Virtual Law Practice

Category: ABA

  • Presentation on Virtual Law Practice for Ethics Commission 20/20

    ABA Ethics Commission 20/20 PresentationThe ABA’s Commission on Ethics 20/20 held a public hearing at the ABA’s Mid-year conference in Orlando, Florida to discuss topics related to their Preliminary Issues Outline.  On Friday, I was honored to be invited to speak to the commission about virtual law practice. The ABA Now wrote up an article about the hearing and presentations here.  

    Below are slides from my presentation at the hearing.  The text of the hearing should be available on the ABA’s website at some point in the near future.  I am happy to report that the Commission is making a great effort to educate itself on the subject of virtual law practice from the benefits to the concerns related to this form of law practice.  I hope to have the opportunity in the future to share additional information on the topic with its members. 

    Virtual Law Practice – ABA Commission on Ethics 20/20

    View more presentations from Stephanie Kimbro.

  • Happy New Year – Going on Year 4

    Happy New Year!   I reviewed many of the virtual law practice news from 2009 in my last post.  In this post I want to look forward to the year ahead by providing some news about my own virtual law office and upcoming speaking/sharing engagements.

    2010 will mark year four of owning my own solo, virtual law practice.  I opened Kimbro Legal Services in the winter of 2006 right around the time that I welcomed my daughter to the world.  I remember being so excited about taking the leap into my own solo practice but also trying to ignore the negative comments that other attorneys had shared with me regarding the idea of making the practice completely web-based.  And four years later, virtual law practice is something that is being embraced by the legal profession and expanding in innovation and technology way beyond what I had imagined back in ’06.  I’m so grateful to be able to share my experiences with other attorneys and to assist them in setting up their own virtual law offices.

    Looking forward to 2010, there will be several opportunities to share information about virtual law practices with others in the legal community.  (more…)

  • Virtual Law Practice Teleconference and Live Audio Webcast

    This upcoming Thursday, December 17 at 1pm EST, Richard Granat, Marc Lauritsen and myself will be co-presenting a CLE teleconference and live audio webcast entitled “The Virtual Law Firm: Benefits, Costs and Ethical Pitfalls to Avoid.”  It is sponsored by the American Bar Association LPM Section and the ABA Center for Continuing Legal Education.

    From the program description, the topics that will be covered include:

    • What is a “virtual law firm”
    • The benefits of delivering legal services online
    • The web architecture for a virtual law firm
    • Online applications, such as web-enabled document automation
    • Ethical issues in the delivery of online legal services, including confidentiality, security, unauthorized practice of law, client identification, conflict of interest checking and client authentication procedures
    • Criteria of vendor selection
    • The costs associated with setting up a virtual law practice
    • Marketing your brand and virtual law practice online

    If  you are interested in virtual law practice or are operating a virtual law firm, please consider joining us for this session.  In addition to some really practical advice on this form of delivering legal services using technology, the session will also provide 1.5 hours of CLE credit in most states.  Have any specific questions you would like answered during the conference?  Please drop a line in the comments section below or email me.

    UPDATE: The teleconference had a really nice turnout and we received great questions from the audience both on the phone and online. I believe the recording of the CLE and materials will now be available for purchase from the ABA at some point.

  • Technology eReport: Setting Up a Web-Based Virtual Law Office

    Check out my article in the November issue of the ABA GP/Solo & Small Firm Technology eReport: Setting Up a Web-based Virtual Law Office.  From the article:

    Consumers are actively seeking more affordable and convenient access to legal services over the Internet. Due to the cost of traditional legal services, they are turning to cutting and pasting together sample online legal documents or purchasing cheap legal forms online without the benefit of attorney review. The economic recession has further hastened this trend. To address consumer demand, more attorneys are opening web-based virtual law offices (VLOs) or adding a VLO to an existing traditional law firm structure to deliver legal services to clients online.

    There are different ways to define and structure a virtual law practice. Simply put, a virtual law practice is a professional law practice where an attorney is able to work with clients over the Internet through a secure portal from the establishment of the attorney/client relationship through to the payment of and final rendering of legal services. The technology used to create and maintain a VLO is a software as a service (SaaS) hosted system, often referred to as practicing law “in the cloud.” To set up a virtual law practice, an attorney should be aware of a number of practical and ethical considerations discussed below.

  • Minimum Requirements for Delivering Legal Services Online

    Co-chairs of the ABA eLawyering Task Force, Marc Lauritsen and Richard Granat, have submitted a draft set of minimum requirements for delivering legal services online which was published in this month’s Law Practice Today.  As a member of the Task Force, we have discussed these minimum requirements as a set of guidelines that attorneys will be able to turn to when they are interested in forming a virtual law practice .  Once approved by the ABA’s LPM, these requirements may be used by different state bars as a way to guide attorneys in their states who are forming virtual law practices.  You may check out the minimum requirements posted in the article and the Task Force welcomes comments and reactions to the document through their listserv. 

    Keep in mind when reading these minimum requirements that the idea behind them is to provide guidance, but not to be too specific in ways that might stifle future innovation in the delivery of legal service.  The topics covered include website architecture, ethics issues, statement of terms and conditions, retainer agreement acceptance, online payment of legal fees, protecting client confidences, and security certification.

  • Keane Award Nomination Info Available

    The updated materials for the ABA Jim Keane Award for Excellence in ELawyering have been posted on the ABA website for the 2010 Techshow and on the ELawyering Task Force website.  Requirements to be considered for the award are listed as well as an online nomination form.   Please also read my previous post about the award.

  • Excellence in eLawyering: ABA Keane Award Nominations

    It’s that time of year again to consider sending in your nominations for the ABA’s James I. Keane Memorial Award for Excellence in eLawyering. The Award is presented by the Law Practice Management Section’s eLawyering Task Force at the ABA TECHSHOW in Chicago at the end of March.  My virtual law office, Kimbro Legal Services, was the recipient of the 2009 Keane Award and it was a great opportunity to share my VLO with the legal profession.    

    If you are or know of an attorney operating a virtual law practice and using technology to deliver legal services to clients, consider submitting a nomination for the 2010 Keane Award.  More detailed submission information will be made available on the LPM site shortly. 

    From the LPM website:

    The James I. Keane Memorial Award gives recognition to law offices or legal organizations that have developed legal service innovations delivered over the Internet. Thus, the focus of the award is the innovative delivery of personal legal services, with special attention given to firms and entities that serve both moderate income individuals and the broad middle class.

  • Spring Virtual Law Office Update

    By now the word has circulated that the ABA Techshow website has posted the audio file from Richard Susskind’s keynote presentation at the ABA Techshow in Chicago earlier this month.  I wasn’t able to attend the event and accept the Keane Memorial Award for Excellence in Elawyering.  However, my husband, the programmer who designed my virtual law office software, attended to accept the award on my behalf.  The presentation came with a lovely plaque that I will hang in my home office.  Of course none of my online clients will get to see it, but I will have to find a way to “decorate” my VLO with some mention of the award.

    Thanks to all of the Twitterers in the audience, I followed the presentation from home and got a good overview of the speech from tweets.  Today I finally had time to listen to the ABA audio file of Susskind’s speech.  He’s a very dynamic speaker which is something that you just can’t get from following a speaker on Twitter.  I was also happy to hear that at the end they included the ABA Task Force’s presentation of the award to my VLO and my husband’s acceptance speech.  Since I wasn’t there to accept it in person, it was nice to hear how it went.

    In other news, my VLO received the Family Favorite Attorney Award for the third year in a row from the Wilmington Parent Magazine, a local parenting publication that many of my online clients read.  This award means a lot of me because it comes from some of the individuals and families that I work with online.  It has helped each year to build my confidence in my virtual elawyering skills and to generate additional client referrals.  A couple articles were also published about my VLO in the NC Lawyer’s Weekly and other law-related publications.  Hopefully all the attention will generate additional interest in virtual law practice and the delivery of legal services using technology.

    Aside from my own virtual law practice, my company, VLOTech, received the 2009 Coastal Entrepreneur Award and was invited to meet with a panel of business experts to discuss the company.  It was a great opportunity to learn from other entrepreneurs who have taken their dreams, accepted the risks and made it happen.

    This spring has been a busy one both personally and professionally.  My goal is to return to blogging more about actual virtual law practice in the summer months as things settle down a bit.

  • Virtual Law Office Listed as a “Law Firm Website That Works”

    The April edition of the ABA Journal published an article entitled Law Firm Websites That Work.  Under the category “Virtuality”, my virtual law practice is described along with illinoisdivorce.com.

    The article consulted a list of panelists to provide suggestions for law firm websites that are productive in the categories of branding, solo, innovation, virtuality, all business, and youth appeal.  Take a look at these websites and the marketing techniques and services they offer their clients.  There may be ways to integrate aspects of several into your own ideas for a virtual law practice website.

  • BigLaw Attorneys Taking to Virtual Law Practice

    The ABA Journal published an online article today about the progress that Virtual Law Partners (VLP) has made in recruiting attorneys from large law firms.  One of the reasons for the growth is the downturn in the economy and large law firm layoffs.  The beneficial reasons cited for the move to a virtual law firm by the former BigLaw attorney include having to put in fewer billable hours for the same return in client revenue and he was able to take with him the majority of his clients and continue to work with them remotely.

    VLP has an interesting structure for a virtual law practice because each attorney in the virtual firm works independently, but all of the attorneys pool resources as a single network.  I’m not clear on the actual technology and security they use to work remotely with each other or with their clients.  However, it will be interesting to see how their network holds up as it continues to grow and add attorneys.

    From their example, solos and small firms can see the benefits of practicing law online and how this option can be available for an attorney who may never have been interested in working for a large large firm.  It does not take the infrastructure of a brick and mortar law office with a huge staff and a fortune in marketing and advertising to be able to provide quality legal services to the public online.  As the way of the future, virtual law practice will allow the solo practitioner and small firm to really compete on the same level and to form the same online and social networks as attorneys who formerly worked for BigLaw.  It’s already happening on a small level and will continue to grow as the technology remains affordable and allows for increased attorney collaboration.  The playing field is leveling off.

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