserve legal assistance) when I’m in a state of cynicism and burnout.

    What am I doing right now?  I’m engaging in several interests focused on getting back to my core passions and attempting to cultivate new creativity in my life. (Of course, this is all on the side of being a mother to my two wonderfully active children and fiance to Ron Dolin, who is happily continuing his work on quality metrics for the legal profession with his project at Harvard Law.)

    In the spring, I took the well-respected Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) course created by Jon Kabat-Zinn. I’m currently taking an eight-week course called Compassion Cultivation Training at the Stanford University Center for Altruism and Compassion. This Center boasts the largest donation the Dalai Lama has ever given to an institution outside of a Tibetan cause and is taught from a secular and scientific standpoint. Yes, there is solid science and research behind meditation and compassion. (While the practice itself is experiential, if you know me at all, you know I am also reading all of the research I can get my hands on, most of which takes me into the fields of neuroscience and psychology.) I am meditating daily and learning to control the flexibility of my mind. No easy feat, but the rewards are already showing.  I am on the look-out for a good week-long silent retreat in the near future.

    I’m also back to my bookbinding habits. I am a bibliophile and used to work on book repair and restoration. I have not been able to do this work since my children were born, around 9 years ago. That’s a long time to miss something. I am returning to bookbinding and taking courses at the San Francisco Center for the Book, the only center of its kind on the west coast. Before going to law school, I apprenticed in the basement of the Cincinnati Museum Center and learned the art of paper and book preservation there. I miss working with my hands and holding a tangible object at the end of the process. Ebooks just don’t smell or feel the same as a real book. Book bindings are a form of creative expression and it gives me peace.

    I’m also going to try writing again, but fiction this time. I’m going to do NaNoWriMo next month. I have downloaded Scrivener and am already in planning mode for November.  It will be a fun process to write for myself and to not have to worry about ethics committees or skeptical lawyers scrutinizing my work. My imagination will have full reign.

    I go hiking in the hills of Los Altos, meditate, and then let my mind run free. Trying to narrow in on a single idea or project right now would be detrimental to the process that I’m going through. Cultivating compassion is opening my heart up to the idea of common humanity and my place in that. Sometimes it’s a challenge to feel like I’m falling without any solid plans for what I will do next. But that’s part of this process too. Check out the TED talk on taking a year off. There is something to this.

    I am not sure when, how, or even if I will come back to the legal profession. Thanks to those of you who have worked with me over the past ten years and supported the endeavors to increase access to justice with technology, unbundling, and forms of virtual law practice.

    And now for something completely different….

     

     

  • Gamification in Law Firms

    Gamification in Law Firms

    Here is my draft working paper on Gamification in Law Firms which looks at the use of gamification in law firms to increase productivity and collaboration, among other benefits. This paper provides a framework for approaching implementation of a gamification strategy within the law firm.gamification

    For this paper I had fun researching in the fields of psychology, sociology, education, game design and development, behavioral science, marketing, human-computer interaction (HCI) and a little neuroscience. This paper provides a background on gamification, including the science behind why it works, and then looks at how law firms could apply gamification for different purposes within the firm.

    The second half of the paper actually provides a map for a law firm to design a gamification strategy and move forward with experimenting with this in the firm.  I have many case studies of different forms of gamification at companies and even a small handful of law firms that have experimented with gamification and had success.

    gamificationpapercoverSome of the objectives for the use of gamification in law firms might be:

    1. Increased associate retention rates,
    2. Efficient and effective training of new technologies and processes, including methods to improve associate recording of billable hours,
    3. Human resources productivity, such as onboarding new associates, training new hires, collecting associate reviews, etc.,
    4. Increased communication between members of the firm,
    5. Encourage inter-generational mentorship,
    6. Increased participation in pro bono activities,
    7. Desired use of firm resources, such as training and education,
    8. Encouragement for individual law firm members to innovate for the benefit of the firm.

    Please note that this paper is a work in progress. I am currently working on a paper related to gamification for access to justice and with client-facing applications that focuses more broadly on increasing online engagement between lawyers and the public.  I’ve found some great, fairly recent, empirical studies for that paper that I may go back and add to the analysis in this one for law firms. Stay tuned.

  • Virtual Law Practice: Second Edition Released

    Cover bookThe second edition of my book, Virtual Law Practice, will be released from ABA LPD Publishing this month. (There will be a digital copy for sale in the coming months and eventually it gets released on Amazon for those of you who want other purchasing options.)  I’ve updated the book significantly since the original publication in 2010 to include new technology solutions and methods of designing a law practice around technology and delivery mechanisms. Here is the copy from the back of the book:

    Virtual Law Practice: How to Deliver Legal Services Online, Second Edition

    The internet has made it easier for potential clients to find legal services.  Virtual law firms have revolutionized the delivery of legal services, lowering costs as well as evening the playing field. Whether you are a large law firm or a solo practitioner, there are business models of delivering legal services online that can bring your law practice up to speed with the 21st century legal marketplace. What are you doing to stay competitive?  Do you have the know-how to responsibly incorporate technology and online delivery into your existing law firm?  The revised and updated Virtual Law Practice is the one resource you need to take advantage of this fast-growing market. This book will help you:

    • Identify and develop a law firm business model for the online delivery of legal services
    • Successfully set up and manage a virtual law firm
    • Increase law firm revenue by responsibly implementing the delivery of online legal services
    • Make use of the latest technology
    • Create a successful marketing strategy for the delivery of legal services online
    • Understand state ethics and advisory opinions
    • Find more flexibility and work/life balance in the legal profession

    Stephanie Kimbro’s practical guide also provides case studies of law firms that successfully integrate virtual law practice into their traditional business models along with client scenarios to show how web-based technology may be used by legal professionals to work with online clients and avoid malpractice risks.

  • Commission on Future of Legal Services Seeks Feedback

    Commission on Future of Legal Services Seeks Feedback

    I was honored to be asked to participate in the ABA President’s Commission on the Future of Legal Services this year and next. This Commission is calling for Issues Paper feedback now through December 10th. For my legal tech friends and colleagues, if you have something to say, now is a good time to get it on the table. Details below.

    I like the ABA President this time around. I’ve heard President William Hubbard speak several times by now. I’ve heard him address some difficult criticisms of the ABA with grace at a conference on disruptive innovation in the market for legal services at Harvard Law School. Most importantly, I think he is making an effort to listen and take seriously the fact that technology can be used to increase access to justice in a variety of ways. Whether or not he or any future leader has the ability to actually sway the more traditional (and often tech-averse) mindsets of the lawyers who actually hold up the HOD and prevent progress…..well, I’ll retain my healthy skepticism. That said, President Hubbard is making solid headway with this Commission. The initiative seems like a good follow-up to the initial research and rule changes that the Commission on Ethics 20/20 underwent.

    From the Commission’s site:

    …technology, globalization, and other forces are transforming the ways legal services are accessed and delivered. Familiar practice structures are giving way in a marketplace that continues to evolve. New providers are emerging, online and offline, to offer a range of services in dramatically different ways.

    I joined up with the BlueSky Working Group that formed out of the Commission. The working groups are interesting because they are made up of such a diverse group of people from across the legal profession. I can tell already that a large part of the work process for the group is just going to be educating each other about our different perspectives whether its from practicing in BigLaw, working in legal services, in legal academia, or with legal tech startups.

    The goal of the Commission is to propose new approaches that are not constrained by traditional models for delivering legal services and that are rooted in the essential values of protecting the public.

    To focus these working groups and the entire Commission, the Chair has issued a call for comments on an Issues Paper. I’ve posted the Issues Paper below. The issues are related to the delivery and access of legal services by the public.

     

     IssuesPaperFeedback

     

     

     

     

  • Meaningful Play & Legal Games Research

    The annual Meaningful Play Conference (@meaningfulplay, #mplay) is being held this week at Michigan State University. This game conference takes an academic approach to how games can be used to educate and persuade the players. The conference explores how games can be designed and developed for meaningful purposes acknowledging that

    …games have the potential to impact players’ beliefs, knowledge, attitudes, emotions, cognitive abilities, physical and mental health, and behavior.

    I am unable to attend the conference, but my two fellow panelists, Lien Tran and Dan Jackson, are there to present information about how games might be used in the legal industry and to raise questions about the development and funding for those games. I wanted to share their important work here and provide an update on my own research progress.

    Lien Tran is a game designer and Assistant Professor at the University of Miami. She has started an initiative, Amiguía Americana, to provide interactive, game-based resources for unaccompanied immigrant minors (UIMs), youth who may have been taken into custody by the government because of their undocumented status. Her first immigration project, Toma El Paso (Make a Move in English), is a board game currently being used by ICAN (a team of community volunteers who deliver a tailored curriculum to UIMs) with UIMs in a juvenile shelter in Miami, Florida, to teach them about the shelter release process.

    Dan Jackson is the Executive Director of the NuLawLab at Northeastern University School of Law. They have created game that is a simulation for self-represented parties. The game is a nominee with the HiiL Innovating Justice program.

    Keep an eye on both of these individuals and their projects as the concept of games for legal services begins to take hold.

    meaningfulplayAs for my research at Stanford Law, I’m reading through examples of how games and gamification have been used in the medical profession and the reported outcomes from use in caregiver/patient or medical organization/public relationships. This is requiring me to read through journals outside of law which makes this work really fun and challenging. I’ve been reading books on persuasive games and radical game design.

    I am also writing a couple of introductory white papers that look at 1) gamification within law firms, and 2) the use of games and gamification to increase online engagement between the public and the legal profession. I’ll share. More to come.

  • Podcast: How to Provide Client Hand-holding in Virtual Law Practice

    micLast month I joined in on a podcast for the ABA Journal with reporter Stephanie Francis Ward; Michelle Crosby, founder of Wevorce; and Fred Rooney, Director of Touro Law Center’s International Justice Center for Post-Graduate Development.
    The topic was “How do you provide client hand-holding if you run a virtual firm?”

    You can listen to the podcast on the ABA Journal site or read the transcript.

    Ward asked the three of us this question towards the end of the podcast:

    [C]an the three of you give me one tip on making that personal connection and doing it online? So combining the personal connection of perhaps, like, automation and things like that, that can make it more affordable for the client and make you, help you be more efficient as a lawyer.

    My response:

    I think that finding a way…that engages the online client. Gets them interested, builds an initial amount of trust. That goes a long way.

    Right now, I’m researching games and gamification as ways that lawyers can effectively engage that prospective client in whatever the practice area is that the client is looking for help. But sort of an initial, warm-up education, empowerment that happens online before that prospective client registers for access or asks a question of the online lawyer.

    I think that really helps prepare them when you start working with the client, then you move from there to web conferencing, have the Google hangout or Skype or real-time chat or whatever their virtual law firm uses to communicate. But I think that initial online engagement is really critical.

  • ILTA Article – Teaching Tomorrow’s Lawyers Legal Tech Skills

    apple2An article I co-authored with Ron Dolin entitled Course Correction: Teaching Tomorrow’s Lawyers Legal Tech Skills, was published in the newest edition of the ILTA Peer to Peer Magazine.

    Ron developed the syllabus for and taught the first course on legal informatics at Stanford Law School. Several of his students from that course have gone on to find innovative paths in the legal industry, including Margaret Hagan, his co-founder in the Program for Legal Tech and Design. Ron writes about the changes he believes are critical in the law school curriculum to prepare future lawyers for the realities of practicing law with technology. I write about my experience teaching courses in legal tech at various law schools for the past three years and developing the Center for Law Practice Technology with Richard Granat.

    It’s a short article that summarizes what Ron and I believe are the key issues that law schools need to address when designing a curriculum that prepares new lawyers to enter a changed legal marketplace. We link out to other useful resources for further research.

  • LegalTech Startup Weekend – San Francisco

    If you are in the San Francisco area, consider checking out the LegalTech Startup Weekend. I’ll be one of the mentors for the event along with several other founders of legal tech companies, including LawPal, Ravel, One400, Judicata, LawGives, Casetext, and more.

    Teams form Friday evening, August 15th and final presentations with be on Sunday, August 17th. The teams will tackle four challenges listed on the event site and compete for prizes.

    The intersection of law and technology presents unique challenges and exciting opportunities for growth and creativity. Recent years have seen a surge of answers to law’s need for innovation, such as e-discovery tools, contract generation apps, law practice management SaaS, virtual firms, and websites changing the way lawyers research. Myriad possibilities remain to integrate tech into solutions for consumers, attorneys, businesses, and the government. SF LegalTech Startup Weekend will bring together legal professionals, policy geeks, programmers, designers and students to innovate the legal services market and bring it into the 21st Century – one solution at a time. SFLegalTechStartupWeekend

  • Second Edition of Virtual Law Practice Book

    book pic2I am updating the second edition to the Virtual Law Practice book that I wrote back in 2010. The book needs to be almost completely re-written based on the way that technology has changed since I wrote about the set up of online delivery in law firms only four years ago.

    I am expanding the book to include my newer experiences working with law firms and lawyers to integrate online delivery of legal services into different law firm business models. Over the past four years, I’ve taught law school courses on the subject of virtual practice and related topics, such as unbundling of legal services and law practice management. Some of the content and material from my courses will end up in the text of the updated edition of the book.

    At the time of writing the first edition, I was very focused on the idea of completely virtual law offices, mostly operated by solos or small firms. However, since then, I’ve worked with so many varieties of business models that use technology to deliver online services that I realized I need to expand the book to include these different models. In many cases, in terms of economic success, these other methods of delivering online services seem to be more successful than the purely virtual law office model.

    In terms of statistics and specific data about the operation and success of any form of virtual practice, we still have very little concrete information to share. Companies like Clio and MyCase may gather useful information on the use of their systems to help with their marketing campaigns to lawyers. However, no one else seems to be able to gather data on how many lawyers deliver legal services online, what tools they use,  how it integrates with traditional delivery models, who their customers are, and any success they may or may not be having. I have my personal experience and that of my colleagues in elawyering working with many law firms and lawyers to create virtual law practices. Perhaps in the future as more lawyers add unbundled, online legal services to their offerings, the state bars will assist in collecting this data.  For the second edition, I will try to locate more statistics that might be useful in helping practitioners determine what the risks and benefits are of the different models of delivery.

    I’m going to spend the next two months finishing up this second edition and then turn my focus back to the work on my fellowship at Stanford Law School with the Center on the Legal Profession. I am attending the GSummit event in San Francisco next week to learn more about gamification and games and to think of ways to apply this form of increased online engagement to the legal profession and to serving the public.

    If anyone who read the original book would like to make suggestions about anything that you would like to see me cover in this updated edition, please let me know. Thanks and I look forward to having new content to share on this blog and elsewhere in the very near future!

  • Video: Legal Technology in the Public Interest

    A couple of weeks ago I gave a presentation on a panel entitled Legal Technology in the Public Interest with Ron Staudt and Phil Malone for Stanford’s Future Law Conference.  Below is the video from this:

     

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