Virtual Law Practice

Category: Unbundling – Limited Scope

  • ABA Annual: Delivering “Unbundled Legal Services” Over the Internet

    If you are attending ABA Annual in Chicago in a few weeks, please join myself, Richard Granat and Will Hornsby, for our CLE panel discussion about delivering unbundled legal services online. The program is sponsored by the ABA Standing Committee on the Delivery of Legal Services and will be held on Friday, August 3rd from 3-4:30pm. Additional educational materials will be provided to attendees. Here is the program description:

    The concept of delivering “unbundled” or “limited legal services” is not a new idea, but the idea becomes much more powerful when these legal services are delivered over the Internet as an online legal service. This program will help all law firms, but especially solos and small law firms, learn how to design an “online limited legal service”. Issues discussed include: designing and pricing the legal service; Internet applications that support online delivery; marketing “unbundled legal services online” ; ethical issues that need to be considered, including the creation and termination of the attorney/client relationship, the limited legal service retainer agreement, and confidentiality of client data. Existing models for delivering “unbundled legal services” online will also be discussed as well as the economics of this approach to online legal service delivery.

  • Stanford CodeX Speaker Presentation Video

    Last week I gave a presentation at Stanford Law School entitled “Unbundling and the Future of Legal Service Delivery.” There was a good turnout and we had some great questions from the attendees at the end of the talk which I enjoyed.

    Thanks again to Stanford CodeX and the Stanford Center on the Legal Profession for inviting me out there to share my thoughts on these topics. I am introduced by Tony Lai, one of the founders of LawGives, a legal tech startup working with CodeX and StartX, that I also had the pleasure of spending time with while in Palo Alto. Below is the video from my talk.

  • 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.

     

  • Launch of Unbundling Book at ABA Techshow

    Last week at the ABA Techshow in Chicago, I was pleased to launch the publication of my new book on unbundling.

    Writing a book on limited scope services seemed like a logical next step in the process of reevaluating how the legal profession can adapt to the changes it faces as a result of disruptive technology, economic recession, Internet-empowered consumers and other factors that I discuss in the book. In my opinion, unbundling is a concept that underlies and works with all of the changes that legal visionaries like Richard Susskind, Jordan Furlong and others have been preaching to us for the past several years. I was grateful to Jordan Furlong for writing a wonderful Foreward for the book.

    The goal of this book is to educate lawyers and law firms on the processes they should to go through to responsibly add limited scope services as part of restructuring their delivery methods to adapt to changes in our legal marketplace. Whereas my other book on virtual law practice was geared more towards solos and firms that were interested primarily in online delivery methods, this book on unbundling is applicable to almost every firm structure from traditional to a hybrid virtual law firm, from solos to large firms and in-house counsel.

    It is not only individuals of lower to moderate means who are seeking limited scope services from law firms, but many more sophisticated client bases are keen on finding law firms that provide this. Accordingly, there is a great potential here for increased revenue for law firms as well as for the public to receive alternative forms of legal service delivery, increasing access to justice across the board. Naturally, the book covers the many ethics rules, best practices, and sometimes complex process of determining when unbundling is appropriate and when full-service is necessary. (more…)

  • Another State Bar Proposes to Allow Online “Daily Deals”

    I wrote a couple weeks ago about South Carolina’s new Formal Ethics Opinion 11-05 regarding an attorney’s use of services, such as Groupon, to offer discounts and deals on their legal services.  North Carolina also has a proposed ethics opinion, 2011 Formal Ethics Opinion 10 entitled “Lawyer Advertising on Deal of the Day or Group Coupon Website.”

    The proposed NC ethics opinion states:

    [A] lawyer may advertise on a website that offers daily discounts to consumers where the website company’s compensation is a percentage of the amount paid to the lawyer if certain disclosures are made and certain conditions are satisfied.

    The primary concern with this opinion and the one that was published in South Carolina is that it does not violate Rule 5.4(a) which prohibits sharing of legal fees with nonlawyers. In the case of the website providing the daily deals service to the lawyer for his or her practice, the fees are directly paid by the lawyer for the cost of advertising and does not include any fees paid by the lawyer’s clients obtained through the daily deals service.

    Ensuring that this method does not equate to fee-splitting and that the method falls under the normal costs of advertising, the opinion goes on to caution that a few other rules and regulations related to lawyer advertising may arise depending on the website service used and how the attorney uses it to market their services.

    To simplify the basic rules laid out in this opinion:

    1) Don’t mislead your prospective clients (it has to actually be a discount from your regular fees offered);

    2) Disclose the method and remind prospective clients not to act hastily in making decisions about their legal representation (um, isn’t that actually the marketing benefit of a coupon – to create immediacy and prompt the consumer to spend? anyway….) ;

    3) Remind them that there may be some reason why you can’t go through with the discount because of conflict of interest, jurisdiction conflict, etc.;

    4) Still follow trust accounting rules even if the funds go to the website service first as prepaid fees;

    5) If you put a time limit on the discount and the client lets it expire, you can’t go back and charge your regular fee for the same service. You have to return any advance payment on the service or if the client agrees to the higher price, add that advance payment to the revised cost;

    6) The legal work provided must still be competent. So if the services exceed what the discount included, you still have the obligation to provide full, competent services to complete the matter for them.

    Both this proposed opinion and the one in South Carolina will be interesting to watch to see how attorneys implement them into their marketing strategies for their firms. It would seem like unbundled legal services at fixed fees would work best with these types of daily deal offers. Following best practices for delivering unbundled services, in terms of educating the client about the scope of services and signing a limited scope engagement agreement would protect both the attorney and the client in this situation.

    UPDATE: It looks like the New York State Bar Association published an ethics opinion on daily deal sites in December 2011: NYSBA Committee on Professional Ethics Opinion 897 (12/13/11). (HT to NY Attorney Paul Jeff Perez.)

     

  • Unbundling Legal Services Webinar Slides

    Check out the slides from a webinar I gave yesterday for AVVO which provides the basics of unbundling legal services with ethics issues and best practices.

    Unbundling Legal Services

    As the owner of a virtual law office for going on six years now I’ve heard multiple times from other attorneys that because I 1) use technology to delivery legal services to my clients, and 2) that I unbundle my legal services, that I am essentially nothing more than a solo mimicking LegalZoom.  

    I feel the need to put this assumption to rest yet again and not just for my own pride in my practice (as an aside I just received the Wilmington Parent Family Favorite Attorney Award for the 5th year in a row for my virtual law office), but because it’s critical that others in the legal profession get this distinction about what unbundling legal services means and how it can benefit our profession and the public. 

    Unbundling legal services is not limited to using document automation and assembly programs to deliver legal forms to consumers online.  Unbundling is a complementary form of legal service delivery that may be used by traditional brick and mortar law practices, even those that focus on litigation, as well as truly web-based law practices and hybrid structures that combine the traditional law firm with a virtual delivery or communication component.  (more…)

  • Law Firms Providing Unbundled Services Online to Meet Public Demand

    Gary Munneke, Chair of the Law Practice Management Committee, at the New York State Bar Association has written a thought-provoking article entitled “Dueling Sanctions . . .  And More” in a recent NYSBA publication.  He refers to an incident reported by the ABA Journal  about a law firm that came under heat from another firm for providing unbundled, self-help legal documents to individuals through the firm’s website. 

    By now our profession should be able to admit that we know consumers are going online in large numbers seeking out online legal services.  Typically they end up at an online legal service company that provides state-specific legal forms without attorney review.  In the worst cases, they are attempting to Google their legal needs and cut and paste together documents that they can’t afford an attorney to help them with. 

    Wouldn’t it be better if the public knew they had an alternative to these options and could actually obtain unbundled legal services from a licensed professional?

    Realizing that self-help legal forms and other free, educational legal content can be used both for the benefit of the public and as a marketing tool for the law firm, some attorneys are beginning to offer self-help services and resources through their website.  This gives them a competitive advantage over law firms that do not offer this online. 

    In many cases, the pro se individuals discover after downloading the forms that they could really use an attorney’s help in proceeding.  They end up going back to the firm that was willing to provide them with the DIY method first without charging them a $200 hour consultation first.  The attorneys posting these self-help documents on their websites realize the current availability of legal forms online and have identified the public’s interest in DIY legal assistance. 

    While firms some offer these forms for free, the attorney in the case discussed by Munneke charged $19.95 for the unbundled legal forms.  That has the potential to pull in a little extra revenue for the firm in addition to some potential prospective clients.  Not a bad marketing strategy that keeps that firm in the running with the online legal service companies.  Law firms that do not offer unbundled legal services, online or off, should reconsider how their firm is adapting to changes in the legal marketplace. 

    As Mr. Munneke writes in his review of this trend:

    Many services, some run by lawyers and law firms, and some not, make available a cornucopia of information, forms, and interactive advice. Although many law firms have eschewed online legal services delivery systems, and use their websites as online billboards, the trend in practice is for more firms to provide more services online. These online services will siphon legal work from pure bricks and mortar law firms in coming years.

    There are two trends here that should be closely watched in 2011:

    1)  The delivery of unbundled legal services is gaining renewed popularity, and

    2)  Elawyering methods, such as the use of a virtual law office and client portals, are growing as lawyers recognize their ability to use the technology to meet a consumer need and create a more efficient and cost-effective delivery of services.

  • Review of PA Ethics Opinion on Virtual Law Offices

    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 New Jersey.

    FEO 2010-200 defines virtual law office (VLO) as

    “a law office that exists without a traditional physical counterpart, in which attorneys primarily or exclusively access client and other information online, and where most client communications are conducted electronically, e.g., by email, etc.”  

    The opinion recognizes that there are different forms of virtual law practice and specifically states that it is not addressing issues related to “client portals” or cloud computing because both traditional and virtual offices may use these. 

    There are several questions that the 14 page opinion addresses including the following: 1) whether an attorney may operate a VLO in the state, 2) using a VLO to work from home or or in locations outside PA, 3) listing a physical address in ads for the VLO or letterhead, 4) using a PO box as the address, 5) if a geographic location must be given to the client letting them know where the attorney will handle the services or meet with them, 6) for a multiple attorney firm, if it is necessary to disclose all of the cities and states from which those attorneys are performing their services, 7) if the firm or attorney with a VLO can claim that fees are lower than a traditional law office, 8 ) compliance with the duty of confidentiality, 9) if the attorney does not meet face to face with clients, if there are other steps required to confirm client identity and handle issues such as diminished capacity.   In clear format, the opinion then lists the direct answers to each of these issues before jumping into its analysis of the PA rules of professional conduct as applied to VLOs. (more…)

  • Technology eReport Features ELawyering

    The September issue of the Technology eReport from the ABA GP, Solo and Small Firm Division has a feature article on elawyering written by virtual lawyering pioneer, Richard Granat.  The article is entitled “Doing Law on the Web: eLawyering for Competitive Advantage” and provides an introduction to elawyering or virtual lawyering, but also goes into a great description of web-enabled document automation and how this can be used to deliver legal services to clients online.

    Also cited in the article is the evidence of growing demand by the public for online legal services.  Granat writes,

    A recent survey of more than 2,000 online users revealed that a majority of consumers expect good law firms to offer their services online in the next couple of years. The online poll revealed that nearly half (47%) of consumers would be more likely to choose a law firm that offered the convenience of online access to legal services and documents over one that had no online service capability. Some 56 percent said they expected good law firms to give customers the ability to use their services online in the next couple of years. Over two-fifths (43%) agreed that they would change law firms if an alternative firm offered a reduced fee in return for the consumer providing initial details about their matter online.

    This is good news for those of us with a virtual law office who have seen the demand from our online clients, but have not seen any report published to confirm this.

  • Ethics Considerations: Guest Post on Mass. LOMAP Blog

    The final guest post in my three-part series for the Massachusett’s Law Office Management Assistance Program (LOMAP) has posted on the blog.  This final post covers ethics considerations in virtual law practice including both the attorney’s responsibility to thoroughly research their software provider as well as best practices for the ethical management of a virtual law office.  

    Below is the introduction to the post.  Many thanks to Jared Correia for the opportunity to share my research and writing with the readers of the LOMAP blog.

    From the guest post:

    The delivery of legal services online carries with it a number of ethical concerns; however, these ethical concerns are not all that unlike those that have traditionally been addressed by offline law firms. The online lawyer is able to mitigate risks associated with virtual law practice just as a traditionally-practicing attorney would with an offline practice when, for example, installing and using software for law practice management. There are two separate categories of ethics matters to address in connection with the virtual practice of law. The first pertains to the attorney’s duty in selecting the service provider that will be setting up, hosting and maintaining the virtual law practice. With any cloud computing service, there are precautions that must be observed in researching and choosing a software provider. The second category of potential ethics concerns relates to the attorney’s daily operation of the virtual law office; and, the focus there is on ways to mitigate potential malpractice risks when working with clients online. Further issues related to each category are discussed in greater detail below; and, in addition, suggestions are made and additional resources are pointed to, for further guidance.

    You can read the rest of the guest post on the LOMAP blog.

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