Slaw’s Ted Tjaden writes that there are relatively few substantive books on project management geared specifically to lawyers. In his recent Slaw post, he recommends two recent works because they complement each other. Levy’s Legal Project Management – Control Costs,…
Posts Tagged ‘legal’
How to Request a New Trial After a Trial in Absentia
13
Jun
If the traffic court tells you that they have had a Trial In Absentia, you need to File a Request for Trial De Novo. Recommended Legal Self Help Form written by Criminal Defense Attorney. Continue reading
Thomson Reuters Legal’s First Quarter 2011 Financials: TRI CEO Tom Glocer is "a happy little hamster again."
10
Jun
The post’s subtitle is a direct quote from Sean Hocking’s Slaw post. Sean writes Unfortunately our naive dream that Lexis or West would change their spots to reflect a new market was short lived. Remember the talk at West of…
North Carolina Bar Regulates Legal Cloud Computing
02
Jun
A proposed Ethics Opinion of the North Carolina Bar that provides guidelines for attorneys using cloud computing services, commonly known as SaaS (Software as a Service), contains language that is troubling because of its potential impact on solos and small law firm practitioners who are creating virtual law practices. The Bar is soliciting comments prior to making the Opinion final. Here are some comments for consideration.
The Opinion states that to comply with the attorney’s duty to keep client data confidential there should be:
"a separate agreement that states that the employees at the vendor’s data center are agents of the law firm and have a fiduciary responsibility to protect confidential client information and client property."
DirectLaw is a SaaS vendor that hosts law firm data at a Tier IV Data Center that implements the security controls that a bank or major financial institution uses. The idea that our data center would enter into an agreement that would make its employees agents of a law firm is not realistic. There is not sufficient consideration to expose the Data Center to this kind of liability, and there is no way that they would modify their terms and conditions to meet the needs of a single SaaS vendor. I doubt that counsel for the Data Center would ever approve such language. The Data Center would just tell us to take our business elsewhere. Amending the contract terms just for SaaS vendors that service the legal industry is not likely to happen.
There are other approaches to providing assurance to law firms that client confidential data is secure and less burdensome.
I think a better guideline would be to suggest or require that SaaS vendors host their data at a data center that is a Tier IV Data Center. A Tier 4 Data Center is one which has the most stringent level requirements and one which is designed to host mission critical computer systems, with fully redundant subsystems and compartmentalized security zones controlled by biometric access controls methods. The Data Center should also be SAS 70 certified. The Data Center should also have PCI DSS certification if credit card data is stored within the Data Center. With these safeguards in place, a law firm should be considered to have undertaken reasonable due diligence to satisfy the obligation to insure that client data will remain confidential.
There are other problems with the North Carolina opinion. Another guideline:
"requires the attorney to undertake a financial investigation of the SaaS vendor: to determine its financial stability."
What does that mean? I am not about to divulge our private financial statements to just any lawyer who inquires. How is it relevant? If there are provisions for data capture and downloading data that is stored in the cloud, and the law firm has access to that data, what difference does it make if the SaaS actually goes out of business?
It would make more sense to simply require that a SaaS vendor carry Internet liability insurance for the benefit of its law firm clients. Law firms will have problems securing Internet Liability Insurance to cover data loss. Data loss as a result of a Data Center outage is not normally covered under a law firm’s malpractice policy. For solos and small law firm’s securing this kind of coverage would be a burden and cost prohibitive. It makes more sense to require the SaaS vendor to secure such coverage and make its law firm subscribers a beneficiary of the coverage.
Another guideline states that:
"The law firm, or a security professional, has reviewed copies of the SaaS vendor’s security audits and found them satisfactory."
How much does such an audit cost? Can solo practitioners afford such an audit? Who qualifies as a security professional? I think this requirement will act as deterrent to solos and small law firms who are seeking cloud-based solutions that they can use in their practice. I think that a less costly and more effective solution would be for an independent organization to issue a Certificate of Compliance to the SaaS vendor indicating that the SaaS vendors has satisfied or complied with well recognized standards. Like the Truste Certificate in the privacy area, this would give solos and small law firms this would provide stamp of approval that minimum standards have been satisfied. This would move the cost burden of undertaking due diligence to the SaaS vendor, rather than to the solo or small law firm practitioner.
Another guideline states:
"Clients with access to shared documents are aware of the confidentiality risks of showing the information to others. See 2008 FEO 5."
This guideline should be clarified because it is not clear what "shared documents" means. This kind of statement is likely to scare clients into thinking that a law firm that stores client data on the the Internet is putting the client’s data at more risk than storing the data in a file cabinet in the lawyer’s office.
As the American Bar American, through its Ethics 20/20 Commission, and state bar associations adapt ethical rules to deal with the delivery of legal services over the Internet, it is important to consider that the burden of compliance may have a different impact on solos and small law firms, than on large law firms. The rules should not act as a barrier to solos and small law firms exploring new ways of delivering legal services online which are cost effective for both the law firms and their clients.
For a similar point of view see Stephanie Kimbro’s blog post on the same topic.
Disclosure: DirectLaw is a SaaS vendor that provides a virtual law firm platform to solos and small law firms.
Opening: Reference Librarian, Ohio State Univ. Moritz Law Library
02
Jun
The principal responsibilities of this Reference Librarian position include providing,in a service-oriented environment, sophisticated research and reference assistance to faculty, students and other patrons of the Moritz Law Library, and teaching the first year Legal Analysis and Writing course, teaching…
How Much is Legal Advice Worth?
25
May
One of the winners of TechCrunch Disrupt Hackathon is a new, yet to be launched, legal document web site called, Docracy, The idea is that members will contribute their legal documents to an open source site so that there would be a basis for comparison between "open source" documents and the document that the member needs for their business. The theory is that by comparing documents, with the document that the member has on hand, there would be a basis for comparison, resulting in an informed decision, without the cost or benefit of legal advice.
In this model, legal advice from an attorney is worth zero. The model is designed to eliminate the attorney from the transaction.
The idea was developed by mobile app developers Matt Hall and John Watkinson ,from Larva Labs, who were faced with signing an NDA with a client and were unsure of some of the terms and concluded that the cost of legal advice was either unnecessary or prohibitive.
This is another example of the resentment that the average consumer and small business person has towards the legal profession resulting in the rise of non-lawyer legal form web sites such as LegalZoom.
Another example of an open source legal document repository is Docstoc which we have used as a research source. It is useful for us, because as lawyers we understand what we are reading. I think simply accessing raw documents as a consumer would be a daunting exercise, although I am sure that many consumers and small business use the site.
The problem with any legal document web site as a source for creating binding legal documents is that the use of a particular clause may be rooted in case law in a particular jurisdiction.
Without understanding all of the implications of using particular language in an agreement, the "non-lawyer" moves into a danger zone, because he or she has no idea what they are signing.
A better alternative is a "self-help" book from Nolo that contains both legal forms and explanations of the implications of each clause, but that often involves reading and understanding a 300 page book, which is beyond the attention span of most consumers.
Another solution is an automated document with extensive help screens that explain the implications of choosing one clause over the other.
A third alternative, is to purchase "unbundled and limited legal services" from an on-line law firm for a fixed price with legal advice bundled into the transaction. In that case you get a certain level of accountability and guarantee that the legal advice is correct for the user’s individual situation.
See for example the firms listed at DirectLaw’s legal document portal , where you can access legal forms for free, or forms bundled with legal advice for a fixed fee.
You don’t get legal advice from a legal forms web site or a LegalZoom for that matter, which can be a major limitation depending on the complexity of the document or the transaction. Without annotations that explain the significance of particular language in an agreement, the non-lawyer is stumbling around in the dark.
Nevertheless, I don’t doubt that consumers and small business will find this a popular site, despite its limitations. Caveat emptor!
Should law firms be owned by non-lawyer investors?
19
May
There has been much discussion recently in various venues about whether 5.4 of the US Rules of Professional Responsibility should be amended or revised to permit investment in law firms by non-lawyer, or non-lawyer entities, or even ownership of US law firms by non-lawyer entities. The ABA’s Ethics 20/20 Commission is circulating a paper on the subject and is soliciting comments.
Known in the United Kingdom as Alternative Business Structures (ABS), this new form of law firm organization, authorized by the UK Legal Services Act of 2007, will be permitted after October 6, 2011. Alternative Business Structures are already permitted in Australia, where several law firms have already gone public.
Other than the State of North Carolina where there is bill pending to permit non-lawyer ownership of up to 40% of a law firm, there has been little movement in the US to make change Rule 5.4 Some hybrid models are beginning to emerge in the US, but they are a workaround the existing rules.
There is no clear path for non-lawyer ownership or investment in a law firm in the United States, and as a result it is arguable that the legal services delivery system lacks the capital necessary to innovate and create the efficient systems that are necessary to serve not only the "latent market for legal services", but existing legal markets more effectively. Resources from Labor Law Compliance Center offer mandatory federal & state labor law posters or combination labor law posters for government business compliance.
Now comes Jacoby & Meyers, a law firm that has pioneered in changing the way legal services are delivered, filing multiple law suits in the Federal District courts of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut against the presiding state justices in those states responsible for implementing and enforcing Rule 5.4, requesting that the Rule by overturned. The Complaint makes clear that Jacoby & Meyers "seeks to free itself of the shackles that currently encumber its ability to raise outside financing and to ensure that American law firms are able to compete on the global stage"
Click here for a complete version of the Complaint.
Andrew Finkelstein, the Managing Partner of Jacoby & Meyers, and also the Managing Partner of Finkelstein & Partners, said that "No legitimate rationale exists to prevent non-lawyers from owning equity in a law firm. The time has come to permit non-lawyers to invest in law firms in the United States,"
Now the fun begins!
Disclosure: Finkelstein and Partners is a subscriber to our DirectLaw Virtual Law Firm Service.
