A Report from Darryl Mountain, Guest Blogger, on the Pacific Legal Technology Conference
On Friday, October 2nd, I presented at Vancouver’s Pacific Legal Technology Conference on the topic of Virtual Law Practice with Simon Chester of Heenan Blaikie and Nicole Garton-Jones of Heritage Law.
We discussed the two heads of the definition of virtual law practice: practising law over the Internet through a secure online portal and practising law under one brand through satellite offices (which are often home offices).
Nicole is an early adopter who described her experience in managing Heritage Law, a paperless office where most staff work from home. Some staff are located in places such as Victoria and the Sunshine Coast that are remote from Heritage Law’s central office in West Vancouver. Heritage Law soon will be implementing DirectLaw through a separate business model called Heritage Law Online, subject to regulatory approval.
I analyzed Web-enabled virtual law practice using the Eliminate-Reduce-Raise-Create grid, which sets out a framework for contrasting innovative value propositions with conventional value propositions. It comes from a book called Blue Ocean Strategy. Among other things, Web-enabled virtual law practice eliminates the visit to the lawyer’s office, reduces cost and waste, raises a lawyer’s reach beyond his or her immediate geographical area, and creates a packaged solution. I also discussed Chrissy Burns’ PhD thesis, entitled “Online Legal Services—A Revolution that Failed?.” It is found at http://tinyurl.com/kvtden.
Simon discussed the regulatory issues involved in setting up a virtual law practice in Canada. Canadian regulators have not addressed virtual law practice specifically but there are issues with regard to limited scope representation, preservation of data, and the client identification and verification rules.
Our PowerPoint slides from the presentation are located here:
http://www.pacificlegaltech.com/download/SSF2.pdf
Reported by Darryl Mountain, President, Ontago, Inc.
