Virtual Law Practice

Tag: Technology

  • California Publishes New Ethics Opinion on Virtual Law Offices

    UPDATE: The State Bar of California has published its formal ethics opinion on virtual law offices, No. 2012-184. I wrote a post on the proposed draft of this opinion that came out this past spring.

    The summary reads:

    As it pertains to the use of technology, the Business and Professions Code and the Rules of Professional Conduct do not impose greater or different duties upon a VLO practitioner operating in the cloud than they do upon an attorney practicing in a traditional law office. While an attorney may maintain a VLO in the cloud where communications with the client, and storage of and access to all information about the client’s matter, are conducted solely via the internet using a third-party’s secure servers, Attorney may be required to take additional steps to confirm that she is fulfilling her ethical obligations due to distinct issues raised by the hypothetical VLO and its operation. Failure of Attorney to comply with all ethical obligations relevant to these issues will preclude the operation of a VLO in the cloud as described herein. (emphasis added) (more…)

  • Review of SubTech2012 at New York Law School in Tweets

    Yesterday was a productive day of brainstorming at New York Law School which is hosting the 2012 Twelfth International Conference on Substantive Technology in Legal Education and Practice (SubTech). Topics discussed at the roundtable included Automation of Legal Work,
    The Nature of the Current and Future Legal Profession, Technology and the Law School Predicament and Re-Invention. You can see a list of the attendees on the site. The discussion was heated at times because of the mix of technologists, academics and practitioners.

    I’m posting my notes which were tweeted below. For the record, these are not all my thoughts. The moderators asked that we not attribute anything that was said in the discussion to any one particular individual. They are also posted backwards below so read from the top up. I’m sure there is a better way to scrape tweets off of Twitter. If you don’t care about the law school dilemma and only want to read about the legal technology, jump straight to the bottom. The ideas are there. Enjoy, comment.

    Heading back to SubTech this morning to listen to individual presentations that address some of the topics we discussed yesterday.

    ______________

    Wonderful wrap-up from Liz Chambliss at #SubTech2012. Looking forward to more productive discussion at dinner.

    UDSL has two online programs starting this fall. RT @rgranat: How about a Certificate in Digital Lawyering? idea surfaced at #subtech2012

    Collaboration among law schools on certificate programs with an assessment component that employers can verify. #SubTech2012

    Could we add more gamificaton to legal education and add multidisciplinary collaboration to that online system? #SubTech2012

    Not having to teach to the bar would also help deliver a product to students that would be more applicable in real practice. #SubTech2012

    Should law schools take a new role in training legal engineers, new firm roles, not just lawyers? #SubTech2012

    Reinvention of legal ed may have to figure out what happens to legal scholarship and research. What is value, who pays for that?#SubTech2012 (more…)

  • Technology in Legal Mentorship

    Below is an article that I wrote on the changing face of mentorship in the legal profession. I was asked to write it for a legal publication last year, but for space reasons they were not able to publish it. I think it’s an important topic so I’ll share. In this article, I focus on alternative forms of mentorship that take advantage of technology and the Internet to assist a new generation of lawyers who may have difficulty finding mentors upon passing the bar. Comments are always welcome.

     

     

  • CodeX Speaker Series Discussion at Stanford Law

    I’ll be giving a presentation at Stanford Law School on May 2nd as a speaker sponored by CodeX: Stanford Center for Computers and the Stanford Program in Law, Science and Technology, and the Stanford Center on the Legal Profession. The title of my presentation will be “Unbundling and the Future of Legal Service Delivery”. You can read more about it here. The event is free and open to the public. I’m looking forward to some challenging and productive discussion.

     

  • Factors Determining “Reasonableness”

    The ABA Commission on Ethics 20/20 published its revised draft resolutions for comment regarding Technology and Confidentiality at the end of last month. Under Comment [16] to Rule 1.6 “Confidentiality of Information”, the revised draft contains a list of factors that determine whether the lawyer has made reasonable efforts to prevent “unauthorized access to, or the inadvertent or unauthorized disclosure of, confidential information.” Comment [16] states:

    Factors to be considered in determining the reasonableness of the lawyer’s efforts include the sensitivity of the information, the
    likelihood of disclosure if additional safeguards are not employed, the cost of employing additional safeguards, the difficulty of implementing the safeguards, and the extent to which the safeguards adversely  affect the lawyer’s ability to represent clients (e.g., by making a device or important piece of software excessively difficult to use). (more…)

  • Online Legal Services in Shopping Center Kiosks

     

    Imagine shopping for your groceries and remembering that you needed to check in with your attorney regarding the status of your divorce case. You find a private legal services booth and step inside. You touch a few buttons on the computer tablet attached to the kiosk and a video of a receptionist who works for your law firm comes online to take your request. A few minutes later you chat with your attorney face to face via web conferencing and log off. Your attorney has informed you that she needs another item for the next hearing in your case. You add a note to your grocery list. When you get home, you will upload the document to your attorney online and schedule another video conference through your secure client portal – after putting the groceries away.

    Such access to legal services is now available in the UK by a company called Instant Law UK.  The LegalFutures blog announced last week that the company was placing video conferencing kiosks in shopping centers this month and by the end of 2012 it hopes to have 120 kiosks across the country. The video conferencing service is also available to clients via the Internet. Areas of law that the company provides include Family, Employment, Personal Injury, Immigration, Landlord & Tenant, Medical Negligence, Contract Disputes, Wills, and Probate. (more…)

  • New ABA Ethics Opinion on Electronic Communication

    The ABA Standing Committee on Ethics and Prof. Responsibility has published a new ethics opinion, Formal Opinion 11-459 “Duty to Protect the Confidentiality  of E-mail Communications with One’s Client”. I didn’t see this one coming, but I think it’s a move in the right direction.

    The situation described in the opinion relates to when an attorney has reason to believe that his or her client  is sending the attorney or anyone else confidential information via email and the client’s employer has keystroke logging on their system or some other way of monitoring the employee’s activities where there is a risk that the employer  could access that confidential information.

    However, the opinion is worded broadly and might expand to more than just email and to more than just these workplace situations. Check out the last paragraph of the opinion: (more…)

  • LSBC Cloud Computing Working Group Recommendations

    Last week The Law Society of British Columbia’s Cloud Computing Working Group published online a report with recommendations regarding the use of cloud computing by legal professionals.

    Recommendations included in the report include:

    1)      Guidelines to help lawyers conduct due diligence in researching a technology providers and cloud-based solution.  (The report refers to “third party service providers” which includes cloud computing but is much broader in scope.)

    2)       Review of potential changes in the Law Society Rules to ensure that its regulatory functions are kept up to date with the changes in technology.  (Canadian legal professionals are subject to audits of law office records by their governing body whereas most state bars in the United States do not have this investigatory function.)

    3)      Methods that lawyers and law students might be educated to improve understanding of their responsibilities when using technology.

    The report advocates that clear guidelines are needed to assist lawyers in making the decision about what type of technology to use and which providers to trust.  Here is a brief overview of what the Report recommends. Even if you are not practicing law in Canada, these are good recommendations to consider as you conduct your “due diligence” in researching any tech-related practice management decision. (more…)

  • Online “Daily Deals” on Legal Services

    South Carolina has published a new Formal Ethics Opinion 11-05 about attorney’s using services, such as Groupon, to offer discounts and deals on their legal services.

    To my knowledge, the ethics opinion is the first from a state bar that is specifically related to this topic. The question posed in the opinion is:

    Does a lawyer violate the Rules of Professional Conduct by contracting with a website to offer vouchers that can be purchased from the website and then subsequently redeemed for discounted legal services such as the preparation of wills?

    The opinion says a lawyer does not violate the Rules as long as the method used complies with attorney ethics rules for advertising (7.1 – 7.2) and the rule on sharing of legal fees (Rule 5.4(a)).  There are other potential risks to avoid that include clearly defining the scope of representation that is covered in the “deal”, making sure payments are routed to the trust account if required, and the duty to prospective clients. The opinion concludes that whether this online client development strategy violates the Rules or not depends on the way that the attorney has set up the procedure within the online service and manages it in accordance with the other Rules.

    The question posed the SC Ethics Committee specifically mentions using the service for estate planning. In fact, it’s difficult to think of what other practice areas it might be possible to do this in. It would work best with an unbundled or limited scope representation service.  More often when people are seeking legal services online it’s because there is a pressing legal need.  The motivating factor to retain an attorney is not the discount on services.  But you never know these days. I’ve heard tales from family law attorneys claiming that the recession has prospective clients delaying major legal needs, including divorce, until they can afford it.  So maybe if your firm was the one offering a “daily deal” on that service, you might be selected above another firm.

    A virtual lawyer providing unbundled services online could connect the daily deal service to their virtual law office to potentially send prospective online clients straight from the deal into the registration process to purchase the requested unbundled legal service online.

    Are any other state bars addressing the use this service in online client development by lawyers?  Anyone know of a law firm using Groupon or another service for this purpose?

  • Proposed NC Ethics Opinion on Cloud Computing Returned to Subcommittee

    The Ethics Committee at the North Carolina State Bar voted to send the proposed formal ethics opinion 6 (FEO 6), entitled “Subscribing to Software as a Service While Fulfilling the Duties of Confidentiality and Preservation of Client Property” back to the subcommittee to reconsider responses they received to inquiries #1 and #2.

    Both of these inquiries contained worrisome minimum requirements for the use of cloud computing that many of the technology providers and attorneys using cloud computing are not certain can be practically implemented without resulting in severe restrictions on the use of a wide number of cloud-based applications.

    The Ethics Committee received responses from groups such as ILTSO and the LCCA as well as from individual attorneys both licensed in NC and across the country.  You may read the LCCA’s detailed response on their website. Some of the responses from individuals included:

    – Nicole Black, author of the soon-to-be published by the ABA/LPM Cloud Computing for Lawyers, provided this response;

    – Erik Mazzone, Director of the Center for Practice Management at the North Carolina Bar Association, wrote about the opinion on his Law Practice Matters blog;

    – Richard Granat, co-chair of the ABA eLawyering Task Force, wrote critically of the proposed opinion on his elawyering blog; and

    – I posted the comments that I submitted to the Committee on this blog a few months ago.

    We should have some idea by the end of October about the revisions, if any, that will be made to the proposed opinion by the subcommittee.

     

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