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.
Toward the end of the webinar, Richard Granat (@rgranat) said something that I sometimes forget as I'm doing all this VLO research. He stated that a "pure play" VLO will be very difficult to maintain without a niche and a business plan developed around that niche. I have devoted very little blog-time to the niche practice aspect of my VLO. That's partly because I haven't gone through the steps of developing a business plan, but it's largely because the choice of a niche is easy to lose track of in all the hooplah surrounding this new venture. Between the new computers, firewalls, software, and ethics opinions and rules, there's a danger that we forget that success depends, ultimately, on developing a brand for the VLO around a client base that might not otherwise be getting adequate legal services. Remember Granat's statement as you do your own research. It's not enough to have a client portal or to practice out of your home. Your VLO will only be successful through a well-developed, well-executed business plan involving a niche practice that you then market like crazy.
A central theme to the webinar - and, I should add, the very concept of VLOs - is this statement made by the panel: "Lawyers are lagging behind consumer behavior." Lawyers across the country are known for being resistant to changes in the doing of the practice of law. What do I mean by that? Essentially this: our potential clients are doing business online with a myriad of other services. People reserve flights, book hotels, apply for mortgages, sign up for lines of credit, balance their checkbook and pay their bills online. All of these activities involve the transmission of inherently sensitive data through cyberspace. Especially where banks are involved, people are completely willing to enter their Social Security numbers and other personal information into a web form and send it tripping merrily on its way through a digital forest that is full of hackers and malware and thieves (oh my!). Consumers do this because they are confident in the security provided through the bank's secured website and data storage system. If banks - the institutions that handle people's money - can do a large amount of their business online, what is stopping law firms - the institutions who prevent people from losing their money (or help them get it back) - from doing a substantial amount of their business online?
The answer is: a resistance to change. All too often, lawyers are so beholden to tradition that they can't see the forest for the reams of paper passing across their desks daily (yes, I just mixed that metaphor). All lawyers see are potential confidentiality breaches when, truly, the internet forest provides its own safety and security through encrypted connections, secure web hosting, and myriad other solutions developed precisely because of the innate risks that go along with doing business online.
Personally, I want my law firm to be on the front edge of the looming technological shift that is coming to the practice of law. With courts digitizing their filing and docket systems, it's just a matter of time before clients are seeking 24/7 access to their file online.
UPDATE: Here's a link to the video of the webinar.
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