By now most of you have read the news that Google Ventures invested $18.5 million into Rocket Lawyer. Back in 2008, we read that Rocket Lawyer had partnered with Lexis Nexis and their Lawyers.com service. Should we really be surprised at this next stage of evolution? Many of us in the legal industry are trying to figure out what the [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

Below is the text from my letter to the NC Bar Ethics Committee regarding their proposed ethics opinion on the use of Software as a Service (SaaS) in law practice management.  The Committee has received only two comments so far.  This is an important issue that will have a big impact on attorneys in NC and potentially elsewhere [...]

Thank you to NC Jolt for inviting me to speak to law students at UNC School of Law in Chapel Hill last week. Special thanks to 3L John Kivus (@kivus) for making the connections. I appreciated the opportunity to share this topic with the next generation of legal professionals. Awesome questions from the attendees as [...]

When my husband and I sold VLOTech, our legal software as a service solution that created virtual law offices, to Total Attorneys in the fall of 2009 we were anxious to see some of the items on our development list taken to the next level.   Almost a year and a half later, I’m excited to [...]

Below is a law review article I wrote recently for the University of Dayton Law Review, Volume 36:1, entitled “Practicing Law Without an Office Address: How the Bona Fide Office Requirement Affects Virtual Law Practice.”  // < ![CDATA[ var docstoc_docid="72207773";var docstoc_title="PRACTICING LAW WITHOUT AN OFFICE";var docstoc_urltitle="PRACTICING LAW WITHOUT AN OFFICE"; // ]]>PRACTICING LAW WITHOUT AN [...]

Check out the latest issue of the Massachusetts Lawyers Journal for an article I wrote about operating a virtual law office.  It covers the basics, ethics issues and marketing and was compiled from three guest posts that I wrote for Mass LOMAP this past summer.  From the publication: Two influential forces are driving attorneys and [...]

Entitled “Ethical Obligations on Maintaining a Virtual Office for the Practice of Law in Pennsylvania”, the PA Bar Association Committee on Legal Ethics and Professional Responsibility published its FEO 2010-200 this month.  The opinion is in stark contrast to the out-dated thinking in the ethics opinion discussing virtual law offices published this past spring by its neighboring state of [...]

I’ve noticed an interesting increase in the number of landlord/tenant-related legal issues that are coming into my virtual law office.  Most of the requests have been from landlords who are having issues with collecting rent.  Others are requesting new lease agreements.  Landlord/tenant law is one area in which I have not set up my virtual law office [...]