Are you one of the thousands lawyers working from home?
If you are, let me guess something about you…
When you thought about the future of your business in 2019, you probably didn’t see yourself running a law firm remotely in 2020. You had a cushy office job, an intense but manageable workload, and a team of trained attorneys who all had your back.
Then the COVID-19 pandemic hit, and your whole world changed.
Suddenly, you’re stuck at home.
You’re still handling cases, collaborating with colleagues, and maybe even managing a team of attorneys.
But now you’re in uncharted waters…
… your staff and colleagues are not there to immediately handle small client emergencies…
… that IT person is miles away when your home printer decides to die on you…
… and it takes days for your support teams to deal with onboarding, contracts, and invoices.
The printer foils your attempts to make the world a more just place.
You’re not alone in this.
Thousands of work-from-home attorneys and law firms are now dealing with the same issues.
The thing is…
Your old traditional office based way of doing things doesn’t work that well in this new situation. And trying to make it work at all costs leads to a lot of confusion and frustration.
That’s why I want you to think about an upgrade — a home-based virtual office for lawyers working from home.
In this post, I’ll walk you through what a virtual law firm is, why this concept is growing (ever) more popular, and what’s the difference between virtual law firms and work-from-home lawyers.
Let’s get into it.
A virtual law firm is a legal practice that does not have a physical office space. Instead, the firm is a legal entity that lives in the cloud, and virtual lawyers who work there do so from their homes.
These practices — often also called remote law firms or eLawyering — are not a new thing.
The first one — Wolley & CO. — was registered in 1996. But, in the last few years, we’ve seen a massive influx of lawyers into the online space. And, with a health pandemic raging in 2020, we’re likely to see more and more virtual law firms providing digital legal services in the future.
In recent years, however, more and more law firms are transitioning to work-from-home. And, while they’re not virtual law firms in the real sense of the term, they can still learn to operate like that to reduce cost and increase productivity.
A recent Loeb Leadership survey shows most lawyers working from home want to keep working remotely even after the pandemic blows over.
Setting up your legal work as if you were a virtual law firm will not only allow you to keep on working amidst the pandemic. It will also afford you to overcome significant challenges and enjoys benefits (all quite handy now that you have to tighten the purse a bit), such as:
Here are four things legal service providers like you can do to effectively transition to and develop your virtual legal profession, whether you’re a solo practitioner or a partner managing a big firm.
Whether you’re one of the solo lawyers working from home or you’re managing a whole team, you need to think about the business plan that will set you up for success.
What’s not a home office?
Your couch. Your favorite lounge chair. Your dinner table with kids crowding around you. (Kiddin’)
What is a home office?
A dedicated working space that allows you (and your team) to focus and do your best work. This space doesn’t have to be an actual office.
But, it does need to be a good place that’s fitted with:
Now that you’re moving to a remote law firm set-up, what does this mean for your client management? Are things changing on a monthly, quarterly, or annual level? How will all this be tracked and measured?
Even if you are a virtual solo practitioner, you need to be asking these questions. And, if you have staff members, you can bet that these will be the first questions they ask.
What you need here is clarity. We have enough uncertainty these days as it is, and you don’t want to pile on more.
Set clear targets and goals for yourself and, if you’re managing a team, clearly communicate what’s expected of them going forward.
Answer all of these questions, make sure your staff members are aware of everything, and then trust them to do the right thing.
When you’re managing a remote law practice when everyone is working from home, falling into the trap of micromanagement is way too easy. Resist the urge to track everything your colleagues and employees do. Trust that you’ve made the right call when hiring people and that everyone is doing their best to serve the company and the clients.
Now is the time to step up your game.
Now that you’re transitioning to doing things differently, you can dial in on transparency by setting up a shared client portal.
Once you share this with new clients, they’ll have immediate access to the information you want them to see. What’s the status of the case? What needs to be sorted in the short term? Are there any files or documents missing (that the client can provide)? Your client can see answers to all these questions with a click of a button, which means that they’ll have peace of mind — and that your phone won’t be ringing off the hook.
Need a bespoke client collaboration portal that saves time for both you & your clients? You’ll get all that (and more) with Clustdoc.
Some traditional law firms have long resisted any attempts at a digital transformation.
Hopefully, this doesn’t apply to you — not if you want to grow your business in these uncertain times.
Since you’re working your lawyer magic remotely — and your collaborators are pitching in from their own homes — you need a cloud-based law practice management solution.
That’s where Clustdoc steps in.
With Clustdoc’s client management portal, you can:
With Clustdoc, all your communication is 100% safe — no need to use email to share confidential client data when everything is available (and safeguarded) in our secure client portal.
How is that for a benefit-packed solution to a lawyer’s work-from-home problems? If you’re ready to use Clustdoc for document management and take your client game to a new level, we promise you’ll find even more cool features that will make your life easier.
That feeling you get when you find a perfect SaaS solution for your virtual law firm.
Ready to Become an Efficient Work-From-Home Lawyer With Clustdoc?
Oh, and did we mention…
Clustdoc’s trial run is free — you get to use the best client portal for 14 days without paying a dime.
And we won’t ask you for your credit card, either. Continue only after you think we’re the right fit for your new and improved virtual law firm.
What do you say?
Clustdoc is a client onboarding orchestration platform used by modern teams around the world. With Clustdoc, you can run automated workflows for requesting, reviewing and verifying new customers’ data, documents and contracts – without juggling between tools.
If your team is managing new customers using emails, spreadsheets and PDFs, you’ll probably love using Clustdoc.
