In a Slowing Economy - Benefits of A Virtual Law Practice

Kevin O'Keefe over at Real Lawyers Have Blogs summarized Dennis Kennedy's suggestions for how attorneys can cut costs in the slowing economy.

At the top of the list was find technology that cuts costs for your law practice. Maybe it should also read: cut out the legal software that was supposed to save you time. Instead, find a more efficient way to accomplish the same law practice management and client development tasks by looking at technologies that other businesses besides attorneys are using to cut costs and raise client revenue.

WSJ Mentions Virtual Offices - Software as a Service to Replace Software

Software as a Service (SaaS) is starting to replace software that you install on your PC. It's simpler to use and more cost effective for the user because they do not individually have to worry about keeping up to date on security or backing up their data. The company that provides the SaaS does this for the user.

Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce.com, Inc., a company that makes online services that aid salespeople in keeping track ot their customers, told WSJ reporters in the Business Technology section of Tuesday's paper that "I think the big news is that there will be no office. The office is becoming more virtual every day, and the technology that's making that happen is the huge wave of mobility...."

Software as a Service is what my virtual practice runs on. Virtual Law Office Technology is SaaS. I don't have to be a computer whiz or keep current on every security patch that is needed for software on my PC. Instead I can spend that time building my practice. I was thrilled to read this article in the WSJ about the "future built on platforms." Lexis and Westlaw, take note.

Consider the time and money an attorney could save using SaaS to run a virtual practice rather than having to keep up on security updates, hardware for backups and storage of critical data.

Virtual Law Practice Heralded as the Future of Solos and Small Practices

The response to my guest post on Susan Cartier Liebel's blog Build a Solo Practice, LLC has been overwhelming. In the past three days Virtual Law Office Technology has been swamped with emails and a few phone calls from other solos interested in using the release version of the web application. I've really been enjoying hearing from these other attorneys with solo or small practices and learning how they run their businesses and how they would like to see this technology work for them.

Also heralding virtual law practice as the future of solos and small firms, Jordan Furlong, Editor-in-Chief of National magazine at the Canadian Bar Association, writes here on his blog Law21, "Small, flexible, accessible, affordable, and turn-on-a-dimeable — that’s what tomorrow’s solo and small firms will look like. It seems that, in some quarters at least, tomorrow has arrived early." He was kind enough to mention my virtual law practice, the Virtual Law Office Technology, and the guest post to Susan's blog.

Guest Blogging

This week I was invited by Susan Cartier Liebel of Build a Solo Practice, LLC to write a blog post describing my virtual practice, the technology that it runs on and why I opted to provide unbundled legal services and fixed fees online. I get great ideas and motivation from reading Susan's blog so I was excited to be able to add my two cents and hopefully introduce the idea of a completely virtual practice to some of her readers. I invite you to read the post here.

Unsecure Law Office Emails - Not the Only Way to Talk to Clients Online

Ross Kodner of Ross Ipsa Loquitur posted sections of an interview with his state’s bar journal about the state of legal technology. Predictably, the question of security in legal technology came up here.

As Kodner discusses, email communications are unsecure and to help with the potential ethics violations, he recommends that attorneys let their clients know from the beginning that email is unsecure. This is a good practice tip for attorneys no matter how much technology they use in their day to day practice.

Even though I communicate with my clients through my secure website only, there occasionally are clients who will find my email address and email me rather than use the website interface. When this happens, I make a point of telling them that email is unencrypted and therefore not as secure as my website where, like online banking, they can have more options of communicating with me than in an unsecure email. Once they understand this, most clients will go to the virtual office.

The trend with law office websites is still the “contact us” form that is sent by unencrypted email and gives the client a chance to disclose their legal issues to the attorney or whoever is answering the law office’s incoming email. The concern from my perspective is that this form of unsecure communication will be confused with my secure virtual website and the methods that the vlo technology uses to protect the client’s information.

Not everyone in the legal profession can be computer experts or technology buffs in addition to successful attorneys. If legal professionals understood the basics, that there are forms of electronic communication that are more secure than email and that these methods were easy to use and required little money and energy, then they might have more confidence in integrating (or hiring someone to integrate) that form of communication into their practices for the benefit of their professional development.