Business Planning for a VLO

I started out my own business plan by finding some templates online and adapting portions of some of them into a format that I thought was helpful to me. Then I took the first session in Rachel Rodgers' VLO class and completely changed my approach. The content that I put together previously is still valid and helpful, but I thought I should follow Rachel's advice and start from the desired impact of my virtual law office's on my personal life. If you're a regular reader, you know that in my first post on Rachel's class, I talked about liking the idea of a Life Plan as an element of a business plan. On Monday this week I promised some more business plan content and my reflections on doing my own life plan. You can find all that good stuff after the jump.

Day Two of "The 21st Century Lawyer: Lifestyle Design with a Virtual Law Office"

Last Wednesday night, I had the pleasure of attending the second of four sessions in Rachel Rodgers' class, 21st Century Lawyer: Lifestyle Design with a Virtual Law Office. If the first session was a little too touchy-feely for my tastes, this session made up for it with the sheer volume of information on the class handout. Class 2 was titled: Get Your Finances in Line with Your Dream; you can guess what our focus was. Rachel broke the class up into three sections: Startup Costs, Surviving the Startup Phase, and Managing Education Debt. Read on after the jump for some specifics and my reaction.

What's Coming Next

Well, I took a week off from the blog, but not a week off from the project. My last post was based on my preliminary research into VLO service providers. Since then, I have signed up for an initial demo version of DirectLaw. I haven't delved very deeply into that system, but I did play with the document-generation aspect of it for about an hour. The interactive questionnaires are robust, but some of the questions I ran into were more than the average consumer could answer. More than likely, attorney guidance would be necessary for the more technical or complex documents. That's not an indictment of the software. On the contrary, I think direct attorney involvement is prudent for many of the documents generated by DirectLaw's software. More on that later. Last week I also had the privilege of attending the second session in Rachel Rodgers's class, Lifestyle Design with a VLO. We disucussed the financial side of starting a VLO, and I'll post my thoughts here tomorrow. Speaking of Rachel Rodgers, I did some stream-of-consciousness lifeplan work last week. I also took some time to talk about our lifeplan with my wife. It was enlightening and has resulted in some changes in our lifestyle, starting today. I'll give you more on that on Thursday, along with more of my business plan. I took some time last week to review the EULA of Total Attorneys' VLO Tech. I looked into DirectLaw's EULA as well, but was apparently on the wrong page, because what I found was not what I was looking for. Never fear, though; I will not be dissuaded. Come back Friday for a brief summary on what I found and some of the more important language in those EULAs. Other things that I'm working on include researching local and DIY web development, embedded logins for client portals, and a more involved research project about physical-address rules and how they affect VLOs. I'm hoping to line up an interview with Jack Newton of Clio sometime soon as well. Lots of good stuff in the works; stay tuned!

VLO Software Providers: Intro

Yesterday I promised you a post about my initial findings regarding the VLO technology that's available out there. This is that post. For starters, lets lay some ground rules. First, this is not going to be a comprehensive list of software providers that specifically target the legal industry (Stephanie Kimbro has a great list on the companion site to her book). In fact, I'm not even going to do a comprehensive list of law practice management suites. What I will do is give you some input on a couple of cloud-based LPM systems and then discuss the two VLO platforms that are currently available.

My method for choosing which systems to cover was simple: find the ones with client portals. I chose to start there because the prevailing definition of VLO (and my working definition of VLO) say that a virtual law office is one that utilizes a client portal to facilitate attorney-client communications. Check out the list and my initial reactions after the jump.

Day One of "The 21st Century Lawyer: Lifestyle Design with a Virtual Law Office"

This is my first of a five-part series on Rachel Rodgers' teleclass, "The 21st Century Lawyer: Lifestyle Design with a Virtual Law Office." I hope to post brief responses to the four individual classes within an hour or two after the class ends. The last post of the series will be an overall review (and recommendation, I'm sure!) of the class as a whole and a response to the information I glean from it. Part one, after the jump.

Quick Check-in

Happy Hump Day to all of you who follow this blog! It's been a few days since I've posted, and for that I apologize. Rest assured that my time has not been spent in vain. Life = including my law practice - rolls on.

I wanted to quickly check in today to let you know about an opportunity that I have to attend an online class regarding virtual law offices: The 21st Century Lawyer: Lifestyle Design with a Virtual Law Office. The class is being taught by Ms. Rachel Rodgers, a self-proclaimed legal rebel and a consultant for solos looking to build their careers around their desired lifestyle. You can find her websites here and here.

Rachel's 'syllabus' looks like we should be covering some really helpful information over the next few weeks. I'll be honest, though: the first class sounds a bit like a motivational speaker presentation. I have no problem with that, but I'll be interested to see how Rachel approaches the subject of Discover[ing] Your Ideal Life.

Rachel contacted me last week to see if I would be willing to review her class on this blog. I'll do her one better, and review each class. I'll try to summarize some of the salient points (without giving anything away - don't worry Rachel!) in an effort to show the value the class is providing. The investment wasn't all that tremendous (less than $150, as I recall), so I expect I'll see a pretty good return.

Stay tuned for another post this evening with my first impressions.

A Fledgling Business Plan

The creation of my business plan has begun! I'm kind of enjoying the process of drafting a formal business plan; that's something I didn't do when I started my bricks-and-mortar practice. Obviously I did a good deal of planning and had strategies formulated for generating business, but I never reduced those theories and ideas to written form. I'm finding it to be a beneficial process and will likely generate a business plan for my law practice as a whole when I get some free time. (haha, like that's going to happen).

There's lots of information to include in a typical business plan, so it's going to take a little longer to draft than I had first anticipated. After the jump, I'll give you a few excerpts from my current draft and my thoughts on the important elements of a business plan.

My Thoughts After Attending "Virtual Law Practice: Basic Concepts"

I had the privilege of listening to a webinar today that was co-led by Richard Granat, Marc Lauritsen, and Stephanie Kimbro. You can find the slides for that webinar on SlideShare. A significant amount of what was covered in the free webinar was also covered in Kimbro's book, but it's always good to hear the leaders in a particular field wax eloquent regarding something you're working on currently. I gleaned some good information from the conversation, and the slides nicely compile information into one location that I previously had only from Kimbro's book and scattered across various online sources. I'm not going to summarize the whole presentation, but, after the jump, I'll talk about a couple of things from the webinar that I thought merit further exposition.

Link Roundup: VLO Blogs (Finally!)

And now: the long-awaited VLO link round-up. I’ve compiled a short list of blogs that are dedicated to all things VLO. I’d be remiss if I didn’t start out with Kimbro’s blog and the derivatives thereof.

Virtual Law Practice - http://virtuallawpractice.org/

This is the current location for Stephanie Kimbro’s virtual law practice blog. It’s also the companion site for her book, Virtual Law Practice. Kimbro posts here about several different relevant topics, including developments in ethical rules and new press related to the practice of law online. Other resources on Kimbro’s blog include a great blogroll, a list of several real life VLOs, and resources referenced in her book. You can follow Stephanie Kimbro on Twitter, too: @stephkimbro.

I linked to the current location of Kimbro’s blog above, but the previous location is still active. There are some really handy posts there, including a checklist for setting up a VLO. Here’s a link: http://kimbrolaw.blogspot.com/.

Total Attorneys - http://www.vlotech.com/blog/

Total Attorneys is the company that acquired Stephanie Kimbro’s startup company VLOTech. We’ll revisit the services offered by Total Attorneys in a future post because they’re one of the software as a service (SaaS) providers mentioned in Kimbro’s book. For now, you should know that their blog covers breakthroughs in their own legal tech as well as ethics opinions and helpful tips for the lawyer interested in launching their own VLO. Total Attorneys is on Twitter too: @totalattorneys

As for the remainder of the blogs or posts that I found relating to virtual law offices, I struggled with how to best share the links with you. If you do a Google search for ‘virtual law office blog,’ you’ll begin to understand my problem. (There are 199,000,000 results for that search) I have set up a list of bookmarks on Delicious. I hope to update it with new links every couple of days, at least until the end of the year. Check it out here: http://www.delicious.com/huizengalaw/VLO.

To wrap up, here’s some links to recent posts on some other legal blogs:

http://c2lawblog.com/category/virtual-law-office/

http://www.elawyeringredux.com/articles/virtual-law-firms/

http://www.sociablelawyer.org/tag/virtual-law-office

Checking In

I've been a bit absent this week. Sorry about that. There are three reasons for the lack of posts:

First, I have a regular law practice to run. As much as I'd like to devote all my time to researching and writing about getting a VLO set up, I have bills to pay and kids to keep fed. So the traditional practice of law goes on in the midst of this project.

Second, I got my new tech from the UPS guy on Thursday. That meant I had to build and install two computers, two firewalls, an external hard drive, and all the software that goes along with operating those devices. I don't begrudge the tasks, because I'm a gadget freak. Really. I love rebuilding my home PC and getting it back to that "new PC" feel. All reformatted and defragmented. Mmmmmm. Unfortunately, between these two things, there's not a lot of free time I can devote to other activities.

As time consuming as those two things are, though, they're not the true reason I'm behind on posting here after just a couple of weeks. The simple fact is, I'm - at minimum - two years behind the VLO curve as far as the basic theory and founding ideas are concerned. Seriously. There's a million different posts out there by the leaders in the VLO field that I would like to distill into lists or RSS feeds that you can subscribe to. It's pretty daunting.

You can rest assured that more content is coming, though. I just need a little time to get the VLO link roundup put together. Oh. And the Bears play the Packers tomorrow, so you'll have to wait until after the game.

A Quick Tech Update

This post is going to be necessarily short, as I have to be up to teach Business Law to a bunch of college students tomorrow. I thought I'd update you on what I've been doing to prepare the infrastructure of my brick-and-mortar practice for the eventual launch of a VLO.

One major advantage to operating a law practice in the cloud is that you can work from just about anywhere. With that in mind,  I did some research last week on utilizing a VoIP telephone system to give me the flexibility necessary for a true VLO. I've purchased a firewall for my home office and have set up a VoIP system that will allow me to make and receive my work calls anywhere through a "virtual office" website on my PC and an app on my Android phone. The system I went with includes 3 desk phones, the ability to set up webinars, and an eFax system. It's really robust and, I think, will be a real asset to both my brick-and-mortar practice and my VLO. If you'd like more information about the system I chose, feel free to leave a comment and I'll send you some links.

Another thing I did last week was make some major technology purchases. I upgraded both desktop computers that we currently use at my office. This was a pretty important change, since both PCs were more than 10 years old. My assistant's computer tends to take as long as 10 minutes just to open multiple levels of file folders, so even a slight upgrade will be a significant improvement.

I also purchased a hardware firewall for the office, to augment my software firewall. This will also give me the freedom to create a VPN network to the office from my computer at home. More flexibility is always better. The last important purchase I made is a two terabyte (2 TB) external hard drive which I will use to back up my clients' files. Coupled with an encryption program (which I have yet to research - stay tuned!), this will help me more adequately meet the security and confidentiality obligations of the ABA Model Rules of Professional Responsibility while providing me plenty of room to increase the amount of data I retain in my client files.

Check back tomorrow for another link round-up, this time of VLO blogs, and my initial thoughts on drafting a business plan.

Link Round-up: LPM Blogs

At the outset of this post, you should know that very little (if any) information is exclusive to this blog. Not only am I following advice I gleaned from VLP, but I am also grabbing information from other blogs, from public documents, and from other websites. I strive to cite appropriately, and will correct any omissions as soon as they're brought to my attention.

A list of law practice management (LPM) blogs should start with a link to the ABA's list of blogs. You can find that list here. I'm not going to cross-reference my list with that one, but I can tell you for sure that many of the blogs linked below are listed on the ABA's site as well. If you're inclined to stay on this page, though, here, in no particular order, is my list of LPM blogs:

Clio - http://www.goclio.com/blog/

I'm probably biased toward this blog, since I use Clio for my law practice management software. It's a great blog for Clio users, but even for non-Clio users, there's useful information to be gleaned. For example, this post about using a high-res image for your logo. Follow them on Twitter: @goclio

MyShingle - http://myshingle.com

This blog is just plain excellent for solo practitioners. I had the pleasure and benefit of hearing the author, Carolyn Elefant, give several presentations on cloud computing last summer, just 2 short months after I launched my law practice. I picked up loads of great tips and advice on everything from client service to networking to technology best practices. The blog isn't the only great thing at MyShingle, though. She's got forms, guides, and more. You can find her on Twitter by looking for @carolynelefant.

3 Geeks and a Law Blog - http://www.geeklawblog.com/

This blog is a straight-up practice management blog with a focus on using tech to more effectively serve clients. Great regular posts - like the weekly Elephant Post that invites reader input - get you involved in some great discussions about cutting edge approaches to law practice management. The 3 geeks each have their own Twitter accounts: @glambert, @lihsa, @gnawledge.

Technolawyer - http://blog.technolawyer.com/law_office_management/

This one takes a little work to get access to their good content - you need to subscribe and then take an initial survey - but the rewards are worth it. They've got several weekly news letters in addition to the LPM blog/newsletter. With a focus on technology in your law practice, this one's got great info on leveraging current tech, law-related or otherwise. Since everyone's on Twitter nowadays, you should follow this one too: @technolawyer.

Jim Calloway - http://jimcalloway.typepad.com/

I'm a little disappointed that I only discovered this blog in the last couple of days. There's a ton of great content for attorneys who are looking to get more efficient in their practices. Jim's most recent post highlights a fantastic ethics resource being offered at no charge by the Minnesota Bar Association. It's worth a visit just to check that out. You guessed it, Jim's on Twitter, too: @jimcalloway.

I could keep this up all night. Unfortunately, if I give a plug to every blog, this post won't get published until Christmas. Here's a bunch more links:

Compujurist: http://compujurist.com/

Dennis Kennedy: http://denniskennedy.com/blog/

The Unbillable Hour: http://legaltalknetwork.com/podcasts/un-billable-hour/ (Podcasts!)

Inter Alia: http://www.inter-alia.net/blog/

Legal Marketing Blog: http://www.legalmarketingblog.com/

PDF for Lawyers: http://www.pdfforlawyers.com/

Law Sites: http://www.lawsitesblog.com/

Thoughtful Legal Management: http://thoughtfullaw.com/

There are loads more LPM blogs that you can find through a simple web search or on the blogrolls of the blogs listed here. In addition, the ABA and many state bar associations have LPM sections with newsletters, listservs, and other resources that can help answer your LPM questions. Check 'em out!

A Discussion of Ethics: Unbundled Legal Services

The Iowa rules of ethics and the Ethics Opinions published by the Iowa Supreme Court Board of Professional Ethics and Conduct are incredibly sparse regarding VLOs and the practice of law online ("Incredibly sparse" should be read to mean "void of any direct guidance"). However, there are two ethics opinions that relate tangentially to operating a VLO. Specifically, these opinions address "ghost writing" documents for pro se litigants. (WARNING: the following may contain lawyer-speak.)

Best I can tell, "ghost writing" is known today as "unbundled legal services," or at least a category of unbundled legal services. The first opinion addressing the issue is Opinion 94-35. In that opinion, the ethics board cited to Committee v. Mahoney and Committee v. Gartin, two Iowa cases, which both held that the preparation of legal pleadings constitutes the practice of law. In citing to those court decisions, the board stated: "It is the opinion of the Board that it is improper for an Iowa lawyer to prepare pleadings for use in pro se proceedings in any state court in which counsel is not licensed to practice." (94-35, paragraph 3) The board went on to say that such "ghost writing" is "a deception on the court" because the lawyer is trying to avoid his "inherent...responsibilities to the court and to the law." (94-35, paragraph 4) Having arrived at this conclusion, the Board references the reader to a Colorado case which cites to ABA Informal Ethics Opinion 1414, which we'll discuss below with the non-Iowa ethics opinions.

The other Iowa Ethics Opinion on point is Opinion 96-31. In that opinion, the Board concludes that a lawyer can meet her ethical duties to the court as they relate to the drafting of pleadings by indicating on the face of the pleadings that lawyer authorship is involved. Specifically, the Board stated: "[A]s long as the Court is informed of the lawyer who prepared the pleading no [...] violation would occur and it would not be improper."(96-31, paragraph 2)

(There is a final Iowa Ethics Opinion addressing ghost writing in the context of military lawyers, but the facts of that opinion are not on point for this discussion and would only serve to confuse it. You can find it here.)

Based on this research, the ethics rule in play is DR 1-102(A)(4), which states: "A lawyer shall not [...] engage in conduct involving dishonesty, fraud, deceit, or misrepresentation." (The corresponding Iowa rule is Rule 32:8.4(c).)

One of my concerns regarding a VLO centered on unbundled legal services. This concern is at least partly addressed by the two opinions cited here: Unbundled legal services are, at the very least, permissible, so long as any legal pleadings show on their face that they were prepared by an attorney and provide the identity of that attorney.

If Con is the Opposite of Pro...

Yesterday I promised a discussion of some of my concerns about setting up a VLO. Here's a quick bullet list of a few of the major ones; we'll explore them in more detail after the jump:

• Resistance to a change in the practice of law among my very traditional client base
• Resistance to unbundled legal services among local attorneys and judges
• Low viability of a multi-state law practice from a rural community

Whose Idea Was This, Anyway: Why a VLO Makes Sense

In the context of a rural Midwest law practice, I'd like to kick this blog off with a brief discussion of my reasoning behind starting a virtual law office. According to VLP, a few of the client-side benefits of a virtual law office include:

• A "greener" practice: less paper means less office waste, which means less pollution
• Stronger security through off-site backups and encrypted communications
• Increased convenience for clients who can access their file/documents at any time and who can speak with their lawyer "in person" from their home computer
• Lower cost makes legal counsel available to individuals who might not otherwise be able to afford it

The first and last item in this list are linked, so let's start by looking at those after the jump.

At the Precipice: the Purpose of this Blog

So, I've been somewhat lax in posting with regularity on my estate planning blog. What better cure for that than to start a completely new and different blog, right? Right? RIGHT?!? Hear me out.

In an effort to get myself back in the habit of blogging regularly, I am going to write this blog to document my process of deciding if and how to open a virtual law office here in rural Iowa. The idea being that, if I am obligated to post on my progress, then I will have to make progress prior to posting. Ideally, I'll be able to write a new post every couple of days, sometimes posting daily if I'm really moving through the process.

The structure I hope to follow is based on a few of the checklists in Stephanie Kimbro's book Virtual Law Practice, How to Deliver Legal Services Online. (I'll cite to this book when appropriate with the abbreviation VLP.) I've entered a series of tasks into my GTD task management software which will help keep me focused over the coming weeks. This has created some deadlines by which I need to accomplish certain important steps before I can launch (if I launch at all) my virtual law office on January 1, 2012. What important steps, you say? During the month of September, I need to:

1. Research law practice management and VLO blogs (9/23/11);
   
2. Research Iowa (and Missouri) state bar rules and regulations re: virtual practice and unbundled legal services online (9/30/11);
3. Create a secure back-up system for client data (9/30/11); and
   
4. Prepare a business plan for my future virtual practice (9/30/11).

No sweat. After all, there's a whole two weeks left in the month of September. What could possibly go wrong?

Other tasks that need to be completed between now and December 31 include researching SaaS providers, investigating malpractice insurance for a VLO, researching web developers, creating a VLO website, and drafting terms, conditions, and clickwrap agreements for the VLO.

So, here I stand, with my toes poking out over the precipice that is the cutting edge of the practice of law. I'm excited about the new frontier I'm about to cross into, but I'm nervous too. On the one hand, there's a good deal of appeal in the ability for people in a rural community to get quality legal assistance without having to drive 30+ minutes to the nearest law firm. On the other hand, technology can be intimidating to a lot of people. I'm hopeful about the potential of the VLO in a rural area, but I'm concerned that people will be resistant to doing that type of business online. But that's a post for a different day.

My hope for this blog is that it be useful to any lawyers out there who are interested in taking the plunge and starting their own VLO. I want to provide information for you that might not be readily available elsewhere through summaries of my conversations, lists of useful links, and reviews of my internet/book research. Feel free to leave your two cents in the comments section of any post. Most importantly, if you find information that I miss, please mention it. I'll give you due credit, I promise.

On that note, I leave you to continue researching VLO blogs.