eLawyering Blog : Online Legal Services : DirectLaw : Document Automation, Web-Enabled Document Assembly, Virtual Lawyering

The Virtual Law Firm: How to Build Your Practice in an Online World, Friday, August 6, 2019, 2:00-3:15 P.M. Moscone Center

Moderated by Marc Lauritsen
Presented by Richard Granat ,Will Hornsby, Stephanie Kimbro
Co-Sponsored by General Practice, Solo & Small Firm Division, Standing Committee on Delivery of Legal Services

This program will discuss in a panel format the concept of practicing law virtually and how it can enhance an existing traditional law practice, or be a exist as a totally virtual law firm. The program will discuss the benefits of a delivering legal services online and how it can help a law firm acquire clients who are members of the connected/Facebook generation as well as provide more effective services to existing clients. Topics covered will include: what is a virtual law practice; the web architecture for a virtual law practice; online legal service applications, such as web-enabled document automation; ethical issues in the delivery of online legal services, such as confidentiality, security, unauthorized practice of law, client identification and authentication procedures, conflict of interest checking; criteria of vendor selection; the costs associated with setting up a virtual law practice; and marketing your brand and virtual law practice online.

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eLawyering Task Force Meeting, Saturday, August 7, 2010, Hilton Hotel, Union Square, 9:00 - 11:00 A.M.Open Meeting

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20/20 Vision: The Impact of Technology and Globalization on Ethics for the 21st Century Lawyer. August 5th, Thursday, 10:30am, Moscone Center West Room 2016, 2nd Floor. Stephanie Kimbro, a member of the eLawyering Task Force is participating.

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National Conference of State Bar Presidents

Joint Workshop 3A – Keeping Pace with the Evolving Practice of Law
Continental Parlor 7, Ballroom Level, Hilton San Francisco

Ethics 20/20 continues to explore the impact of technology on the practice of law, as well
as global developments that may redefine and expand our ideas about law practice and
how to regulate it. Join us for a discussion of cutting edge ideas that are going to affect
the profession and your members: the virtual law firm, elawyering and cloud computing,
publicly traded law firms and alternative business models for law firms.

MODERATOR
Frederic S. Ury, Fairfield, CT, Past President, Connecticut Bar Association; NCBP
Secretary, and Member, ABA Commission on Ethics 20/20
PANELISTS
Richard S. Granat, Palm Beach Gardens, FL, Founder, President and CEO, DirectLaw, Inc.,
and Co-Chair, eLawyering Task Force, LPM, and Member, ABA Standing Committee on the Delivery of Legal Services
Steven Mark, Sydney, NSW, Australia, Commissioner, New South Wales Office of the
Legal Services Commissioner, and Chairman, Australian Section of the International
Commission of Jurists

 

 

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As many of you know who have been following this blog, DirectLaw is a client portal that enables a law firm to offer online legal services. It is not designed as a cloud-based practice management system, such as timekeeping and billing which we view as "back-office" functions, although DirectLaw still incorporates many practice management features. The purpose of the client portal concept is to enable the law firm to work with a client online, rather than just by telephone and face-to-face, and in ways that are powerful than simply using email.

This week, we launched a Free Version of DirectLaw.  We call it "free" because there is no monthly subscription charge, but there is a $99.00 set-up fee to cover our costs in activating a new account.

This is a fully operational platform that includes all of the virtual law platform features except web-enabled document automation and our state specific libraries of legal forms and documents.

Here is what you can do with the "DirectLaw Free Version":
 

• Legal Advice by Phone, E-mail and Web Cam.  Sell any or all of these services on a flat fee basis.  You set the pricing.
• Legal Document Review.  Offer review services and provide advice for existing documents or forms.  Example:  "I purchased a will from LegalZoom.com, and need an attorney to review it."  You quote a fee based on the complexity of work.
• Legal & Court Coaching.  Another legal advice service you can offer on a flat fee basis.
• Online Collaboration Features.  Share and store documents.  Communicate with clients online.  Secure, archived and accessible 24/7.  Works great for existing/traditional clients, as well online clients.
• Calendaring.  Publish important, upcoming dates/events.  Includes an automatic reminder feature.
• Legal Resources.  Publish client-relevant legal information/links.  Information is accessible via the "client space".
• Attorney Dashboard.  Manage all client-related data; communications; selection/pricing of legal services, etc.
• MyAccount. Stores client contact information.  Information is downloadable to Excel spreadsheet format.
• Integrated Credit Card Processing.  Accept online credit card payment for online legal services.
• Legal Invoicing.   Bill clients via the "client space".  Easy, convenient way to offer online credit card payment of legal invoices.  Works great with existing/traditional clients and for online clients where work beyond the scope of limited services is necessary.
• Rapidocs Solo, our Rapidocs document authoring system, is also included, so you see if you can automate your own documents.

The DirectLaw Free Version is to be distinguished from the Free Trial, which is not a fully operational version and is simply a "sandbox" which lets you play around with the DirectLaw features. You can convert from the Free Trial to the DirectLaw Free Version at any  time, and you can upgrade from the DirectLaw Free Version to Levels I, II, and III at any time. Click here to see the differences between the three levels of service and the different levels of pricing.

We decided to introduce the concept of a Free Version with the idea of accelerating the adoption of virtual law firm concepts by solos and small law firms. Our marketing data, based on analyzing Google Key Word popularity in this market space, such as "virtual law firm," "online legal services", and "virtual law firm,"  shows a relatively low hit rate compared to other trends in the law firm technology market space. We will provide more details of this analysis in a later post. What it says to me is that the number of lawyers, particularly solos and small law firm lawyers, who are simply just interested in learning more about the"virtual law firm" concept is a very low percentage of the total addressable market. This is typical of the way in which the legal profession adapts to new technology - - very slowly. Thus we think the concept of a "Free Version" of DirectLaw can be an important learning tool for lawyers who are interested in moving their law practices onto the Internet. By making this proposition a "no-cost" experiment, law firms can witness first hand how operating on the Internet can enhance their law practice and increase law firm productivity.

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The Ethics Committee of the North Carolina Bar, in response to an inquiry from a law firm, is assessing whether a law firm can utilize "cloud-based" legal applications where client and other law firm data is stored on the Internet.  It could result in a determination that law firms in North Carolina cannot operate as "virtual law firms."

Stephanie Kimbro, the founder of one of the first North Carolina virtual law firms, and  Virtual Law Office Technology, Inc., a web-based virtual law firm services provider, and originally a North Carolina company, (now owned by TotalAttorneys, Inc., which is based in Chicago),  has written an excellent post on this topic.

 "Cloud Computing" enables solo practitioners and small law firms to provide online legal services to individuals and small business at affordable legal fees, and therefore enables them to compete effectively against non-law firm providers, such as LegalZoom, which also operates in "the cloud."

The eLawyering Task Force of the Law Practice Management Section of the American Bar Association has submitted a statement to the North Carolina Ethics Committee on the issue of the relationship of "cloud computing" to solos and small law firms. the delivery of online legal services,  and access to the legal system by individuals of moderate income.

Interested parties who wish to submit comments, should submit them to:

Alice Neece Mine
Assistant Executive Director
North Carolina Bar Association
208 Fayetteville Street Mall
PO Box 25908
Raleigh, North Carolina 27611-5908
EMAIL:  amine@ncbar.gov

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Detroit News just published an article on the decrease in divorces because of the recession - a national trend, and an increase in pro se divorces in Detroit, also a national trend. The article discussed the possibility that law firms could offer "unbundled legal services" as a way of reducing the cost of divorce, but apparently there are very few Michigan law firms that provide this kind of limited legal service.

One law firm in Michigan that is pioneering in offering a reasonably priced limited legal service for divorcing couples over the Internet is Calibre Law, PLC at  Michigan Virtual Law, one of the law firm;s in the DirectLaw network.  Calibre is Michigan's first virtual law firm.  Calibre offers no-fault divorce forms with legal advice for a reasonable fixed fee.

Calibre Law is lead by Edward F. Hudson II. a litigator with experience in estate planning, family law, and small business disputes. Based in Royal Oak, Michigan and launched only a few months ago, Attorney Hudson, plans to have an impact on making legal services affordable throughout the entire Detroit metropolitan area.

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The ABA Ethics 20/20 Commission had public hearings at the ABA mid-year meeting in Orlando. Florida this week-end. A focus of the Commission's work is the impact of Internet technology on the delivery of legal services, both globally and within the United States. The Commission has a 3 year period to undertake research, conduct hearings, and report its findings and recommendations.  Three years from now Internet technology will be further transformed, and by 2020 who knows what technologies will be available. By then, I am sure, legal business (negotiations, dispute settlement) could well be conducted by our avatars in virtual legal environments on an international and cross jurisdictional basis. Licensing of lawyers by states may prove to be increasingly anachronistic by 2020, although it is unlikely that state bars will go away without fight.

I was honored to be able to testify before the Commission and submit a written statement which can be found here. Stephanie Kimbro now a member of the ABA's eLawyering Task Force, also made a presentation on the virtual law office concept which I thought was very well received.  My impression was that the Commission members were very interested in our statements and explanations of how Internet technology enables the more effective delivery of legal services.

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ABA President B. Lamm has created a new Commission on Ethics called Ethics 20/20 to review  ethics rules and regulation of the legal profession in the United States in the context of a global legal services marketplace. Hearings will be held at ABA Meetings to get input from various interests on how to reform or modify the ABA Code to enable US law firms to remain competitive in an age where Internet  technology is pervasive.

I have been invited by the Commission to testify and submit a statement at the ABA Mid-Year Meeting in Orlando, where the Commission is holding one of its first public hearings.

My statement will discuss the following topics:

• how the rules of professional responsibility function as a deterrent to innovation;
• issues relating to the unauthorized practice of law and the definition of "the practice of law;"
• legal referral concepts in the age of the Internet;
• state rules of professional responsibility that require a "physical" business office in order to practice law in that state;
• the potential for cloud computing;
• enabling the delivery of limited legal services online;
• law firm ownership structure as it relates to innovation in the delivery of legal services;
• and the eLawyering Task Force Recommended Guidelines for the Delivery of OnLine Legal Services.

I am looking for suggestions and ideas about other issues that relate to the delivery of online legal services and the rules of professional responsibility. Any ideas are welcome. Just comment on this blog.

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The Law Practice Management Section of the American Bar Association is sponsoring a Teleconference on the The Virtual Law Firm: Benefits, Costs, and Ethical Pitfalls to Avoid, on Thursday, December 17, 2009 between 1:00 P.M. and 2:30 P.M.

The program is a Live Audio Webcast with PowerPoint support.

I am participating in the program, together with Stephanie Kimbro of KimbroLaw Services and Marc Lauritsen, President, Capstone Practice, and Co-Chair, eLawyering Task Force, ABA Law Practicement Section .You can register online.

 

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DirectLaw is pleased to announce the opening of a new virtual law practice by Montreuil & Associates in Macon, Georgia.   The firm will provide services in the areas of business, family and divorce, estate planning, landlord/tenant, and name changes over the Internet throughout the state of Georgia.

The firm provides both traditional legal services and an online legal solution platform to serve new and existing clients. The online service allows the firm to provide cost-effective legal services so that everyone in the state can have access to affordable legal services. Ms. Montreuil says that she is committed to the idea of using the Internet to providing increased access to the legal system.

Renay Bloom Montreuil has an undergraduate degree, magna cum laude, from Youngstown State University and a law degree from Mercer University School of Law. Renay has been a Pro Bono Volunteer for Georgia Legal Services and has worked with Life support as a mentor for woman and youth.  She is licensed to practice law in Georgia and Florida.

For more information see website.

 

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The eLawyering Task Force,  which is part of the Law Practice Management Section of the American Bar Association has been developing a recommended set of minimum requirements for law firms delivering legal services online.  The draft that has been published is a working draft and we are soliciting comments as we move towards a final document. The draft document can be downloaded here.

The ABA does not have a comment facility on their web site, but comments can be contributed on this blog, well as a discussion group  that has been set up on LinkedIn called Virtual Lawyering.

Any comments that are submitted will be circulated among members of the Task Force.

Disclosure: I am Co-Chair of the eLawyering Task Force

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The Law Practice Management Section of the American Bar Association awards the James I Keane Memorial Award in Excellence in eLawyering, annually at the ABA TechShow in Chicago. Nominations are now open for the Award to be in March, 2010. Candidates can self-nominate. The Award Requirements can be found here. The nomination form can be found on-line here.

Here is a brief summary of the Award criteria:

• The project or law firm must demonstrate the use of the Internet to deliver legal services.
• It must be unique. It should be an on-line legal service that has never been done before, or not quite this way before.
• Absence of precedent - Never been done or done quite this way before.
• There should be some measurable outcome that would indicate that the innovation is accomplishing what it was intended to do.
• Action must have taken place no more than three years prior to this entry, and the legal service must be operating for at least one year prior to submission of the Application.
• Additional consideration will be given to projects that focus on the delivery of legal services to individuals of moderate means.
• The nomination should describe how the service was developed, how it is managed, and how it has been evaluated.
• The nomination should describe how the service can be replicated by other law firms in terms of development costs, required technology, people requirements, and ongoing maintenance costs.

 

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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.

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Virtual Law Office Technology, LLC, (VLOTech) based in North Carolina has been acquired by TotalAttorneys, a well-regarded law firm marketing and management services organization based in Chicago. VLOTech should do well and flourish under TotalAttorneys management umbrella, and with TotalAttorneys' financial backing, VLOTech will continue to be a major player in the emerging market for web technology that enables law firms to deliver legal services virtually. Stephanie Kimbro, the co-founder of VLOTech,  was the winner last year (2009) of the James Keane Award in Excellence in eLawyering, awarded by the Law Practice Management Section of the American Bar Association, for her work in designing and operating her virtual law firm in North Carolina, (which was the prototype for the VLOTech technology).

As many of our readers know, we have been a friendly competitor of VLOTech , through my company, DirectLaw,  a client-centered hosted web service for solos and small law firms , in the sense that the more vendors that are in this space, the less time it will take for these ideas to move beyond early adopters to capture the interest of the mainstream of the profession. My view is that the more competitors in this market space the better, as each will come up with their own unique innovation to respond to the differing needs that law firm's have as they migrate their practices to the web. Our experience is that it always takes longer than we can predict for these innovative ideas to catch the interest of the bulk of practicing lawyers.  Congratulations to Stephanie and her team and good luck with their new partner. Click here for more details.

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There has been some recent blog comments [See: Carolyn Elefant 's Blog  [about  the meaning of Robert Capps article  in this month's WIRED Magazine, (September 2009) about the concept of "Good Enough",  "Good Enough" solutions, (when cheap and simple is just fine). , and my quote about how this concept applies to the legal profession.

When I was interviewed for the Wired Article, I didn't know the focus of the article, and I was simply reporting my experience in offering limited legal services to consumers for a fee they can afford. I wasn't saying at all that lawyer's should do less competent or less excellent work. Rather I was thinking about how legal transactional events between consumer and lawyer can be restructured to get to the "good enough result" that many consumers seem to want.

My best example is one that I participate in daily, and which I mentioned in previous blog post. Divorcing couples opt for a quick settlement, even if they don't get "every right" they are entitled to in the interest of reducing their legal fees and getting on with their lives.

Divorce lawyers can charge from $5,000 - $10,000 (low-end of fee schedule) for even a relatively simple divorce. case. The lawyers will say there are no simple divorce cases. But that is from the the viewpoint of the lawyer. From the consumer point of view, they have a choice to spend $5,000 for each counsel who is representing either party- or to take the money and use it to get on with their lives. The question is--  what is the ROI from the consumer's point of view?  Sometimes the investment of $5,000.00 in legal fees is worth it. ($5,000.00 is really a low end estimate). Consumers don't think so, or there would not be thousands of pro se litigants representing themselves in family court. Pro Se Representation is a good example of a restructuring of the lawyer/client relationship to get a "good enough result." The success of LegalZoom -  admittedly a service which is a very small step above a bare legal forms service is more evidence of consumer preferences.

So is the movement towards "limited legal services." Lawyers, mostly solos and small law firms, that think that otherwise and think that full service representation is the only way to go are not facing consumer reality. These lawyers are living in a dream world.

Consumers want solutions to their legal problems. If they can get legal solutions in a different form than a traditional legal service from an attorney that is "good enough" at much less cost, they will turn away from the legal profession and seek those alternatives if they get a result that satisfies their expectations. 

 

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The American Bar Association Journal has started a new Legal Rebels project to get lawyers thinking about how to change the legal profession. The Journal recognizes that the legal profession is undergoing structural change accelerated by the current recession, and that as the economy emerges from this recession, the landscape of the legal profession will be very different from the one that we have now know. 

Searching for new ways of practicing law, the Journal will profile 50 or so lawyers who are demonstrating new ways of serving clients by expanding their markets, delivering legal services in a different ways, or creating new styles of legal practice. The plan is to tell the stories of these lawyers through a variety of social media channels using text, pictures, audio and video.

A colleague of mine,  Jeffrey Hughes, was named today in the first group of profiles for his innovative and ground-breaking work in combining a law practice within the context of a coffee house under the Legal Grind brand, serving "legal counsel" and good coffee in a community setting. Legal Grind is an excellent example of delivering "unbundled" or "limited legal services" at prices that people can afford.

By the way, I was honored to also be included in this first group of profiles.

 

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The month's WIRED Magazine, (September 2009) has an interesting article on how the Internet is enabling "Good Enough" solutions, (when cheap and simple is just fine). I have maintained for a long time that often there is a certain amount of overkill when lawyers tackle a problem, when consumers really want a quick and reasonably priced result. Consumers will often sacrifice securing every "right" they have in order to save thousands of dollars in legal fees. I see this in the divorce area in my online practice all of the time. Often the divorcing parties want to get on with their life at the lowest possible cost. Rather than spend $15,000 in legal fees pursuing every right that the parties think they have, often the best solution is to use the funds that would have been spent on legal fees to invest in their individual futures. The present recession is accelerating these trend.

Lawyers are taught to represent a client "zealously". In fact they are required by the ethical codes of professional conduct to do so -- but at what price. Pursuing every legal angle results in prohibitive legal fees that the average consumer or small business can't afford. There must be a better way to practice law without breaking the bank.

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It has been a very busy summer at DirectLaw. We are constantly adding features to our DirectLaw Virtual Law Firm Platform. Sometimes new features are suggested by our growing network of DirectLaw law firms; often one of our staff gets a good idea and we push it out to the Platform to see what kind of response we get from consumers and our client law firms. The nature of a SaaS (Software as a Service) offering, like DirectLaw, is that we can can modify and enhance the platform at any time and all law firms in the network benefit immediately. Our clients don't  have to wait until "the next quarterly software release."

Here are some of the recently features that have been added to the DirectLaw Virtual Law Firm Platform:

June 17, 2009 - New virtual law firm platform for consumer bankruptcy attorneys released. Click here for more information.

July 13, 2009 -  DirectLaw Workspace™. brings the benefits of web-enabled document automation for clients who are not online by enabling law firms to use our web-enabled document automation system for regular office-based clients.  

July 29, 2009 - A new "collaboration" function that enables law firms to communicate and collaborate securely with their clients over the Internet. Click here for screenshot.

August 5, 2009 - We installed a new "billing" function that enables law firms to bill clients online for traditional legal services and supports online bill payment by clients through their MyLegalAffairs page. Click here for screenshot.

August 20, 2009 - Today we released a new user friendly design for the Legal Services Page ,  which is now available to all law firms in the DirectLaw network of law firms. Each legal service offered by the law firm now appears on a separate tab, with detailed explanations of the scope of the legal service. Legal services offered by the law firm can be added or deleted and the fees charged increased or decreased at any time by the individual law firm using the Attorney Dashboard - the Administrative area that the law firm uses to manage their virtual law firm platform.

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A colleague of mine, Paula Black has just published a new book for lawyers on how to market themselves and their law firms.  This book should be on every lawyer's desk or night table. You don't get business, unless you ask for it, and Paula Black shows you how to do it. That’s why I am happy to share with you a special opportunity. For the next 48 hours only, Paula is offering a collection of FREE bonus gifts to anyone who purchases this little gem: “The Little Black Book: A Lawyer’s Guide To Creating A Marketing Habit in 21 Days.” Designed to help lawyers integrate marketing into their daily lives, this book is quick, easy and inspirational. By purchasing it within the next 48 hours you will receive special access to information and resources from more than 30 experts. A compilation of advice from some of the most sought-after marketing and management experts in the legal profession, “The Smart Lawyer’s Toolkit” gives you instant admittance to an incredible collection of tips and information. Click here for details…but do it fast!

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The eLawyering Task Force of the Law Practice Management Section of the ABA, had its monthly telephone call on Friday. One of the action items is a renewed interest and commitment to produce a set of best practice guidelines for law firms that want to deliver legal services online. These guidelines would complement the Best Practice Guidelines for Legal Information Web Site Providers that were produced by the eLawyering Task Force and approved by the ABA House of Delegates in 2003. The Legal Information Best Practices Guidelines apply to both law firms and non-law firms and don't deal specifically with issues that lawyers face when they want to deliver legal services online. In some cases it has been reported that malpractice insurance carriers have declined coverage when a law firm attempts to provide legal services directly through their web site. With more law firms embracing the concept of virtual legal practice, it becomes even more important to provide a framework for best practices.  The guidelines would cover such topics as ethical issues in delivering online legal services, security issues, and the attorney/client relationship.

In addition, a new group of software vendors that license "software as a service" {SaaS) have emerged to provide online software applications that support virtual law practice. Some of these vendors include: Virtual Law Office Technology, RocketMatter, Clio, and our own DirectLaw, Inc.,  As part of the guidelines development process, we plan to seek input from this emerging group of software as service vendors.

The goal is to have a draft ready for the discussion by the eLawyering Task Force at the ABA mid-year meeting and then a revised draft for further discussion as the quarterly meeting of the Law Practice Management Section in New Orleans in May, 13- 16, 2009.

Feedback and ideas about what issues should be covered are welcome from all.

 

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For those of you who are members of the eLawyering Task Force of the Law Practice Management Section of the ABA, this is reminder that there is a Task Force Conference call on January 9, 2009 at 10:00 A.M.

Our agenda includes a discussion on standards and best practices for elawyering and delivering legal services online.

Members of the American Bar Association, who wish to become members of the Task Force should contact Marc Lauritsen, Co-Chair of the Task Force at marc@capstonepractice.com directly. In order to be eligible for membership you also have to be a member of the Law Practice Management Section of the ABA. 

 

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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.

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•  

 

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 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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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