By Correy Stephenson
The Daily Record Newswire
A pioneer of the virtual law practice, Stephanie Kimbro draws upon her own experience to offer lawyers guidance in a new book published by the American Bar Association, "Virtual Law Practice: How to Deliver Legal Services Online."
Kimbro, who launched her North Carolina virtual law practice in 2006, points out the benefits of a practice that offers greater work/life balance and flexibility, lower overhead and the ability to expand a client base across jurisdictions.
Defining a virtual practice as "a professional law practice that exists online through a secure portal and is accessible to both the client and the lawyer anywhere the parties may access the Internet," Kimbro quickly delves into setting up and operating such a practice.
Lawyers should begin by choosing a structure for their practice (will it be strictly virtual or a traditional law office adding a virtual practice?) and then determine what technology to use. Kimbro advises attorneys to perform thorough research to find a SaaS provider, focusing on the company's data return and retention policies, pricing structure and security capabilities.
As part of her "daily best practices," Kimbro emphasizes the importance of security, from securing mobile devices and wireless networks to using full disk encryption on all computers and creating strong passwords.
The book also addresses issues related to marketing and managing a virtual law practice, as well as providing good customer service (Kimbro suggests establishing a response policy for client contact through the portal).
In an interesting and informative addition to the book, Kimbro spoke with several lawyers with a variety of virtual practices and provides "case studies" of how they operate their practices, including tech specifics, ethics concerns and advertising approaches. There are also similar case studies on virtual legal assistants and the impact of virtual practice on e-discovery.
Kimbro acknowledges the risks of a virtual practice, most notably issues surrounding the security of the technology involved and the practice of law outside of a jurisdiction. She devotes a significant portion of the book to ethics and malpractice issues, providing opinions from state bars on a number of topics relating to virtual practice, from unbundled legal services to the electronic storage of law office data.
Because virtual law practices are in an early stage, Kimbro advises lawyers to be prepared to educate their state bar association and malpractice carrier about what is involved when they launch such a practice.
To purchase the book, go to: http://www/abanet.org/abastore/
Published: Tue, Dec 28, 2010
