The 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 […]
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Practicing Law Online Ebook
Here is the revised version of the Practicing Law Online ebook, which I first released in 2008 and updated in 2010. This revised edition of the ebook examines different business models for virtual law firms and goes beyond solos and small firms to apply the concept of virtual practice to larger firms and in-house legal departments. The ebook walks the reader […]
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Podcast: How to Provide Client Hand-holding in Virtual Law Practice
Last 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?”
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Online Legal Services Gets a Boost from ABA & Rocket Lawyer Partnership
I was surprised and happy to hear the news today that the ABA announced its partnership with Rocket Lawyer on a pilot project to help match up ABA members with online clients.
I’ve been researching and writing about lawyer collaboration with branded networks like Rocket Lawyer for the past couple of years with a focus on ethics issues and best practices. I wrote a book about the best practices for lawyers who wanted to work with these companies and make connections with clients through them.
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Second Edition of Virtual Law Practice Book
I am updating the second edition to the Virtual Law Practice book that I wrote back in 2010. The book pretty much needs to be 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.
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ABA Journal Article on Virtual Practice
The ABA Journal published an article entitled “Lawyers’ definitions of virtual practice vary, but not when it comes to finding success”. The article runs through the different definitions of virtual law practice and the wide variety of ways that lawyers are choosing to deliver legal services online.
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Infographic: Client Portal for a Law Office
Infographic of a secure client portal for the delivery of legal services for a law office.
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Bona Fide Office Rule In the News Again
The Bona Fide Office Rule has reappeared in the news again. I’ve written about the Bona Fide Office rule here several times, mostly with regard to New Jersey’s joint ethics opinion on the subject. Other states have been revisiting surrounding issues in terms of the lawyer’s requirements to provide certain contact information on his or her website or other advertising and in that requirement calling for some physical office address.
Bona Fide Office rules discourage lawyers from finding alternative and often more affordable methods of delivering legal services to clients. Requiring that a member of the bar provide contact information to the regulatory body is obviously necessary. Requiring that a lawyer provide his or her clients with a reliable method of contacting the lawyer is also necessary.
However, a lawyer does not need to maintain a traditional, physical law office seven days a week during 9-5 business hours in order to accomplish either of these. He or she does not have to retain the services of an employee to work at that law office in order to answer the phone when the lawyer is not present to accomplish adequate and reliable communication with his or her clients.
The Supreme Court of Delaware recently issued an Opinion that suspended a lawyer who worked from his home office in Pennsylvania while practicing Delaware law. The lawyer’s violation of their Bona Fide Office Rule 12 was not the only item at issue in this opinion which is why I will not go into it in detail except for their discussion of the Bona Fide Office Rule which will mostly like be read by other lawyers in Delaware and potentially discourage them from considering virtual law practice and delivering legal services online to clients.
According to the Court:
“[t]he Rule requires that the office “be a place where the attorney or a responsible person acting on the attorney’s behalf can be reached in person or by telephone,” and have “the customary facilities for engaging in the practice of law.”
There is no mention of the possibility of the lawyer working from home and delivering legal services in unbundled fashion to his or her clients. There is no mention of the use of temporary/as needed renting of office space so that the lawyer can meet with the clients for full service representation, but continue to conduct the majority of their work with clients online. There is technology available to securely work with clients online. This technology decreases the cost of overhead of a traditional law office which in turn decreases the cost of legal fees. There is NO EXCUSE why States should not consider alternative forms of legal service delivery.
The lawyer that was suspended in this case was only using the phone to call his clients. There was no mention of any secure client portal or other virtual law office technology. But it’s the way that the Court addressed the Rule in their Opinion that disturbs me. They must start thinking outside of the Bona Fide Office Rule. It does not make sense anymore on so many levels to restrict how lawyers communicate with clients to in-person visits. Supporting a Bona Fide Office Rule is barrier that is going to continue to discourage lawyers from finding innovative and cost-effective ways to serve the public and increase access.
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Five Tips for Lawyers Purchasing Online Lead Gen Services
Five Tips for Lawyers Purchasing Online Lead Generation Services 1. Find out how much traffic the branded network’s site generates. Check with a company like Quantcast, which provides an estimate of the traffic generated to a single website. 2. Find out where the company pulls in the leads. An unscrupulous company might be purchasing low-quality […]
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Performance Above Presence
The November/December issue of the CBA’s National Magazine featured an article entitled “Workplace Transformation“. The article poses the question of whether the legal profession is ready to focus on methods of practice that emphasize the lawyer’s performance above presence. I was interviewed for this article because of my work in virtual law practice and […]
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