Reach out to clients anywhere with eLawyering. By Richard S. Granat The idea of eLawyering can be traced to the early days of the Internet when law firm Web sites such as www.visalaw.com first appeared. In January 2000, William G. Paul, then president of the American Bar Association, created the ABA eLawyering Task Force (www.elawyering.org). Thus, the idea of eLawyering was formally recognized as a legitimate way of delivering legal services. Paul’s vision was for lawyers to be able to use the power of the Internet to serve clients of moderate means who had been priced out of the legal market. In fact, the concept of eLawyering is much broader than that, and law firms of all sizes now are using the Internet to serve clients of all income levels in ways that enhance client service and increase lawyer productivity. ELawyering will grow in importance in coming years, just as shopping online has experienced year-to-year growth. Understanding eLawyering In a January/February 2004 Law Practice magazine article titled “The Many Faces of E-Lawyering,” Marc Lauritsen, co-chair of the eLawyering Task Force, defined eLawyering as “all the ways in which lawyers can do their work using the Web and associated technologies. These include new ways to communicate and collaborate with clients, prospective clients and other lawyers, produce documents, settle disputes and manage legal knowledge.” Lauritsen also said to think of the word “lawyering” as a verb that encompasses interviewing, investigating, counseling, drafting, advocating, analyzing, negotiating, managing and so forth. For each activity, Lauritsen said there are corresponding electronic tools and techniques. This is a good start to understanding the concept of eLawyering. In addition to this definition, I would add that eLawyering is an attitude about how to build a law firm business model that exploits Web technologies for a competitive advantage. The core of this business model is a law firm Web site that incorporates interactive and Web-enabled applications that support interaction between lawyers and their clients. Creating an ePractice The first step in creating an eLawyering practice is to build a strategy map that identifies who and where your existing and potential clients are and how you can serve them more effectively via the Internet. A highly localized and neighborhood-based firm that serves lower-income families might not find the Internet relevant to its client base. On the other hand, a law firm that serves small businesses in a specialty area such as intellectual property, immigration or employment law, and that is seeking to expand its practice from a single city to the entire state, will find the Internet very relevant. Attorneys doing transactional work for clients who want to be kept informed about the progress of their transactions on a regular basis, and who want to directly review documents, might find that practice over the Internet is an indispensable and critical way to differentiate their law firms from others practicing in their niche. One would not use farm models to manage a factory economy, and one should not use physical office models to manage what essentially is a virtual information service business. Time, geography, pricing, unbundling and specialization all are factors to be taken into account when creating a strategy map for the law firm wishing to develop an eLawyering element to its practice. The strategy map then is translated into a Web site development plan that estimates investment costs, revenues and intangible benefits resulting from the shift from a traditional practice to a Web-based legal service delivery system. Step two involves creating a law firm Web site in which your firm has the control and capacity to develop and incorporate interactive Web-enabled applications. Most law firms still have first-generation Web sites that are little more than an expanded Yellow Pages advertisement. Law firm Web sites that are no more than digital brochures have little impact on law firm revenue. A law firm’s first Web site often contains information about the law firm, its partners and basic contact information. It costs around $2,500 to create this kind of a Web site, which often includes full site design, including graphics and logo; domain name registration; Web site hosting; graphics and text updates for a year; and e-mail addresses. If you shop carefully, you will find Web design firms that create first-generation Web sites for less than $2,000. Today, a first-generation Web site is one that also contains specialized legal content in the form of articles, frequently asked questions and a blog. However, I would not consider a law firm with a first-generation Web site, as defined above, as one engaged in eLawyering. Often, these sites exist within a larger law firm directory, and the firm has no access to the Web site to add interactive applications. For these firms, the Internet is just another media channel for communicating about the firm’s capabilities. They are not interactive service sites because the law practice site is business as usual. Step three involves moving beyond this type of content-only Web site to one that helps clients collaborate with their lawyers by performing certain tasks via the Internet. The impact of these Web-based, interactive applications saves time, often increasing lawyer productivity and profit margins while providing a more satisfying experience for the client. Firms moving into this next stage are what I call “Web-enabled law firms” because of their commitment to using the power of the Internet to change the way they practice law. For these law firms, the Web site becomes the primary medium to relate to clients and manage workflow. Deciding what interactive applications to add depends on the kind of practice you have. If you have a litigation practice, a secure online document depository might be just the ticket. If your firm is a transactional practice based on documents, such as in estate planning, an online document automation solution might be appropriate. In step four, you should evaluate and select Web-enabled interactive applications to add to your law firm Web site. These applications either can be licensed and hosted by third-party vendors or developed by the firm internally. The following are some of the most important interactive applications. Client extranets. A client extranet is a private space where the client can communicate securely with his or her attorney and check the status of the case. In this private space, documents can be archived, and legal fee billings can be presented and reviewed, if not actually paid electronically. A client extranet permits a personalized experience, secure communication and the convenience of having all of one’s documents and transactions in a private and secure Web space. A client extranet can be costly to create if you program the entire application yourself. Few lawyers possess this level of programming skill. A more practical alternative is to create a client extranet around applications hosted by third parties such as FindLaw, Microsoft’s SharePoint and WebEx WebOffice. These hosted applications are easy to set up and substantially reduce costs because custom programming isn’t an issue. For example, if you already have developed a Web site with FindLaw, you can add the company’s West WorkSpace application (http://products.findlaw.com/work space/index.html) — a secure, online collaborative workspace that supports information and document sharing with clients at any time and from any place. WorkSpace is very flexible and can be modified for a wide variety of practices such as litigation, corporate, real estate and family law. Web-enabled document automation. Within a secure extranet space, clients can provide data through an online questionnaire, which results in document assembly through the use of Web-enabled document solutions such as LexisNexis HotDocs (www.hotdocs. com), GhostFill (www.ghostfill.com) and Rapidocs (www.rapidocs.net). Enabling the client to provide data directly into an online interview reduces the time an attorney has to spend on the interview process and can result in an instant draft for the lawyer’s more detailed review. Web-enabled document assembly relies on the client to provide the data to create a customized document without initial lawyer intervention. Traditionally, document automation was used by lawyers within the office environment to speed up the production of documents of all kinds. A major increase in lawyer productivity occurs when the document automation process is moved onto the Web. Creating automated document templates that work on the Web isn’t a minor undertaking. All of the major document automation systems require some level of knowledge about scripting language. If the firm already has automated documents that have been used on the desktop, the task of importing these documents for use on the Web is much easier. Products such as HotDocs and Rapidocs have large inventories of state-specific legal automated documents that often can be used with minor adjustment. These predefined document templates can be used to generate first drafts, which the attorney then further customizes. Online calculators and appointment scheduling. Online interview forms can be used to collect financial data as the basis for calculating an immediate, useful result. Examples of this kind of application are the child support calculator at www.mdfamilylawyer.com and the Chapter 13 Eligibility calculator at www.njchapter13.com. Clients also can make appointments to see their attorney directly through the Web site using third-party applications such as Microsoft’s Appointment Manager (www.microsoft.com/smallbusiness/online/scheduling/appointment-manager/detail.mspx). Client data intake. Clients can provide data through online forms as the basis for an office consultation. Providing the data in advance allows the lawyer to fully prepare for the office consultation and often reduces the time required for the in-house consultation. For example, at www.mdbankruptcylaw.com, an online form collects client financial information prior to the first office interview to determine whether the client will have to file Chapter 7 or Chapter 13 under the new bankruptcy law. If you have a Web site developed by FindLaw, you easily can add online intake forms to your site. Interactive legal advisers. Some law firms are creating inter-active legal advisers. Like online document assembly, the client answers questions through an online questionnaire, but instead of a legal document being created, the intelligence engine generates a legal answer by manipulating a series of if-then statements. While these interactive legal advisers are not easy to program, once they are completed, they can be used for a long time without major revision. Interactive legal advisers can be designed to alert the lawyer of potential problems that require more sophisticated analysis and direct legal advice. For example, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (http://uscis.gov/graphics/index.htm) has several legal advisers on its site that make a determination of the immigrant’s eligibility for U.S. citizenship. Some law firms have learned how to monetize the use of such legal advisers, either on a transaction basis or a subscription basis, realizing every lawyer’s dream of making money while he or she is sleeping. Ron Friedmann’s Web site, www.prismlegal.com, provides a list of firms experimenting with online interactive legal advisers. Online legal advice. Lawyers can provide legal advice by telephone and e-mail, then publish the client’s questions and the attorney’s answers to a secure Web space for the client to reference in the future. Often such legal advice is offered at a fixed price per incident (e.g., www.legaladviceline.com and www.mdfamilylawyer.com offer this type of service). This is a convenient service for clients who have relatively narrow questions and want quick answers. Lawyers can answer these questions when they are not busy, maximizing use of time that usually has marginal billing opportunity. Online case management. Data about and within cases also can be made available via the Internet for clients to view and analyze. Information that clients see can be restricted to certain fields when they log in, but keeping them regularly informed about the progress of their cases will bond the client to the law firm. Most major case management software vendors offer Web-enabled versions of their desktop applications that can be made accessible through a client extranet. Online dispute settlement. Video and Web conferencing applications also can support forms of online dispute settlement and mediation. An online dispute settlement space easily can be set up by renting a Microsoft SharePoint application and dedicating it to a particular case or controversy. The application contained within a single and secure Web space offers discussion group functions, document uploading and archiving, calendaring and e-mail notification, which provides all elements for asynchronous conversations. Third-party vendors will continue to develop additional Web-enabled, interactive applications. Watch for them and continue to evaluate whether they can be incorporated into your law firm’s Web site. Making Your Services Shine Once you have evaluated, selected and implemented the Web-based services you will offer, the fifth step is marketing your new Web site functions to your clients. Add information to your home page about how clients can take advantage of the new functions. Advertise these capabilities as the way your firm does business differently, attracting a clientele that prefers to do business over the Internet. A new cohort of clients are coming of age who just now are realizing they have legal problems, and this generation prefers playing, making dates, working and shopping online. Your Web-enabled firm will help you penetrate this market. The Web is an interactive medium and the next generation of law firm Web sites will offer clients a way to interact with the firm’s actual legal work. Interactivity with clients is the true marker for what constitutes eLawyering in the law firm of the future. Richard S. Granat is co-chair of the eLawyering Task Force of the Law Practice Management Section of the American Bar Association. He also is the managing partner of www.mdfamilylawyer.com, a virtual law firm and is president and founder of MyLawyer.com Inc., a legal information services company, and Epoq, US Inc., the distributor of Rapidocs document automation technology in the United States. |