eLawyering Blog

LEGALTECH NEW YORK 2009

rich@granat.com (Richard Granat) — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 12:43:21 -0500

We are exhibiting our DirectLaw Web Service at LEGALTECH in New York on February 2-4, 2009. This show is one of the largest legal technology shows involving over 450 legal technology vendors which attract over 13,000 participants. The show is at the New York Hilton at 1335 Sixth Avenue. We are Booth #1621 on Level II. If you are planning to attend, please stop by for a demonstration of our DIrectLaw Service or just to chat about new developments in the delivery of online legal services. We will be introducing the latest version of Rapidocs, known as Rapidocs 4.0, which is our web-enabled document automation solution that operates totally within the web browser without requiring the downloading of an Active X control, Java Applet, or other software application. Come see legal documents assembled in real time within the web browser.

Richard Cohen, CO-CEO of EPOQ, our sister company in the London, will also be in attendance and is up to date on new developments to de-regulate the legal profession in the UK and EPOQ's new mylawyer network of web-enabled UK law firms that serve consumers.

The End of Lawyers? Rethinking the Nature of Legal Services

rich@granat.com (Richard Granat) — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 19:22:17 -0500

Richard Susskind's new book, The End of Lawyers?: Rethinking the Nature of Legal Services was just published by Oxford University Press, in the United Kingdom. I received a copy from my associates in London today, and US distribution should begin within 10 days. For law firms thinking about the future of the legal profession, this book should be mandatory reading.

Susskind sees the legal market as “broken.” Access to justice is available only to citizens who are very poor or very rich. The cost of dispute resolution in the courts often exceeds the amount at issue. Small businesses invariably claim that mainstream legal services are beyond their budgets. And even the world's largest companies and financial institutions are seeking radically new ways of meeting their legal needs.

Susskind argues that, in this time of grave economic uncertainty, the market will no longer tolerate traditional, expensive lawyers who handcraft tasks that can be better discharged with the support of modern systems and techniques. He claims that the legal profession will be driven by two forces in the coming decade: by a market pull towards the commoditization of legal services, and by the increase of disruptive, Internet-based technologies. The threat here for lawyers is clear - their jobs may well be eroded or even displaced.

Susskind challenges the legal profession to ask what elements of their current workload could be undertaken more quickly, more cheaply, more efficiently, or to a higher quality using different and new methods of working. Susskind argues that if automation can streamline certain legal tasks and that the market will forces lawyers to adapt to the "digitization" or they won't survive.

I am still working my way through this important book, so will have more to say in future blog posts when I finish it.

First Virtual Law Firm in Iowa

rich@granat.com (Richard Granat) — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 18:00:09 -0500

Bernardo Granwehr has launched Iowa's first virtual law firm focusing on family law matters and wills at IowaLawyerOnLine. The law firm offers legal forms bundled with legal advice for fixed price. For example, Iowa Divorce Forms with Minor Children sells for $299.00 and a Will sells for $100.00. The divorce services are designed for pro se itigants. The web site is powered by our DirectLaw hosted service which includes the Rapidocs web-enabled document automation capability. Cllients complete on-line questionnaires which generate completed forms and documents ready for attorney review. The use of a web-enabled document automation capability keeps the cost of document creation to a minimum enabling the attorney to spend time giving legal advice and additional custom-drafting at still make a reasonable fee for the time expended.

Nominations Now Open for James I. Keane Memorial Award in eLawyering

rich@granat.com (Richard Granat) — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 14:42:57 -0500

The James I. Keane Memorial Award for Excellence in eLawyering is awarded once a year by the Law Practice Management Section of the American Bar Association at the Annual ABA TECHSHOW in Chicago. The Award is named for James I. Keane, the founding Chair of the ABA eLawyering Task Force. The Task Force was created in 2000, when ABA President William G. Paul, of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, took the unusual and creative step of asking a Section to assume responsibility for one of his presidential initiatives, namely an examination of ways that lawyers could use the Internet and other electronic resources to deliver legal services to people of moderate means more efficiently and effectively. Last year's recipient was the law firm of Cowell Taradash, P.C., based in Chicago, for the web site at Illinoisdivorce.com . The ABA eLawyering Task Force of the Law Practice Management Section will review the nominations and select the recipient. The Award Guidelines and Nomination Forms can be found here. Law firms can nominate themselves. The deadline for submission is January 15. 2009.

Louisiana Virtual Law Firm

rich@granat.com (Richard Granat) — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 12:58:48 -0500

Myrna Arroyo, a solo practitioner in located in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, who specializes in estate planning, has launched a virtual law firm site that offers wills, living trusts, and other estate planning documents bundled with legal advice for a fixed price. The site is designed to provide an alernative to web sites like LegacyWriter, Do Your Own Will, LegalZoom, and Wills-Online, which offer legal forms without any legal advice. None of these legal form web sites offer documents that are specific to the State of Louisiana because of the particular nature of Louisiana law, which is based on the French Civil Code. Users are able to complete an on-line questionnaire which generates a completed legal document, ready for lawyer review, analysis, and further customization. Web enabled document automation enables saves time in document creation, enabling Ms. Arroyo to provide legal advice with the document for a fixed price. The site is powered by Epoq's, DirectLaw Web Service.

virtual law firms vs. elawyering

rich@granat.com (Richard Granat) — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 17:23:48 -0500

There has been some recent press about the concept of the virtual law firm. Craig Johnson has started a web-based law firm called Virtual Law Partners, P.C. The idea is to eliminate the overhead of a physical office or offices and to increase client collaboration over the Internet. I think this is a positive trend and indicates that lawyers are beginning to think about new ways of delivering legal services over the Internet. We would not call this firm, however, an instance of eLawyering, in the absence of digital applications that substitute for the labor of a lawyer -- such as web-enabled document automation. While these pioneering virtual law firms, may be saving the cost of a brick and mortar infrastructure resulting in lower fees to clients, their attorneys still work the same old way which is to bill for their time. Web-enabled digital applications on the other hand substitute for the time of an attorney and are truly disruptive as this time saving feature can result in more radical cost savings and translate into dramatically lower legal fees. We can envision that emerging virtual law firms will incorporate digital applications into their business models creating fixed price service packages for less complex legal services. At that time, these firms will morph into true providers of elawyering services.

ABA eLawyering Task Force Meets in Santa, Fe, NM

rich@granat.com (Richard Granat) — Fri, 23 May 2008 12:15:30 -0500

The eLawyering Task Force of the Law Practice Management Section of the American Bar Association has its quarterly meeting in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The group discussed projects that are underway including: developing guidelines for malpractice carriers, adding content to the eLawyering part of the LPM/ABA web site; the development of a webinar on eLawyering concepts that would be delivered as a CLE program through the ABA, and the development of a model curriculum unit that could be used in Law Schools on delivering legal services on-line, as part of a law practice management course.

A submission date of December 1, 2008 was set for acceptance of applications from law firms for the James Keane Memorial Award for Excellence in eLawyering, for next year's award. The Award is given annually at the ABA LEGALTECHSHOW in Chicago, which this year is scheduled for April, 2009. Last year's award was won by the law firm of Cowell Taradash, P.C. for their website at IllinoisDivorce.com

The next meeting of Task Force is on October 16-18, 2008 during LPM Section Fall Meeting at
The Westin La Paloma Resort & Spa - Tucson, Arizona. Lawyers interested in virtual lawyering are welcome to attend. The meeting is an open meeting, and the Task Force is recruiting new volunteers who want to work on these issues.

What is LegalZoom?

rich@granat.com (Richard Granat) — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 23:32:05 -0500

LegalZoom is a California-based company that offers on-line paralegal document preparation services on a nationwide basis. A nationwide advertising program, financed in part by a relatively large capital investment from Polaris Venture Partners, is now underway in major national media markets with the goal of branding LegalZoom as the leading legal services web site on the Internet. With Robert Shapiro of OJ fame, as the company's leading spokesperson, LegalZoom uses the tag line: "We Put the Law on Your Side", a claim that the company could not make if it were a law firm under the marketing roles that govern the legal profession in all states. LegalZoom, as it is not a law firm, is not bound by these rules, Nevertheless, the company claims to be the leading legal web site. Is there something wrong with this picture?

When a customer arrives at the LegalZoom web site they are presented with a menu of legal documents that are sold for a fixed price. The documents are common legal documents that range from wills, powers of attorney, living wills, and no-fault divorce, on hand to business documents such as incorporation, trademark, and copyright on the other. The customer completes a web form and pays with a credit card. From the data inserted by the customer into the web form, a paralegal aided by document assembly software of some kind, generates a legal document or form, which is returned to the customer in paper format by regular mail.

Under long standing bar rules that are operative in every jurisdiction in the U.S, LegalZoom as a non law firm, cannot give legal advice of any kind, cannot modify a customer's answers in any way, and cannot do any custom drafting that is responsive to a customer's particular set of facts. The company in a very fine print disclaimer makes clear that it is not a law firm and that" "LegalZoom is prohibited from providing any kind of advice, explanation, opinion, or recommendation to a consumer about possible legal rights, remedies, defenses, options, selection of forms or strategies. " The company does do a review which has to be limited to making sure that all answers are completed in the Questionnaire, that the spelling is correct, and minor tasks that are limited to very narrow role of being a proof-reader of the customer's data entries.

The company claims that: "With LegalZoom's lawyer-free service, you can save up to 85% off the rates an attorney would charge for the same procedure. " This comparison misrepresents the contribution that an attorney makes when serving a client. It suggests that the LegalZoom service is equivalent to the services of an attorney, when it clearly isn't. The representation suggests that a consumer will receive the same result that they would get if they went to an attorney, which is clearly not the case. Moreover, there are many attorneys who charge fees which compare favorably with LegalZoom's fee structure, so the fees that lawyers charge for comparable transactions which are published on the LegalZoom web site are true of some law firms, but not all solo and small firms.

LegalZoom's prices are in fact not cheap, when you consider that with a bit of effort searching on Google a customer can find identical forms on the Internet that are either free, or which are sold for a modest fee, when compared to the "document preparation fees" that LegalZoom charges for very common legal documents.

But if the role of LegalZoom is really limited to data input and some minor editing and proofing, where's the beef?

There is no doubt that this service concept has been successful, because the company has claimed to have served 500,000 customers. LegalZoom's customers may believe that they are getting a service that is equivalent to the service that they would get from an attorney.

As a disruptive innovation, LegalZoom is demonstrating that there is room for competition in the delivery of legal services and that there are other way's to solve people's legal problems than going to an attorney, despite the very real limitations of the LegalZoom service.

It will be interesting to see how the organized bar responds to LegalZoom as the company becomes more dominant and continues to eat away at the legal profession's dominance in helping people solve their everyday legal problems.

Venture Capital Fund in UK Targets Legal Services Industry

rich@granat.com (Richard Granat) — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 13:53:43 -0500

Lyceum Capital, a UK private equity firm, has announced a new $500 million Fund to target opportunities in the legal services industry made possible by reform of the UK's regulatory structure that governs the legal profession. Richard Susskind an independent adviser to law firms, in-house legal departments, and national governments has been appointed as a Special Advisor to the Fund. Sussikind specializes in future trends in legal services and the impact of IT and is the author of the seminal book, The Future of Law: Facing the Challenges if Information Technology.

Described as the lawyers’ equivalent of the City’s Big Bang deregulation of 1986, the Legal Services Act will enable law firms to secure private or public investment and will permit non-lawyers to compete in the provision of legal services – together with or separately from legal professionals. Research by Smith & Williamson published in November last year indicated that nearly a quarter of firms interviewed would be seeking external capital in the next five years, typically of up to £20 million each. Most of those seeking capital were expected to be small to mid-sized firms and private equity was deemed a more popular source of finance than the public markets.

Commenting on Lyceum’s expansion into the legal services sector, Managing Partner, Jeremy Hand, says: “The legal services market is large, fragmented and offers considerable potential for continued growth – all characteristics of the sectors in which Lyceum has been successful. We anticipate consolidation of small and mid-sized legal services businesses and believe that, in spite of increased professionalisation of the legal industry in recent decades, many opportunities remain to improve service standards, efficiency and profitability. Although the Act does not come into full force until 2011, now is the time to build the early businesses that will have first mover advantage when the Act’s changes come into effect in three years’ time.”

Professor Susskind says: "I believe that external investment in legal businesses will be vital in coming years, not least to support the development of modern systems and processes. I am very pleased to have this opportunity to advise on the most promising IT-related investment opportunities."

Reform of the Legal Profession in Ireland

rich@granat.com (Richard Granat) — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 17:25:36 -0500

The Irish Competition Authority (the equivalent of our Federal Trade Commission) says the market for legal services is permeated with unnecessary and disproportionate restrictions on competition and is in need of substantial reform. In a report published this week, the Irish Competition Authority recommends new comprehensive legislation to address the lack of competition in the legal services industry in Ireland. The legislation would establish an independent Legal Services Commission with responsibility for regulating the legal profession and the market for legal services. This new Commission would be independent, transparent and accountable, involving a wider group of stake holders that the current model of self-regulation. The Competition Authority says that all who have studied the legal profession have reached a similar conclusion -- that the legal profession needs to move towards a modern, transparent and accountable system.

Perhaps the American legal profession could learn something from this report. Very few state bar associations have adopted recommended reforms to make the legal profession more accountable to the consumer. The US legal profession still operates like a closed guild subordinating the interests of the consumer, over the interests of the profession. It's time for a change. For a summary of this report, click here.

Virtual Law Firm in Texas

rich@granat.com (Richard Granat) — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 17:22:27 -0500

I recently ran across another virtual law firm in Texas called Texas Law on Demand .
The law firm is a solo practice run by the Patricia McCartney. Legal forms are offered with legal advice for a fixed fee. Fixed fees are reasonable. A Texas no-fault divorce costs $349.00 and includes a 20 minute phone consultation. Other transactions includes wills, powers of attorney, leases, deeds, and Protective Orders, and LLC formation. The service is designed for pro se litigants and the plaintiff is expected to file his or her own documents. We expect to see more virtual law firms like this in the future offering "unbundled legal services" over the Internet.

Cowell Taradash. P.C. Wins Keane Award

rich@granat.com (Richard Granat) — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 12:55:59 -0500

The James E. Keane Memorai Award in Excellence in eLawyering has been award to the Illinois law firm of Cowell Taradash, P.C. for their web site IllinoisDivorce.com. This law firm offers a web-enabled document automation solution that enables pro-se litigants to generate their own divorce documents for $185.00. Wes Cowell, the Managing Partner, reports that that this service, together with an enhanced service where an attorney accompanys the client to a short hearing, which is priced at $500.00, generates about $100,000 in revenue for the firm. More importantly, this feature creates demand for a more full-service approach, as pro se litigants realize that sometimes their divorce is too complicated for a self-help approach. This demand generation feature has resulted in generating revenues in the 7 figure range for the firm that. The Guidelines for the James Keane Memorial Award in Excellence in eLawyering Award can be downloaded from the ABA Law Practice Management web site.

Web-Enabled Divorce Law Firm in Illinois

rich@granat.com (Richard Granat) — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 12:53:38 -0500

http://www.illinoisdivorce.com is another web site that offers low cost no-fault divorce forms bundled with legal advice. Operated by the Chicago law firm of Cowell Taradash, P.C., this web site offers useful legal information on Illinois divorce issues, an offer of free consultation with an attorney by telephone, and an offer to answer simple legal questions on family law by email for free. The basic fee for an uncontested, self-help divorce is only $185.00.

Free Web-Enabled Florida Divorce Forms

rich@granat.com (Richard Granat) — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 12:51:04 -0500

A new web site based in Florida: http://www.idivorce.com offers a set of automated Florida divorce forms for free. The user scrolls through a set of friendly but numerous screens, and inserts their financial information and other information. Once completed, the forms are instantly available and can be printed out from the web browser. The generated forms are not in Adobe .PDF format, as distributed by the Florida Supreme Court, but they seem to meet all of the court requirements any way, so they should be accepted by Florida court clerks.

The interesting feature of the site is that the forms are not only automated, which requires a capital investment, but also free. Apparently the research, development, and administrative costs will be offset by advertising revenues generated by Google Ad Words and other advertising networks. I see this as a trend in the sense that as legal forms continue to become more transparent in the sense that the legal profession can no longer control legal information distribution, they become commodities and the cost of legal forms themselves goes down to zero.

It will be interesting to see if this site generates enough advertising revenues to justify expansion to other states outside of Florida. Meanwhile it will be a useful site for Florida consumers. It would be useful if the site mentioned on the home page that only Florida divorce forms are available at this time, but there additional states are planned. As presently presented the site is not in compliance with the American Bar Association's Best Practices for Legal Information Web Site Providers.