Total Attorneys

Last week, Total Attorneys and several other industry leaders in the legal cloud computing arena announced a partnership we hope will help determine the direction of cloud computing for the legal field.  Founding members of the Legal Cloud Computing Association (LCCA) include Total Attorneys, Clio (Themis Solutions Inc.), DirectLaw, Inc. and RocketMatter.

In a rapidly changing technological environment, LCCA will cooperate with Bar Associations and other policy-making bodies to help develop standards, guidelines and “best practices” that will assist attorneys in making the most effective use of new cloud computing opportunities while fulfilling their ethical obligations and ensuring the security of client data.

Join Total Attorneys this Friday at 12:00pm Central on Total Expert Radio for an informative interview with Alan Klevan on ways to manage your law firm when you are out of the office.

Klevan is a principal at Klevan & Klevan, LLP, and he is the creator of Law Practice Strategies, a legal consulting firm dedicated to assisting attorneys move towards building a more efficient and profitable law practice. In August of 2009, the American Bar Association’s General Practice, Solo & Small Firm Division awarded him the “Solo and Small Firm Trainer of the Year Award.”

During this free broadcast, callers will have the opportunity to speak to Klevan live on-air and get answers to their questions. Call in by dialing (347) 857-1419 or visit the show online here. For more information on this show and others visit the Total Expert Radio page.

Last week I handed the reins over to Chelsey Lambert to host an episode of Total Expert Radio. While I didn’t get to listen in live, I did get a chance to enjoy the archived recording. This episode was on Holiday Law Practice Strategies, and it featured Donna Seyle, an expert in freelance lawyering, virtual practice and law practice management. This was a great episode for Chelsey to host since she is Total Attorney’s Virtual Law Office Enabler, and she and Donna were able to give our listeners many tips on how to balance the practice of law with other obligations during the holiday season.

Holidays provide one of the rare times of the year when attorneys in traditional practices get to leave their offices, but they need the tools to allow them to walk out of the office without feeling business will collapse while they are enjoying a child’s holiday pageant or visiting friends at a party.

According to Donna Seyle, attorneys can practice law anywhere they have access to a secure internet connection. At Total Attorneys, we agree and often help attorneys create virtual office solutions for their entire practice, but brick-and-mortar attorneys can also benefit from virtual solutions during the holidays.

Here are some of the other tools and tips suggested during the show:

• Use a virtual receptionist to manage calls and messages while the office is empty.
• Set up auto-responses to notify clients when you will be responding to emails and phone calls.
• Manage your time in short increments to get both work and holiday tasks. Chelsey suggested using the Pomodoro technique.
• Use your down time during the holidays to research ways to make your business more efficient. Generally there is a technology out there that can help you streamline your business.
• Give your clients reasonable expectations during the holidays by sending them a proactive email that explains how and when you will be working during the holidays.
• Avoid scheduling court dates and meetings on days when you have holiday plans with friends and family.
• Take advantage of opportunities to grow your practice by networking and making connections at parties. You just might find a new referral standing under the mistletoe in that Santa hat.

For more great tips, listen to the full show here, and join us this Monday and Tuesday for a Power Chat on Security in the Cloud, featuring Total Attorneys’ David Dahl and Clio’s Jack Newton.

Yesterday on Total Expert Radio, we discussed Security in Cloud Computing with two IT experts, Clio’s Jack Newton and Total Attorney’s Dave Dahl. When I host these shows, I try to keep things laid back and off the cuff so that our listeners will get the opportunity to hear candid discussions on a variety of legal industry topics. While the show always features many great experts, some shows really stand out above others for those golden bits of information that pop up during our conversations on air. Yesterday proved to be one of those golden shows. If you didn’t have time to join us yesterday, you can still listen to the show by visiting the Total Expert Radio page, but here are a few highlights from the show:

• What is cloud computing? It’s a broad term used in a lot of contexts, but for the purposes of the show, it’s any situation where you are hosting your software and data with an off-site provider and accessing that data through a web browser rather than keeping all of your data on your own servers in your office.
• Is cloud computing too advanced for my law firm? Every attorney is probably already using at least one cloud-based service: online banking, email, online shopping are all examples.
• Can cloud-based service providers do an adequate job of maintaining security and privacy for my files? If your office burns down, you fire a disgruntled employee or your computer crashes, your office may not be equipped to protect your data, but good cloud service providers will store servers in highly-regulated facilities, perform frequent security audits, and create built-in redundancy to maintain integrity and security of your data.
• How do I pick a service provider? While there is no official “stamp of approval” to certify cloud service providers, you can do background research and ask questions to determine whether a service provider uses all of the proper means of keeping data secure.
• Isn’t it easier to just use the software I already have installed on my computer instead of uploading my data to a web-based application? Cloud-based legal applications and services offer a lot of benefits: they cut down the time and cost of managing your own IT resources; updates, improvements and security patches are ongoing so no need to download new software or reboot; software constantly matures on a 24/7 basis so that you never have to learn a new program all at once or buy a new version of software after the old one becomes outdated; you have the freedom to work from anywhere and on any operating system as long as you can access the internet; plus, there are many other benefits.

After talking to Jack and Dave yesterday, I agree with something our CEO, Ed Scanlan, once said to me: “The term cloud computing will someday go away; it will just be called computing.” Check out the full show here, and join us next month on Total Expert Radio for a discussion on Contract Lawyering.

Cloud computing offers convenient and lower-cost solutions to many of the challenges small firm and solo attorneys face today, but it also raises questions for conscientious lawyers. Is cloud computing secure? Can attorneys ethically entrust their client data to shared servers and third-party providers? Join Jack Newton, Co-Founder of Clio, and Total Attorneys Chief Technology Officer David Dahl as they discuss security in the cloud next week on Total Expert Radio at 12:00 p.m. Central. Access the show here or call-in at 347-857-1419. Callers will have the opportunity to join guests on the show and ask questions on the air. To see a list of our past shows, please visit the Total Expert Radio page.

In today’s legal industry, we are surrounded by new technology and new ways to communicate with our clients. We market law firms online, communicate with clients via secure online portals, network through social media, create our websites for easy viewing on mobile devices, and even file court documents online. On the other hand, most attorneys are still entering into agreements on paper with the majority of their contracts. Attorneys utilize a printer, ink pen, scanner and email for most contracts, while they still meet in person to exchange and sign more important agreements. In most situations, however, is all of this printing, signing, copying, and scanning necessary?

The answer is likely “no” since the Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce Act (ESIGN) was passed over a decade ago and the Uniform Electronic Transactions Act (UETA) has been adopted by 47 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. These acts facilitate electronic commerce and the use of electronic records and signatures by ensuring the validity and legal effect of contracts entered into electronically.

With these laws in place, which lay out the signature and identification requirements necessary to validate a person’s signature, electronic signatures are in most cases recognized as being equally valid as handwritten signatures, as long as the agreements do not include terms that are unconscionable or against public policy. That means that click-wrap agreements and signatures could become as prevalent as traditional handwritten signatures and paper documents for many agreements created by attorneys and businesses. Not only do changes in law lean in favor of electronically signed contracts, electronic signatures combined with software and internet services offer a few benefits that are not available during traditional contract signing procedures:

• Electronic signatures and click-wrap agreements save paper since there is no need to print the agreement, and web-based platforms allow all parties and their attorneys to view the same agreement as it is saved in your virtual law office or online document storage website.
• Contracts can be accessed anywhere the internet is available, and there is no need to find a printer, scanner or fax machine. That means contracts can be accessed virtually anywhere, in the office, at home, from a laptop on vacation, and other places where printers, scanners and fax machines may not be readily available.
• Because parties do not have to take the added steps of printing, signing, scanning and faxing, electronic signatures and click-wrap agreements speed up the contracting process.
• With the advancement of security in SaaS (Software as a Service) products, electronic signatures and click-wrap agreements can help parties protect privacy. Instead of leaving a private agreement out on a table where wandering eyes may find it, web-based contracts can be stored on password protected sites that are accessible only to parties with the correct passwords and credentials.

Does your virtual law office or traditional law firm create electronic contracts? If so, what types of contracts do you think work best with e-signatures or click-wrap agreements?