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

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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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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 DirectLaw is pleased to announce the launching of SlatterLaw its third virtual law firm in the State of Georgia. SlatterLaw will provide online legal services to small businesses and individuals throughout Georgia.

Kerry Slatter founded the law firm with the goal of providing convenient and cost-effective legal services to small business owners and individuals across the state of Georgia. In addition to small business legal services, the Slatter Law Firm also provides counsel in various other areas, including estate planning, corporate law, and employment law.

From the web site:

 "Slatter Law provides the following core values for its clients:

• Customer Service – Provide value and legal solutions to exceed client’s expectations.
• Cost Efficiency – Provide cost efficiencies to enable clients to obtain more value from their legal budgets.
• Responsiveness – Limit attorney workload and the number of clients. The motivation to build long term relationships with clients drives this goal.
• Convenience – Utilize excellent customer services and technology to provide legal services in a convenient manner for the client (via secure online website client space, by email or by phone as needed).
• Innovation – Promote innovation for all aspects of client legal services, including the use of cutting edge technology, resources, and fixed fee arrangements."

Mr. Slatter has an undergraduate degree from Morehouse College and a law degree from State University of New York at Buffalo School of Law and is licensed to practice in Georgia.

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We are pleased to announce the launch of the law firm of Pfau and Associates that will provide online Estate Planning services to Nevada residents. This is the first DirectLaw law firm in the State of Nevada.

Pfau and Associates concentrates solely on the areas of estate planning and probate to ensure the highest quality of legal representation. The firm offers both online digital estate planning solutions and in-office services to provide for the client’s estate planning needs. Among the online offerings are simple living wills and trusts, durable powers of attorney, and advance healthcare directives.

Matt Pfau says that his philosophy is, “We make sure that we are always available to our clients for any type of support that they need. Since the choices that you will make are deeply personal, we will provide you with individualized, one-on-one attention"

Matthew Pfau has an undergraduate degree from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas and his law degree from Wittier Law School. Matthew is admitted to practice before all courts in the State of California and Nevada.  He is also admitted to practice before the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.  For more information visit his website.

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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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DirectLaw  has announced that the Law Office of Kyle Rhodes, based in Fort Worth, Texas has subscribed to DirectLaw's virtual law firm platform to enable the firm to offer legal services over the Internet to Texas residents. The firm focuses on offering Texas, Wills, Texas Trusts, and other asset protection documents for a fixed price, bundled with legal advice.

This law firm is not a pure virtual law firm as Attorney Rhodes maintains a downtown Ft. Worth office for clients who prefer to meet with him face-to-face. This is a good example of what I call, "click-and-mortal" - combining a virtual law practice with an off-line physical practice.  The market research that we have conducted suggests that the most effective implementation of the "virtual law firm" concept is as an add-on to a office-based practice, as this combines the best of both worlds.

For more information visit the website. The firm utilizes Rapidocs, DirectLaw's web-based document automation system to enable clients to complete online questionnaires which generate documents ready for lawyer review and editing.  This is DirectLaw's third law firm launch in the State of Texas. 

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Total Attorneys has responded to Attorney Zenas Zelotes filing of ethics complaints in 47 different jurisdictions.

The Total Attorneys response can be found here.

Total Attorneys summarizes its response as follows:

"In a nutshell, Mr. Zelotes’s 303-page complaint (including exhibits) alleges that Total Bankruptcy (and various other Total Attorneys companies) is a for-profit referral service, that the business model of the Total Attorneys marketing sites amounts to impermissible fee splitting, that our advertising is impermissible solicitation and that our advertising is misleading. The complaint is a hodge-podge of hearsay, factually inaccurate statements, and carefully selected lines from a myriad of state advisory opinions taken wholly out of context, all crafted together to paint a picture of our program that could not be ignored by state regulatory counsel."

This is a complicated issue that needs further analysis, as there are two sides to this story. Supporting documents in the Total Attorneys response which require further examination include:

Zelotes Complaint with Exhibits

Total Attorneys Response filed in Illinois

Zelotes Reply

South Carolina Ethics Opinion

Kentucky Ethics Opinion

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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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 I am offering an on-line course on "unbundling legal services" with a particular focus on how to offer limited legal services over the Internet.  "Limited legal services" is another name for "unbundled legal services."The course begins the week of June 1, 2009 and there will be 7 sessions over a 12 week period. By the end of the course participants will have developed a design for an "unbundled legal service" that can be integrated with their traditional law practice. Topics include: how to "unbundle" legal services by task or by issue; how to create and price an on-line service; marketing of on-line "unbundled legal services"; and ethical and regulatory requirements for offering "unbundled legal services."

For a detailed syllabus go to: Solo Practice University

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Stephanie Kimbro, a solo practitioner who operates Kimbrolaw.com, a virtual law firm in North Carolina, has been selected as this year's winner of the James Keane Memorial Award for Excellence in eLawyering. This award is given annually by the eLawyering Task Force of the Law Practice Management Section of the American Bar Association, a group which was founded by Jim Keane an active and long-standing member of the ABA/LPM section who died tragically from lung cancer several years ago. I am the present Co-Chair with Marc Lauritsen.

Ms. Kimbro's law firm is a completely virtual law firm that serves individuals and small business over the Web. Our group concluded that Kimbrolaw.com  met the criteria for the Award perfectly as it demonstrates an innovative online model for delivering services to the broad middle class. Clients access their own individual web space where they can consult with their attorney, have their documents reviewed, and conduct other legal tasks -- all online.

The Award will be formally given to Ms. Kimbro at the American Bar Association's TECHSHOW on April 2, 2009, immediately before the key note speech by Richard Susskind, who will discuss his new book: The End of Lawyers: The Rethinking the Nature of Legal Services.

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 I joined up as faculty with Solo Practice University last week. This is a new online educational venture started by Susan Carter Liebel , a coach and consultant to solo practices. Law schools really don't teach law students how to open a solo practice -- they are too busy training students for large law practice for which many of their students aspire but very few achieve. This program will be a welcome addition to bar association CLE courses as it focuses on the needs of solos, who still make up the largest percentage of practicing lawyers. I am going to develop a course on how to offer what is known as limited legal services or "unbundled legal services" both online and offline. My plan is to use pre-recorded video, discussion groups, an online blog, and email to help course participants develop a business plan for increasing and diversifying their revenue base. I am looking forward to this learning experience in how to deliver legal services online.

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There is a blog post at For Connecticut Lawyers which analyzes LegalZoom's deceptive advertising practices that are designed to persuade consumers that purchasing legal documents from LegalZoom is the same as a service from an attorney. The post examines the hidden nature of the disclaimer notice that LegalZoom cannot give legal advice, and questions what "Put the Law on Your Side" - [ Legal Zoom's tagline] means when proclaimed by a non-lawyer, legal document preparation services organization. Since LegalZoom's staff members cannot provide legal advice  when they review a document one could ask the question:  What they really do and what justifies the relatively high cost of a LegalZoom's services? How are LegalZoom's services different from a legal form that is purchased from an on-line legal form web site such as US Legal Forms, which are available at much less cost?

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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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Richard Susskind, in his new book, The End of Lawyers? Rethinking the Nature of Legal Services, devotes a chapter to disruptive legal technologies and identifies automated document assembly as a leading example. A related analysis can be found in a paper produced by Darryl Mountain, a Vancouver attorney, that is titled "Disrupting Conventional Law Firm Business Models Using Document Assembly" Both authors make the point that automating legal documents is one of the major ways that a lawyer can increase productivity, particularly for document intensive practices. Offering these documents over the web directly to clients through a secure client area, where the client completes an online questionnaire increases productivity even more. It is much more efficient than a process where a lawyer or paralegal types data into a desktop windows application manually.

Once the user answers a series of questions that appear in the web browser, a document is instantly created ready for the lawyer's further review and analysis. If the client misses a question, the lawyer can easily communicate by email and request additional information or provide a clarification on how a question should be answered. But that is much more efficient that jotting down the client's answers to the attorney's questions on a yellow pad.

This is consistent with Susskind's analysis that lawyers should automate what they can, leaving to human intelligence what it does best, which is providing legal advice and more customized and individualized drafting. Today automated document assembly solutions  are very robust and can automate very complex documents with multiple levels of "if-then" clauses to accommodate hundreds of different fact situations. Automation of more standardized legal documents should be a "no-brainer."  Using automated document assembly reduces greatly the amount of time the attorney has to spend on an individual document project enabling alternative billing systems that yield a higher margin for the law firm and also potentially lower pricing to the client.

We have seen these efficiencies in our own business activities. Through our affiliate company, Epoq, US, we sell thousands of standardized legal documents a month directly to consumers. Many of these documents are court documents, available for free from court sites, in Adobe .PDF format. Examples are non-contested divorce actions, name change actions, child support modification actions, incorporation documents, and other corporate filings.  By automating these documents and legal forms and adding extensive help screens we add value and make it easier for self-help ("pro se"  parties to complete online.

We know that our legal forms business is taking away market share from law firms, even though we do not provide legal advice and we are selling legal forms only. This is a classic case of "pure-play" disruption. Because the user is "doing"  the work by completing an online questionnaire, and the software does the rest, we have a very high profit margin on these forms, once they are automated. I call this, "making money while I am sleeping."

We also know the limitations of a "forms only" , self-help approach. Our DirectLaw, virtual law office platform, makes our legal forms and automated document assembly technology, available to law firms as a hosted service.  In the law firm configuration, the lawyer can bundle legal advice for legal forms offering a much valued-added offering at a price point which is significantly higher that the sale of automated legal forms only. The lawyer still provides a personal service element, but the document assembly technology enables the lawyer to spend more time with the client because creating the first draft of the document is instantaneous. Moreover, the client is doing part of the work as the lawyer doesn't have to waste time gathering basic factual information which is captured online within a web page. This also can be a very profitable business model. I know from operating my own Maryland virtual law firm , from my home in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida,  just how profitable and satisfying this can be.

I have heard some critics of automated methods remark that lawyers were not trained to be "robots." This perspective misses the point by a mile. By figuring out what parts of a legal process can be efficiently automated, and which parts need to remain the domain of human intelligence, the productivity of the lawyer is greatly enhanced. In the future automated document assembly over the web will become the norm, as it offers the promise of greater value and lower fees or prices.  If not through law firms, then through non-lawyer legal form publishers who have migrated their legal form content to a dynamic and interactive format.

Solos and small law firms ignore these developments at their peril. While many solos practitioners ponder these developments, non-lawyer operated web sites like SmartLegalForms, Wills Online, the Name Change Law Center [ disclosure: We also operate these aforementioned legal form web sites ], Nolo, and LegalZoom, and other non-lawyer sites, will continue to eat away at the market share of the legal profession, particularly solos and small law firms.

It is time for the legal profession to catch up and not cede this piece of business to non-lawyer operators. At the end of the time day, it is the consumer who will suffer by not having access to the legal profession.

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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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Apparently LegalZoom has been advertising to its customers that the trademark filing fee is $325.00, when it was actually $275.00,  an obvious misrepresentation. Apparently they have been doing this since 2005. This has resulted in a consumer class action suit to recover the $50.00 overcharge on behalf of all customers who have paid the higher fee. Here is a good summary of the details of the case.  LegalZoom has since changed its web site to characterize the additional $50.00 fee as an administrative fee. If a law firm made this kind of misrepresentation on its web site it would receive a sanction from the bar for misrepresentation. This is another example of the lack of regulatory control over non-lawyer providers of legal services and the absence of any accountability other than the response of the market -- which is in inefficient as consumers  rarely have sufficient knowledge to understand the nature of a misrepresentation.  LegalZoom's claim that a consumer can save thousands of dollars by using its service, rather than lawyer, assumes that somehow the services of LegalZoom and an attorney are identical. Nothing could be further from the truth. Caveat Emptor!!!

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EssentiaLegal, based in Atlanta, Georgia, and founded by Robert Arrington, Latif Oduolo-Owoo, & Michael Mason, three alumni from large law firm practices in Atlanta, is a new style law firm, part virtual and part physical that is designed to serve the broad middle class with unbundled legal services. The physical office is located in a shopping mall for easy access, but the virtual component is powered by our DirectLaw Service and enables the firm to serve clients throughout the state of Georgia. Clients can complete Questionnaires either on-line, or within the physical office, which results in the instant creation of the first draft of a document or form, ready for the lawyer's review and further modification. Clients have the option of meeting with an attorney at their offices or relating to the firm on purely virtual basis through the MyLegalAffairs application created within the web site by our DirectLaw Web Service. I believe that this "click and mortar" strategy will be ultimately more effective than a purely virtual strategy because clients have the option of face to face contact with their attorney. "Click and mortar" refers to a business model that has both on-line and off-line components.

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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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 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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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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