Total Attorneys

For years technology providers have held back solo & small law offices. Overwhelming license fees, over sized features, and headaches that add to their already overflowing schedule. Holding back and stifling the passion and energy of a group who is so anxious to grow, succeed and help.

Total Attorneys is proud to announce those days are over! POWER TO THE SMALL FIRM! Announcing a new line of products and services designed, built and PRICED for the 21st century lawyer.

It's been almost a year since we launched the Total Attorneys Practice Management Platform. In that time we’ve listened and learned your needs, wish lists, ideas and dreams. The next chapter of the Total Attorneys Platform is the culmination of those teachings. We too have a vision. We see a platform where every lawyer can afford to be organized, grow add staff and work from anywhere.

Introducing: Total Apps
A marketplace where today’s law firm, can build a solution tailored to their business and goals.

Need to accept payments?
Add a legal research tool?
Virtual Paralegal Services?
A Website?
Online Marketing?

Need tools that you can turn on / off as you need them, with pricing that is affordable? Want all of this seamlessly integrated into your Practice Management system? DONE!

Now Total Attorneys Practice Management Platform users can add one or many additional tools and services to their platform account. Build the system you need and leave out the stuff you don’t.

Welcome Solo's it’s about time it was all about you!

Today marks a special day in Total Attorneys’ history. We are proud to announce the first app store for small and solo law firms. Beginning Thursday, Total Attorneys customers will be able to purchase a variety of apps from the Total Attorneys platform to service their law firm.

We believe that attorneys should have choices on what they need to run their practice. We also believe that these practice management elements should be integrated and work seamlessly together. You will begin to see this with the launch and continuous development of our app store, Total Apps.

We’re thrilled to announce our first apps featured in the Total Apps marketplace. Among them is an app for Fastcase, the leading research provider for attorneys. Our customers will now be able to purchase a monthly subscription to access Fastcase’s robust research engine. We are also proud to announce our integration with Legal Web Experts, which will allow subscribers to purchase online marketing packages including building websites, reputation management, SEO management, and other online marketing services. Another app in the platform is LegalEase, which allows users to purchase attorney and paralegal hours to outsource work. Capital Payments is our Total App for payment processing, and allows for the one-time or recurring processing of credit card and ACH payments seemless intregrated into our platform.

Additionally, Total Apps users will be able to purchase Total Attorneys’ own hugely successful products: Legal Leads and Live Virtual Receptionist.

Our goal is to provide attorneys with everything they need to run their practice conveniently, efficiently, and successfully through an elegant online platform. We hope you subscribe here for only $1 per month today and try out some of the Total Apps!

If you are a developer or legal service provider and want to learn more about our API and program, feel free to reach out to me or email us at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

I’m excited to announce the release of Total Attorneys native iPhone and iPad apps! Beginning today, you can download the apps in the Apple App Store and start running your practice from anywhere. These apps are the first comprehensive native iPhone and iPad applications in the legal practice management software industry and come free with your $1 per month Total Attorneys user account.

Both apps allow you to access contacts, matters, record billing records, discussions, tasks, and your dashboard all from your iPhone or iPad. You can even track time in one of the apps and it will simultaneously sync with the web platform:

Everything about the apps is just as integrated as the time tracking sync. Create a matter for a new client you meet on the go and the record will be waiting for you when you get back to your office and login to the web browser version. Create a task for something you remember on your commute, and it will be there when you get to the office. Need to access a discussion with a client quickly while in a meeting with co-counsel? It’s right there on your phone. We understand the importance of being able to access important aspects of your practice on the go and built the apps with that in mind.

The apps are free to all Total Attorneys customers and are available for download in Apple’s app store. We hope you will enjoy using them as much as we have enjoyed building them. Not a customer yet, create an account for only $1!

By Stephanie Kimbro, author of Virtual Law Practice: How to Deliver Legal Services Online and co-founder of VLOTech.

Most lawyers who have researched ethics opinions related to online advertising are familiar with the Total Attorneys ethics matter, which began in April, 2009 when a single Connecticut lawyer filed an ethics complaint with the state bar disciplinary counsel in 47 states. The complaints targeted not just the company, but also more than 500 of its bankruptcy law firm customers. Established in 2002, Total Attorneys is a cloud-based technology and marketing company that is the country’s oldest and largest performance-based lead generation provider to small law firms. For those not familiar with advertising terminology (after all, we don’t typically receive business education in law school), a “lead” for a law firm would be a “prospective” client.

The ethics complaint alleged advertising ethics violations pertaining to the company’s methods. Specifically, the complaint alleged 1) that the lawyer advertising model was actually a for-profit referral service and not advertising, 2) that its customers were fee-sharing, and 3) that the company’s paralegal services constituted the unauthorized practice of law. Of the 47 states that were presented with these allegations, only 24 states requested a response to the Complainant’s charges. The remaining states never took any action with regard to the complaint. While most of the disciplinary counsel who opened investigations did not pursue fee-sharing and UPL issues and many quickly closed investigations with no finding of wrongdoing, a few disciplinary counsel aggressively argued that the Total Attorneys business model violated Rule 7.2. The complainant alleged that when an attorney paid a fee on a per lead basis (instead of the traditional flat fee directory model), the payment violated Rule 7.2 of the Model Rules of Professional Conduct, as adopted by most state bar associations, which prohibits a lawyer for paying a non-attorney for the recommendation of his/her services.

To defend its business model, its customers and the ability of lawyers nationwide to take advantage of new technology to grow their legal practices, the company funded the legal defense of its attorney customers in each state. Total Attorneys, their customers and their counsel successfully argued that Total Attorneys was not a referral service and that the payments were payments for the reasonable cost of advertising and not a payment for a recommendation of the lawyers’ services. Over a period of almost 3 years, each of the 24 states’ regulatory bodies reviewed the complaint and closed their investigations with either “no finding” or a “finding of no wrongdoing. All of the complaints were eventually dismissed by November 2011. The states which conducted an inquiry and then closed or dismissed the matter are listed below:

• Illinois
• Connecticut (charges dismissed at close of prosecution in evidentiary hearing, see Zelotes v Rousseau)
• Hawai’i
• Alaska
• Alabama
• Arizona- A request for advisory opinion was jointly submitted by bar counsel and defense counsel – this was a term of the dismissal. The AZ Bar issued Opinion 11-02 in Oct. 2011.
• Idaho
• New Mexico
• Colorado
• Vermont
• Washington
• Texas
• North Carolina
• Missouri
• Wisconsin
• Maine
• North Dakota
• Michigan
• Tennessee
• Oregon
• Montana
• South Carolina
• Utah
• New Jersey

Resolution of the ethics matter was an important development in the states’ interpretation of online marketing. For the first time, clearer distinctions were made between referral sites, directory listings and other forms of lead generation marketing used by lawyers. (You can read many of the pleadings here which discuss in greater detail the difference between referral services, online directories and how pay-per-click advertising works.)

The fact that the company had to spend so much money defending its permissible advertising methods raises concerns. Any company or lawyer who comes up with an innovative method of marketing their services to the public must be aware of both the risk that comes with presenting a new method of marketing without obtaining the initial blessing of the states’ regulatory entities and the inertia that resists change within the legal profession. Unfortunately, the approval process is time-consuming and the default response to the use of new methodologies is often “no, you can’t”. Both attorneys and consumers pay the price for that inertia, as commercial speech is chilled and opportunities to expand access to legal services are lost. Further, the lack of standardization in the advertising rules from state to state, especially with regard to online advertising methods, puts even more of a chill on future innovation. After a long a tedious approval process, one state may permit the new advertising method/pricing structure only to have the state next door prohibit the same exact activity. The result is that the public is presented with fewer alternatives for locating and working with a lawyer.

What about the lawyer who wants to try a new form of online advertising or a multijurisdictional virtual law firm that must figure out how to comply with differing ethics rules in several states? Total Attorneys’ investment in advancing legal marketing opened up many options for attorneys, but in the time that it took to resolve the ethics matter, additional online advertising methods and technology for marketing have emerged. These may contain other nuances that have not been clearly addressed by state regulators and may not be clearly interpreted by a law firm reading its states’ advertising rules. Where the rules of a jurisdiction don’t clearly relate to a specific method, lawyers are left to interpret the rules without context and with little guidance.

Citing the ethics matter among others, the Standing Committee on the Delivery of Legal Services wrote a letter to the ABA Commission on Ethics 20/20 providing its recommendations regarding lawyer advertising rules, including the deletion of Model Rule 7.2(b), the rule that prohibits a lawyer from giving anything of value for recommendation for his or her services with four exceptions. The exceptions to the rule combined with the emergence of new online advertising methods have left lawyers with more questions than confidence when it comes to using Internet-based tools for client development.

The Committee’s recommendation for removal of the restrictions in 7.2 was rejected at the February meeting of the Commission. However, initial awareness of the issues was raised and a larger conversation started. A proposal to amend Model Rule 7.2 will go to the ABA House of Delegates for consideration at the Annual Meeting in August. The proposed amendment to Comment 5 would clarify the meaning of “recommending the lawyer’s services” and explicitly state that a lawyer may pay others for “generating client leads, such as Internet-based client leads, so long as the lead generator affirmatively states that it does not recommend the lawyer, any payment to the lead generator is consistent with Rules 1.5(e) (division of fees) and 5.4 (professional independence of the lawyer), and the lead generator’s communications are consistent with Rule 7.1 (communications concerning a lawyer’s services).” While it would have been preferable to eliminate Rule 7.2 outright, this proposal at least demonstrates recognition of the increased pressure for attorneys to compete in a crowded marketplace and the continued lack of access to lawyers among lower and middle-class Americans and raises hope for continued evolution of the Rules to alleviate those issues.

It's that time of year when most of us make an extra effort to stop and count the blessings in our lives.  For some, that might be a bit more challenging the past couple of years, as work is hard to come by, salaries are down and it doesn't appear that change is right around the corner.  In particular, many new lawyers who invested significant time, effort and money in preparing themselves for legal careers are facing challenges they never anticipated.

So what's to be thankful for in all that?  The flexibility and opportunities that we attorneys have today.

When I graduated from law school nearly twenty years ago, going solo required a significant up-front investment, contract lawyers were few and far between, working remotely was virtually unheard of and I'd never met a part-time lawyer.  Yes, in one way these are tough times in which to build a legal career...but in another they're the most exciting times in history.  New technology, new flexibility in the way legal services are delivered, a new understanding of what clients need and a new generation of prospective clients are bringing change to the legal profession in far more ways than just scaling back the available large-firm jobs and putting that astronomical salary out of reach for most graduates.  They're allowing us to redefine our profession in a way that could be better for us, better for the clients we serve and better for the way the public views lawyers.

Some amazing minds are envisioning a future in which lawyers work more efficiently, offer affordable services to a wider range of clients while still building lucrative careers and bring their own special strengths and talents to the profession.  Experts in technology, legal ethics, business management and other areas are collaborating to create new models, and we've only scratched the surface.

So, today, I'm thankful for the opportunity to be a part of the renovation of the legal profession, and to be in a position to provide tools and resources to the attorneys who recognize that they get to decide what "be a lawyer" means for them in the future and who will thus create new possibilities for all of us.

All of the buzz surrounding MILOfest over the past few days has me thinking about converts.  The conference offers several sessions geared toward recent converts, and that’s no surprise:  not only is the Mac movement growing, but the very nature of technology means that people are going to make new discoveries and want to make changes.

In business, though, it’s easy to get locked in to a system simply because that’s what you’ve always used, what your colleagues use and what your (often expensive) software runs on.  Making a change can look daunting and professionals may be discouraged from making the switch simply because they don’t have time to sort out all of changes and expenses and data transfers that would be associated with the move.  That, unfortunately, can mean not taking advantage of the best, most efficient technology available.  And this can be a vicious circle:  when the business needs new software, it’s matched to the old hardware and operating system, creating one more reason it might be difficult or expensive to make a change.

Fortunately, cloud computing eliminates many of these issues.  There’s been a lot of talk—and rightly so—about how cloud computing provides flexibility in location, but I’ve seen little mention of the equally-important flexibility in equipment.

A web-based law practice management platform like TotalAttorneys.com doesn’t discriminate based on your operating system. Simply log in with a secure Internet connection and access your files from any machine.  That means no conflicts if you use a PC in the office and a Mac at home.  It means that you can access a client file from your PC laptop connection just as easily as you can through your iPhone app.  It even means that you can work on a Mac while your partner works on a PC.

With cloud computing, attorneys and other professionals will be freer than ever to “convert” without replicating software costs and interrupting the flow of business.

Right now, Mac-loving and Mac-curious lawyers from all over the country are gathered at MILOfest in Florida. Even though I’m working away in my office in Chicago, I’m a little excited about that gathering, and the fact that it’s the third annual Macs in the Law Office conference and appears to be gaining in popularity. When the 2009 conference was announced, the message many Mac enthusiasts were attempting to spread was simply that it was possible to run a law firm on Macs. In just two years, we’ve advanced to sharing advantages and looking at the opportunities devices like the iPhone and iPad present for legal practice, and the number of lawyers and law firms using Macs in their practices and Apple devices to do business continues to grow.

If you’re a regular reader of this blog, it will come as no surprise to you that I’m kind of an Apple geek. You’ve undoubtedly noticed that I liberally quote Steve Jobs, and you might remember that earlier this year, we held a company-wide Oregon Trail tournament in our atrium. At Total Attorneys, I have the good fortune to work with many people who shared my nostalgia for the Apple IIs we set up for the tournament and who remain Mac enthusiasts to this day. My past with Apple is long. Like many my age, I learned to program Basic on an Apple II in the 80s. Now, a quarter-century later, it’s energizing to see new converts recognizing the Mac advantage and long-time enthusiasts realizing that they don’t have to run their law offices on PCs even as they delight in their Macs at home and relish their iPhones and iPads.

It’s exciting, too, to be able to contribute to that movement by offering solutions that help attorneys make the most of those Apple machines and devices. By the end of this year, we’ll be offering Total Attorneys apps for both the iPhone and the iPad, so that attorneys can use those devices to elegantly access and manage their law practice. It has been a blast building the iPhone and iPad native apps to take advantage of the fantastic capabilities of the devices.

Cheers to you Mac lovin lawyers!

As a profession, we're traditionally slow to change, and that's all the more true with the areas of our businesses that most of us never wanted to give much thought to in the first place, like marketing.  For many law firms, that means that once the marketing plan was in place, no one ever looked back.  And that's assuming that there ever was a comprehensive marketing plan and not just a few unrelated marketing efforts tacked on as opportunities arose or the sales person from the yellow pages called.

In many areas of your law practice this might work just fine--if you're still comfortable in the old chair you purchased the day you set up your first law office, by all means keep right on sitting in it.  And if you prefer to keep your time by hand and have your secretary enter it into your billing program later, you're adding an unnecessary step and probably wasting a little time, but there's no real harm in it.

Marketing, though, is different.  If you're spending money on marketing ventures that no longer reach your prospective client base or marketing with messages that no longer resonate, you're wasting money--probably a significant amount of money.  And you're not just missing opportunities to bring in new business.  If you're not advertising where they are, they may simply never know that you exist.  But if you're advertising with the same content you hired someone to write five or ten years ago, you may be sending a message that doesn't resonate with your current prospects and actually discourages them from picking up the phone.

If you haven't carefully reviewed and consciously overhauled your law firm marketing plan recently, it's time. And it's not a one-time process, either:  once you've assessed, cut some efforts, ramped up others and integrated a new strategy or two, you'll want to monitor, reassess and adjust your investments based on performance.

Start reviewing now to start out the new year with a fresh, more effective approach to law firm marketing.

Related Resources:

5 Reasons Your Law Firm Marketing Isn't Working

How to Measure the Return on Your Legal Marketing Investment

Last week, a paralegal blogger posted about a job posting that called for “JD Paralegals”. Her primary concern seemed to be that there were plenty of qualified paralegals and no reason attorneys should be encroaching on that territory or law firms should be paying higher rates just to get JDs.

What struck me about the situation, though, was that the ad invited lawyers to downgrade themselves to paralegal status and paralegal pay. For the law firm, of course, it’s a great deal—if they get takers, they’ll essentially be getting contract lawyers at paralegal rates and paralegal prestige. And they will get takers. The lawyers won’t make a lot of money, they won’t get experience that looks particularly good on their resumes, but they’ll get a (relatively small) paycheck for a while, which is more than many of their former classmates can say.

It’s easy to see how even a small steady paycheck might be enticing in the current economy, especially as news reports indicate that the already bleak legal employment landscape may actually be worse than law schools have been leading us to believe. There may even be good reason to take on such projects in the short term. But it’s also easy to get caught in that cycle of accepting low-paying jobs that don’t really make full use of your skills just to keep the bills paid, and it can be self-perpetuating.

In legal publications and mainstream news and even right here, you hear over and over again that the legal profession is changing and that attorneys are going to have to adapt or “die”. But think carefully about what adaptation means for you, and don’t just accept a place at the bottom of the totem pole where someone else can take advantage of those changes to profit from your education and hard work while you remain trapped.

“The legal profession is changing” doesn’t mean “accept that you’re going to be stuck in a low-level, poorly compensated job.” It means getting creative, making the most of new tools, being prepared to become an entrepreneur or to join forces with other attorneys in your situation; it means finding new markets, taking advantage of technology and adapting the services you offer to those markets and networking in new ways.

Going solo, starting up a virtual law practice and finding a niche in which to offer contract legal services to law firms from your home are just a few ways that you may be able to find your place in the new legal landscape; don’t blindly accept the place that the large firms who don’t want to compete with new structures and options want to assign you. Yes, the changing legal marketplace presents some challenges, especially if it crept up while you were in law school and you graduated into a very different world than the one you’d been preparing for. But it also offers opportunities, and this is the time to find them, when you can be part of the foundation of the new legal profession.

Written by Russ Korins, Nimbus Law Firm Marketing. Russ Korins assists law firms with marketing and practice development. He previously practiced corporate and technology law. He is based in New York City and works with clients around the country.

The next time you are out with your non-lawyer friends, try asking them a couple of questions:

"Who here urgently needs commercial litigation?"

"Raise your hand if you need trusts & estates work."

If these sound stilted and silly, just think: most legal marketing is guilty of this very problem. You can do better by incorporating an approach called client-centric marketing into your practice development efforts.

Focusing on the benefits and value to buyers, from the buyer’s perspective, is something most great businesses already do. Think about ads for the hottest smartphone: they do not talk about the technical aspects of how data packets travel from point A to point B; they instead emphasize staying in touch, connectivity, sharing, and doing what you love and working from anywhere. These are things people want and need. They say "I want to be able to email when I'm away from the office."

Law firms can benefit from the same approach. Client-centric marketing for lawyers means explaining how their work is:

• the solution to a problem, or
• the key to an opportunity.

Imagine what a prospective client is thinking to spur the search for an attorney. Then, describe your work in those terms, from the client's perspective.

Returning to the commercial litigation example, no businessperson walks around saying, "I need commercial litigation." Instead, they say they need help resolving a dispute with another company and protecting their own business.

Similarly, people do not say, "I need trusts & estates." They think, "I need a lawyer for a will because I want to protect my loved ones."

Consider your own practice. What problems do you solve? What do you help people do? If you are not sure, a good way to start is completing the sentence "I help ____ do ______."

Once you sharpen your client-centric message, work it into all of your marketing channels: your website, your email with contacts, and the way you introduce yourself in person. For help, explain what you do to those non-lawyer friends, and ask them why they think it is valuable.

A client-centric perspective is an important element of successful legal marketing. Work it into everything you say, and prospects and referral sources will remember you as someone valuable.