Law That You Can Afford : Self-Help Law, Limited Legal Services : MyLawyer.com : Law That You Can Afford

Stephanie Kimbro, a solo practitioner who operates Kimbrolaw.com, a virtual law firm in North Carolina, has been selected as this year's winner of the James Keane Memorial Award for Excellence in eLawyering. This award is given annually by the eLawyering Task Force of the Law Practice Management Section of the American Bar Association, a group which was founded by Jim Keane an active and long-standing member of the ABA/LPM section who died tragically from lung cancer several years ago. I am the present Co-Chair with Marc Lauritsen.

Ms. Kimbro's law firm is a completely virtual law firm that serves individuals and small business over the Web. Our group concluded that Kimbrolaw.com  met the criteria for the Award perfectly as it demonstrates an innovative online model for delivering services to the broad middle class. Clients access their own individual web space where they can consult with their attorney, have their documents reviewed, and conduct other legal tasks -- all online.

The Award was given to Ms. Kimbro at the American Bar Association's TECHSHOW on April 2, 2009, immediately before the key note speech by Richard Susskind, who discussed his new book: The End of Lawyers: The Rethinking the Nature of Legal Services.

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 I am offering an on-line course on "unbundling legal services" with a particular focus on how to offer limited legal services over the Internet.  "Limited legal services" is another name for "unbundled legal services."The course begins the week of June 1, 2009 and there will be 7 sessions over a 12 week period. By the end of the course participants will have developed a design for an "unbundled legal service" that can be integrated with their traditional law practice. Topics include: how to "unbundle" legal services by task or by issue; how to create and price an on-line service; marketing of on-line "unbundled legal services"; and ethical and regulatory requirements for offering "unbundled legal services."

For a detailed syllabus go to: Solo Practice University

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I joined up as faculty with Solo Practice University last week. This is a new online educational venture started by Susan Carter Liebel , a coach and consultant to solo practices. Law schools really don't teach law students how to open a solo practice -- they are too busy training students for large law practice for which many of their students aspire but very few achieve. This program will be a welcome addition to bar association CLE courses as it focuses on the needs of solos, who still make up the largest percentage of practicing lawyers.

I am going to develop a course on how to offer what is known as limited legal services or "unbundled legal services" both online and offline. My plan is to use pre-recorded video, discussion groups, an online blog, and email to help course participants develop a business plan for increasing and diversifying their revenue base. I am looking forward to this learning experience in how to deliver legal services online.

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Bernardo Granwehr has launched Iowa's first virtual law firm focusing on family law matters and wills at IowaLawyerOnLine. The law firm offers legal forms bundled with legal advice for fixed price. For example, Iowa Divorce Forms with Minor Children sells for $299.00 and a Will sells for $100.00. The divorce services are designed for pro se itigants. The web site is powered by our DirectLaw hosted service which includes the Rapidocs web-enabled document automation capability. Cllients complete on-line questionnaires which generate completed forms and documents ready for attorney review. The use of a web-enabled document automation capability keeps the cost of document  creation to a minimum enabling the attorney to spend time giving legal advice and additional custom-drafting at still make a reasonable fee for the time expended.

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  Myrna Arroyo, a solo practitioner in located in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, who specializes in estate planning, has launched a virtual law firm site that offers wills, living trusts, and other estate planning documents bundled with legal advice for a fixed price. The site is designed to provide an alernative to web sites like LegacyWriter, Do Your Own Will, LegalZoom, and Wills-Online, which offer legal forms without any legal advice. None of these legal form web sites offer documents that are specific to the State of Louisiana because of the particular nature of Louisiana law, which is based on the French Civil Code. Users are able to complete an on-line questionnaire which generates a completed legal document, ready for lawyer review, analysis, and further customization. Web enabled document automation enables saves time in document creation, enabling Ms. Arroyo to provide legal advice with the document for a fixed price. The site is powered by Epoq's, DirectLaw Web Service.

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The eLawyering Task Force of the Law Practice Management Section of the American Bar Association will award, for the first time, the James I Keane Memorial Award for Excellence in eLawyering at the ABA TECHSHOW in March in Chicago. The James I. Keane Memorial Award gives recognition to law offices or legal organizations that have developed legal service innovations delivered over the Internet. Thus, the focus of the award is the innovative delivery of personal legal services, with special attention given to firms and entities that serve both moderate income individuals and the broad middle class. The Award will be given to a law firm on Friday, March 14, 2008 at a Luncheon to be attended by all of the participants in ABA TECHSHOW.

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Law.Com reports that the Hawaii Bar Association has petitioned the Hawaii Supreme Court to expand on its authorized practice rules in a way that would prohibit non-lawyer legal document preparers.

Bar Association President Jeffrey Sia said the "motive is not greed, but the protection of the public." Does he have any empirical evidence to back up this position -- of course not!!

When the Massachusetts Bar Association tried to pass a similar rule expanding the definition of the Unauthorized Practice of Law, the US Department of Justice and the US Federal Trade Commission sent an advisory letter to the MBA suggesting that there was no consumer benefit in the expanded rule and that it would be anti-competitive. The FTC stated that there was no justification for such a rule in the absence of substantial consumer injury would could be documented. I wonder how the FTC will respond to this latest effort by the organized bar to restrict consumer choice.

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http://www.illinoisdivorce.com is another web site that offers low cost no-fault divorce forms bundled with legal advice. Operated by the Chicago law firm of Cowell Taradash, P.C., this web site offers useful legal information on Illinois divorce issues, an offer of free consultation with an attorney by telephone, and an offer to answer simple legal questions on family law by email for free. The basic fee for an uncontested, self-help divorce is only $185.00. Although it is hard to tell from the home page, some form of document automation or web-based interview is utilized to increase efficiency and law firm productivity.

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 A new web site based in Florida: http://www.idivorce.com     offers a set of automated Florida divorce forms for free. The user scrolls through a set of friendly but numerous screens, and inserts their financial information and other information. Once completed, the forms are instantly available and can be printed out from the web browser. The generated forms are not in Adobe .PDF format, as distributed by the Florida Supreme Court, but they seem to meet all of the court requirements any way, so they should be accepted by Florida court clerks.

The interesting feature of the site is that the forms are not only automated, which requires a capital investment, but also free. Apparently the research, development, and administrative costs will be offset by advertising revenues generated by Google Ad Words and other advertising networks. I see this as a trend in the sense that as legal forms continue to become more transparent in the sense that the legal profession can no longer control legal information distribution, they become commodities and the cost of legal forms themselves goes down to zero.

It will be interesting to see if this site generates enough advertising revenues to justify expansion to other states outside of Florida. Meanwhile it will be a useful site for Florida consumers. It would be useful if the site mentioned on the home page that only Florida divorce forms are available at this time, but there additional states are planned. 

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