The growth in the virtual law office concept is pretty big these days. There are a number of reasons why this is the case, but the biggest is that technology is now at a point where 100 percent of certain legal services can be delivered electronically.
1. What is a virtual law office?
A virtual law office is a when legal services are delivered solely electronically via the internet, telephone, online meetings, video conferencing, e-mail, fax, and even cloud computing document storage and sharing websites.
Some might argue that a pure virtual law office requires no verbal contact between lawyer and client. I’m of the view that if the legal services can be delivered without in-person presence, that qualifies as a virtual law office.
The typical services provided virtually revolve around standard document preparation such as wills, family law documents, intellectual property, small business services, estate administration documents, most document-based legal services.
However, with the growth in micro-niche legal practices that are research-based, many lawyers are developing virtual law practices that are research-centric rather than document-centric.
Virtual office locations can be at home, on the road, or traditional fixed office location. What defines a virtual law office is that all services are delivered electronically; the entire legal service delivery from start to finish is done without in-person client contact.
That said, a home office isn’t necessarily a virtual law office if the lawyer or professional meets in-person with clients. The same is with a mobile or remote office. Likewise, you can have a virtual law office in a commercial setting – it’s just clients don’t attend the office.
2. Virtual Law Office Advantages
- Security breaches: if your computer system is breached, it can compromise your clients. However, nearly all traditional firms have this same issue.
- Lower overhead: it’s not necessary to rent commercial space and you can invest more into technology than human resources.
- Lower cost to clients: lower overhead means you can compete on price and use technology to increase volume.
- Client convenience: clients don’t need to visit your offices; they can instruct you using the computer.
- Work flexibility: work when you want – break free of traditional firm hours.
- Work from anywhere: turn your laptop into your entire office and work from anywhere in the world.
- Micro-niche the practice: clients are global which means a lawyer can specialize in a very specific area that serves clients globally.
- Leverage services: using technology and delivering electronically gives rise to leveraging existing products for faster and more cost-effective legal services.
- Global reach – not restricted to local clients. Can market and deliver legal services anywhere in the world.
- You get to work using plenty of technology. This is only a plus if you love technology.
- Job protection – it’s a way to adapt to the changing practice of law. Law is changing; some people see it becoming commoditized. Embracing technology could very well be an excellent method for job protection.
- Staffing convenience – a virtual law office easily enables telecommuting and virtual assistant arrangments.
3. Virtual Law Office Disadvantages
- Less personable – no person-to-person contact. You don’t watch the body language of clients; often a way of further understanding clients’ communications. Also, you may miss working with people in person.
- End up competing on price. It’s not always fun to compete strictly on price. This need not be the case if you work in a micro-niche legal area.
- Fewer resources. You most likely won’t have the human, technology, and other resources a larger firm has.
- You’re very reliant on technology – if problems arise, not good. If you systems crash, business grinds to a halt. This really isn’t a unique problem to virtual law offices because most firms these days are extremely dependent on technology – a crash affects a traditional firm as much as a VLO.
- Restricted to certain types of law. You can’t deliver 100 percent of legal services electronically in most litigation matters.
A virtual law office isn’t for every lawyer; some will do it and love it, while others will find it restrictive, lonely, and too technology-centric. That said, more firms, in my view, will add virtual law office aspects to their service delivery in order to gain the above-listed advantages. Afterall, it’s hard to dispute the fact that electronic delivery of legal services is cost-effective and convenient for clients. Firms that don’t see this will lose out in the long run.
I don’t presently have a virtual law office, but I’m looking into it. My practice is a litigation practice, but I’m constantly striving to incorporating technology and electronic delivery in my litigation practice.
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