Virtual Law Firms: Cutting Costs And Raising Efficiency

7/4/2013

Virtual Law Firms: Cutting Costs And Raising Efficiency

With no brick-and-mortar law firm to go to, what exactly does a lawyer with a virtual law firm do all day? Maybe he lays in bed a little longer. Maybe he sits in his easy chair or at his home office desk. Maybe he takes lunch breaks when he wants to. Doesn't sound like he's getting much done, right? Wrong. The virtual law firm lawyer can perform nearly all his practice work from remote location - except in-court trials, we aren't there yet. So besides the requirements to appear in court, what else is there that a lawyer can’t do from his home computer, laptop, tablet and smartphone?

How to go virtual

Video conferencing allows lawyers to "meet" with clients or potential clients from wherever they may be. Cloud apps such as Dropbox, Box and Google Drive allow him to quickly create and send legal documents to clients or to other lawyers. Apps such as Docusign allow clients and lawyers to legally sign documents over the internet. Apps such as Evernote allow lawyers to quickly make notes, take photos and organize them with a very efficient tagging system. Apps such as Basecamp allow the lawyer to oversee every aspect of his case from a single page- including appointments, the ability to collaborate and have discussions, a to-do list and much more.

Ready to go mobile?

With this arsenal stored in his laptop and mobile devices, this lawyer is ready to take his business on the road. Phone calls, collaboration, meetings, document creation, file and document sharing and complete case file management can all be performed in the cloud. Virtual law firms have been estimated to cut costs anywhere from 50-60%, which can be a huge reduction when you cut out office fees, storage fees and more. And there are cloud backup services such as cloudHQ that provide complete cloud backup so your data can be safe today, tomorrow and years from now.

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1 Comment

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7/30/2013 07:14:42 pm

The last quality that a lawyer has to have and probably the most important is that he has to have good judgment. A lawyer will have to make a lot of decisions and his clients rely on him to make good ones.