Emergence of virtual law firm

We all know that lawyers are intermediary between  the courts and the clients. They provide directions on how to go about a case. We are acquainted with the traditional form of lawyering where a lawyer works in his chamber, and assist the client through out the case. There is a famous legal maxim given by William Ewart galdstone ‘Justice delayed is justice denied’. This can be true but in reality what happens in most of the cases is ‘Justice not delayed is justice not granted. It means that This has become the famous practice almost everywhere to drag cases for many years, and this is something which irritates a victim to file a suit.

Though it was difficult to reduce the backlog of cases, so Some lawyers actually looked out the prospects of considering ‘customer as the ultimate king’ and followed the concept of bringing change in oneself instead of blaming the procedure of the courts. They gave birth to some new concepts of lawyering, which proved as a blessings in disguise for everyone. New concepts leads to emergence of virtual law firm. It is a wider concept than E-lawyering which was limited to legal ghostwriters, unbundled legal services. These services accompanied with teleconferencing and cloud computing and gave birth to Virtual law office. Virtual law office is free from bricks and mortars, it work upon network to deal with clients through distance communication mode.

California became the first state to officially permit the unbundled legal services. It was limited scope legal services, providing only few services to the client to cut their cost. Areas embraced by unbundled legal services were legal ghost-writing. Because of it’s success it began to evolve in to other areas like E-lawyering and Virtual law office which focused upon further cost cutting and made services easily accessible anywhere anytime. The first recorded virtual law firm was "Woolley & Co" set up in 1996 in England by Andrew Woolley. He defined virtual law firm as ‘it is a law firm that:

1.      Has a stable core group of attorneys;

2.     Has established collaborative relationships with other, specialized law firms that possess expertise that’s occasionally needed;

3.      Is glued together with appropriate computer and telecommunications technology; and,

4.      Expands and reduces personnel as needed.

There are many advantages of setting up a virtual law office:-

setting up a VLO does not require any funds, but a good network for digitalisation and proper knowledge of internet, computer and handling out the data. Thus no investment is required. Secondaly any competent attorney with eligible qualification can open up a virtual law firm so it provides a source of employment to many. It is also time saving business, as it can be operated from a bed with a tea. Also It reduces the visits of a client and limits it only to court visits. All forms are available online, thus helps in saving time. Also it works on digitalisation concept, so there is no use of paper, all data are secured through network. Thus it helps in sustainable and environmental development.

Inspite of having so many advantages, a virtual law firm is not free from challenges. There are many challenges like it is not accessible to everyone, because existence of these firms are limited to a network, and many people still do no have an internet connectivity. Also there are many security threats associated with it, as all the work is secured in a network, which can be hacked and formatted and thus the data is not secured. But such problems can be solved through cloud computing. Also there is a fear of misuse of these services as there is no personal contact between client and firm, there are chances of unauthorised operator operating as a legal attorney. For curbing such practices, registration and licence can be issued to regulate virtual law firms but that can happen only if virtual law offices are permitted officially. There is not much rules Governing it. California imposes the same duties on VLO as that of Traditional forms, however in addition to that it requires the ethical compliance from VLO. In India Bar councils frames many of the rules, regulation and code of conduct to be followed by law professions. Though there is no specific rules and regulations Governing the code of conduct for Virtual law office in India, but still, companies undergoing such practice are required to be a qualified lawyers and have to provide access to clients through website only by proper channel of registration and signup. 

Presently many foreign law firms are gaining success in this field. Few of them are legalwebexpert, exello, vlp etc. They provide access to the data only through registration which can be done by submitting details and fees prescribed for the plans. The data are saved and secured through cloud computing. Online assistance and live chats are provided to customers. In future it is going to become a trend and will gain success as it is the most convenient mode of legal services. New legislation will come to light Governing the new line of service.

*This article is an excerpts of the paper 'Emergence of virtual law firm' written by Apoorva sharma, and presented in 'Vision 2020, 3rd national conference In Institute of Law, Nirma university, on 24-25th January 2013.

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