I will be speaking at the District of Oregon Conference entitled, Innovations in the Law: Science and Technology, on Friday of this week at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry in Portland. Speakers for the event will have 6-12 minutes to present on a number of topics including “improving the delivery of legal services, innovations in the courts, gaps in the law, and how the public’s use of technology impacts law enforcement.” Many of the speakers on the roster were involved in the ReInvent Law event in Silicon Valley last spring. I will be giving my 6 minute Ignite style talk on the consumer law revolution and how lawyers can collaborate with branded networks to increase access and delivery. If you are in Portland on Friday, consider registering for the event.
Tag: Technology
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Infographic: Technology in Legal Education
This was my first attempt at creating an infographic using Piktochart. Any feedback is welcome! It’s challenging for a writer to think in terms of graphic design, but I’m trying!
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Breaking News: Major US Bank Offers Online Legal Services in Business Hub
An exciting breakthrough in online delivery is occurring through the new offering that Suntrust Bank is launching. They have partnered with a third party to create an online Business Hub which provides legal services in addition to assistance with planning, websites, data backup and finances.
From the website: “This online portal helps you create legal documents, develop business plans and generate invoices and financial reports.” It appears to be a one-stop shop for small business owners who need accounting and planning software, and even some marketing services. The service also claims to provide risk assessment services for businesses through the legal services tools.
Business Centric Services Group, Inc. is the named developer of the Business Hub according to the Terms of Service. Both Epoq Legal, a company based in the UK, and DirectLaw, a US based company are providing technology components to this project. Mozy Pro, PlanHQ, Moonfruit and Freeagent are also providing software. The link on Suntrust takes the user to a third-party website that is run by the Business Centric Services Group, Inc. All of the tools provided in the Hub cost the user $25 a month which may be debited from the user’s Suntrust account.The online legal services are provide through a product called Legal Document Builder. According to the site, this lets the business owner handle the following:
– Create legal documents for your business from a wide range of templates using a straight forward question and answer process.
– Templates include: website terms and conditions, privacy policy, tenancy agreement, debt recovery letters, shareholders agreement and many more.
– Avoid risks and disputes that could financially weaken your business and comply with Health & Safety legislation by performing risk assessments and more.
That’s a lot of practical software in one place for a small business owner for only $25 a month. I haven’t had time to dig into the details of using each product on the Hub because I have not registered yet. But as a small business owner myself and having been a solo practitioner for many years, I can certainly see the appeal of this package of unbundled legal and other services. I do not at this point see any reference to licensed lawyers providing support for the legal documents. For many small business owners’ legal needs, this would not even be necessary. However, there may be more options available once you register.
In my classes, I tell the law students to think about what happened when Intuit got into the tax business. What happened to accountants when Turbo Tax went on the market? Then I ask: “What would happen to estate planning or small business legal services if Turbo Tax added those online options at the end of the annual tax software?” How many consumers are going to go straight through that trusted brand for the convenience and the fact that their confidential information is already being handled in that space. With this new online Business Hub from Suntrust, it seems like that future is starting to get here.
How will pure-play virtual law offices serving business law manage to compete with $25/month for all of these services? I will leave that for another post.
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Writing, Writing and More Writing
A few articles to note and a request for leads:
- A Symposium on Justice, Lawyering and Legal Education in the Digital Age will be held by Chicago-Kent College of Law this week in conjunction with the CALI’s 2013 Conference for Law School Computing. Richard Granat and I co-wrote an article entitled The Teaching of Law Practice Management and Technology in Law Schools: A New Paradigm, for the symposium which has been published in the law school’s law review.
- I also wanted to point out Will Hornsby’s article in this journal entitled, Gaming the System: Approaching 100% Access to Legal Services Through Online Games, an earlier copy of which I read with great interest. I incorporated some of his research on this topic into the business plan for my game project.
- My chapter entitled “eProfessionalism” has been published this month in the new book from the ABA Center for Professional Responsibility entitled Essential Qualities of the Professional Lawyer.
- I’m collecting research and case studies for an international report on online legal services that I’ve been commissioned to write. In particular, I’m looking for examples of online delivery methods by private practitioners and law firms in Asia, Africa and South America. If you know of any studies that cover these countries, please share.
I like to write.
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Client Portal Matrix
Last week I gave a presentation with Chad Burton at the ABA LPM Spring meeting about the eLawyering Task Force‘s newest project, the Client Portal Matrix, formally titled as the “Comparative Evaluation of Web-based Practice Management Software with Client Portal Applications for Solos and Small Law Firms.” Donna Seyle, who did most of the work gathering data for the matrix, was unable to make the meeting so I filled in to discuss some of the practical uses of a client portal in law practice and the best practices and ethics issues that might come up.
The matrix will be posted on the eLawyering website in the near future. It is a work in progress, but is already a useful tool and starting point for lawyers considering virtual practice. It was designed primarily for solo and small firm practitioners. The matrix focuses on cloud-based, SaaS solutions and specifically excludes the online client portals and tools provided by branded networks, such as Rocket Lawyer. The focus of this project was on client-facing technology so also excluded were systems that focused on other administrative tasks, such as time and billing, calendaring, or matter management among others. There are fourteen companies with client-facing features on the matrix so far.
It makes me think back to eight years ago when I opened my solo virtual law office and co-founded the system that is now Total Attorney’s platform with client-facing features. At the time, there weren’t any SaaS options out there for a practitioner. Now there are choices and more most likely in the works. Expect to hear more clients asking their lawyers and firms for online access to their legal accounts. If you don’t have a client portal or any client facing features in the technology you use for your firm, you need to consider in the near future how you will add it to the mix. This is going to be the case whether you are delivering legal services online with a virtual law office or operating a traditional law firm without online delivery options. It’s about client access and good customer service which should apply in any firm structure.
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Virtual Practice and the Work-Life Balance Debate
For what it’s worth, here are some thoughts on my quote that was published in an article on Attorney at Work today by Ruth Carter entitled, Is Work-Life Balance a Fraud?
I’ve been asked about work-life balance since I launched my virtual law office in 2006. (Yes. I am a mom to two young children and sure, that adds a layer of challenge to life, but I get things done and the kids don’t seem to be deprived or permanently scarred for life, yet.) Many assume that trying to achieve work-life balance is a motivating factor for anyone to set up a virtual law practice. It is certainly one of the reasons why I chose this form of practice, but not the only one. I’ve got a long-term side mission running to increase access to justice and online delivery and tech in law practice is a part of that.
Many of the lawyers that I help to set up virtual law firms, from web-based unbundled delivery to hybrid firms with both traditional and online delivery, want the flexibility that virtual practice provides. It’s great that the technology is available to allow us all to make choices that provide more flexibility, but it’s got to be a choice based on what’s right for us and our clients, and that may not be what works for another lawyer and their practice, their clients or their personal lives.
Anyway, here’s my thought on the exhausting work-life balance debate that Laura Bellow, current Pres. of the ABA re-raised earlier this year, as quoted in the article:
Balance is possible, but it’s BALANCE based on choices that we have made in our personal and professional lives. It doesn’t guarantee happiness. I think it’s a way of coping with the phases we all go through in life. Even with the best of examples and role models, I don’t believe a 20-something man or woman in law school has any idea what his or her 30- or 40-something self is going to want or need. So we make decisions because we have to, without fully understanding the consequences or what will have to be sacrificed personally and professionally later on down the line. That’s just a fact of life. Work-life balance is an attempt to adjust to those decisions based on where we are currently in our lives. And that means different things get sacrificed at different times—in both personal and professional spheres—to make the most people and ourselves happy. That’s the balance.
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Law Practice Technology in Law Schools
Please take a minute to read Richard Granat’s post entitled “10 Top Law Schools Teaching Law Practice Technology.”
The eLawyering Task Force is working on a project to identify law schools that are adequately preparing their students to enter practice with practical skills related to the use of technology. The Task Force is currently reviewing the programs and courses offered at different law school and has identified ten that meet the criteria discussed in the post.
What is your law school doing on this front? Is it enough?
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Game On!
I’m making a game and it involves legal services.For the past six months, I’ve researched the idea of creating a game that would engage and empower the public to learn legal issues surrounding personal legal services.
Why am I doing this? When I was ten years old, I didn’t dream of being a lawyer, I dreamed of being this woman, a well-known computer game designer. When I went to college, computer science as a major was in its infancy and a class in game design was unheard of. Life happens. About six months ago, a friend pulled me back into gaming as a hobby – something I had sacrificed to give attention to my children when they were babies. Now back into gaming full force, I remembered how powerful it is as a tool of engagement. That made me start thinking about how cool it would be if we could use games to engage the public to learn about their rights and the law in a way that would help them prevent legal needs before they occur.
I starting researching the use of games for social good. Yes. There is a small segment of the game industry that develops games that will have an impact on society. It’s not all about first person shooters and role playing games. There is even a Games for Change Festival that showcases these games and those who work to create them. I read Jane McGonigal’s book Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better nad How They Can Change the World. Watch her impressive TED talk video if you don’t have time to read the book.
I also have immersed myself in game design and theory, exploring a “playcentric” approach to design which emphasizes playtesting and user experience before hard core development even begins. I also started exploring the tutorials on different game engines, including Unity, LiveCode (big thanks to the brilliant David Johnson for this one and for the brainstorming sessions), and MIT’s Scratch and using Code.org to start learning JavaScript, HTML, and CSS. I also started researching and understanding the marketplace for games (the legal services marketplace I think I know pretty well by now) and the different platforms for publication.
What has been done so far surrounding legal services is focused more on educating school children on the legal process or it is geared towards law students. There are a few others that are focused on educating the public, but they tend to be heavily text-based, and frankly, I got pretty bored playing them.
Here is an example of a game for social good. In March, a game called Half the Sky Movement was launched as a Facebook game to help end world hunger. The game play is a compelling story about empowering women, and allows the user to donate to a variety of causes as he or she plays through. The game allows the user to unlock free rewards. For example, one of these might be that a real world book would be mailed to a girl in India from a foundation which donated to the nonprofit, Room to Read Foundation. While learning about a social situation, the player is rewarded by connecting with real-world individuals. There is a sharing component and multiple layers of engagement throughout the game.
This, and games like it, inspired me to think that what we really need for legal services is increased ENGAGEMENT – before a legal need arises. That is exactly what games provide when they are done right. The game we are creating isn’t going to be an iCivics or any courtroom-based legal education game. It isn’t going to be preachy or overly full of text. It is going to be a game you would want to play and it will have an unique connection between the legal services marketplace and the players. That’s teasing. I’ll reveal more as I go along. (more…)
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Using Technology to Unbundle in the Legal Services Community
My article for the Harvard Journal of Law and Technology has been published online. It looks at the building blocks that are already in place and proposes methods of unbundling legal services and delivering them to the public throught the use of technology. This articles comes from a white paper I wrote for the LSC Tech Summit.
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Florida Publishes Proposed Cloud Computing Ethics Opinion
On January 25, 2013, the Professional Ethics Committee of the Florida State Bar published Proposed Advisory Opinion 12-3 2 related to the use of cloud computing in law practice.The proposed opinion refers to the ethics opinions already published in Alabama, Arizona, Iowa, Nevada, New York and Pennsylvania. Here is a link to my post that lists state bar ethics opinions related to virtual law practice and cloud computing.
This short proposed opinion in Florida also comes to a similar conclusion as most of the other states that have addressed the topic: Yes. It is o.k. to use cloud computing in law practice. However, there are precautions that the lawyer should take. And then the proposed opinion provides the usual caveats which essentially come down to using “reasonable care” in the selection and use of the technology in law practice to ensure compliance with the Rules of Professional Conduct (in particular Model Rule 1.6(a) regarding confidentiality).
The conclusion of the opinion states:
In summary, lawyers may use cloud computing if they take reasonable precautions to ensure that confidentiality of client information is maintained. The lawyer should research the service provider to be used, should ensure that the service provider maintains adequate security, should ensure that the lawyer has adequate access to the information stored remotely, and should consider backing up the data elsewhere as a precaution.