Lawyer Tennis Championship Denied
On Thursday, June 19th, Karl Schieneman the founder of 1-2-3 Law Group played in the ACBA Tennis Tournament. After winning the qualifying round, the tournament organizer Jeffrey Pollock was convinced by the two finalists to play in the singles competition. While initially Mr. Pollock refused saying it wouldn’t be fair, he decided after much prodding to join the tournament. With fresh legs and a lot of support from the wind, Mr. Pollock upset Karl Schieneman in the finals 6-3.
Seriously, the tennis tournament is always a highlight for me at the Bench Bar Conference. Jeff has done a fabulous job the last few years organizing the tennis tournament and it was an honor to lose to him. We will have a rematch at some point later this summer with less wind and a decidedly different strategy employed by me. It was also exciting to attend the Bench Bar Conference again and talk to so many of the lawyers in attendance about 1-2-3 Law Group and the concept we are working on called Making Law Easy as 1-2-3. The response was very favorable from my colleagues that this virtual legal model is worth continuing to develop locally and pursuing as a national strategy. I left Seven Springs Resort in Champion Pennsylvania feeling more validated on the business concept of Making Law Easy and excited to continue growing the business model outside of the Pittsburgh region. Look for more exciting news to follow in the coming year. A lot is happening right now that is premature to post at this time.
Best wishes for your summer and we look forward to working with you in the future if the opportunity presents itself.
Sincerely,
Karl Schieneman, Esq./MBA
Virtual Or Online Law Firm Version 2.0
1-2-3 Law Group has now been in operation for a little over a month after seperating from what we now describe as an experiment called Version 1.0 of a Virtual Law Firm or Online Lawyering. So what’s new with Virtual or Online Law Firm Version 2.0? To understand this, we sort of need to recap what was working in Virtual or Online Law Firm Version 1.0 for the first 10 months. Our use of online case management tools and a virtual network of lawyers to assist clients in cases which the lawyers had a substantial amount of experience in was very well received by both the lawyers and the clients. The problem was our law firm model was for lack of a better word, not very virtual. As a result, our expenses were higher than they needed to be and despite some success and strong client satisfaction, we were never even remotely profitable. As the majority investor and creator of Virtual or Online Law Firm Version 1.0, I analyzed our business process and concluded it was time build off of our successes and to work on Virtual or Online Law Firm Version 2.0.
Virtual or Online Law Firm Version 2.0, does build on the success of the first version. However, it is an immediate improvement because we have reduced our expenses by over 30% and now 1-2-3 Law Group is a truly “virtual law firm”. This enables us to continue to keep our billing rates down without losing sight of what worked very well in Virtual or Online Law Firm Version 1.0. We were also profitable for the first time in only our first month of operation!!! Our website continues to evolve and offer more tools such as online bill payment, better access to our podcasts, and easier navigation. We have also assembled a technology team to continue the development of our website so it can improve and grow and added an of counsel who has been AV rated by Martindale Hubbell, its highest rating for lawyers and was a partner in two large Pittsburgh law firms as well as a pioneer in the delivery of online legal forms. The next goal is to get to Virtual or Online Law Firm Version 3.0 which will require being able to change how law is practiced and accessed much like how Amazon.com and ebay have changed how we buy products, how Sabre, Travelocity, Expedia and Orbitz have changed how we buy travel arrangements, and how blogs, podcasts and websites have changed the way we get news and information.
So does reaching Virtual or Online Law Firm Version 2.0 in the form of todays 1-2-3 Law Group mean that we have succeeded? That depends on how you define success. I believe both versions 1.0 and 2.0 have been successful in their own way but much work remains to improve client service and continue to reduce costs. The world of online lawyering continues to hold so much potential. Lawyers have written about this potential for over ten years but have only recently begun moving to execute on the potential. To attain objective success and a scalable model which will continue to lower costs to a level which most customers can afford while still delivering profits to the law firm and/or lawyers will require working with the following five factors:
- attracting and making an investment of additional capital to create or buy online tools to reduce the costs of practicing law,
- the continued development of online tools,
- identifying and locating skilled professionals who can provide these online tools to teach the legal community how to move forward,
- researching, identifying and solving the bottle necks in law firm practice which solo practitioners and small law firms everywhere face,
and - having an understanding, respect, appreciation of and sensitivity for the rules of professional conduct which govern how lawyers, nonlawyers and clients interact with each other.
Of these 5 factors, lawyers as a group tend to only excel in the 5th area of understanding the rules of professional conduct. The first three challenges of raising money and developing technology are not considered areas where law firms can excel for a variety of reasons. In the United States, law firms can only be owned by lawyers. This makes it challenging to raise capital for investment and hire talented nonlawyers who can develop new tools. Even if a law firm could achieve this objective, how would the talent required to develop new tools fare long term working for only lawyers? As an example of this challenge, and one of my areas of experience over the past 6 years is the emerging field of electronic discovery where lawyers manage the review of emails and other electronic records in anticipation of litigation. I have spent a good deal of time analyzing this field including building a board game to capture many of the issues confronting clients in these projects. My assessment is law firms in this field have struggled to attract internal talent to oversee the technology and project management needs of this field. As a result, most of the successful law firms in this field have had to partner with outside vendors as well as their clients to tackle electronic discovery. I know of many law firms who have tried to build internal teams to tackle electronic discovery and have hired technology managers only to see the technology manager leave within a year or two because of an inability to work for lawyers who have difficulty appreciating their technology skills. This is not just the lawyers in the electronic discovery group. In many instances, the pressure put on the technologist and under appreciation comes from lawyers who work in other practice areas and have an under appreciation of how technology works. Because of the difficulties in hiring skilled professionals who are not lawyers and paying them at levels which they can make in other organizations, law firms have a difficult time solving issues for their clients which reside outside of the narrow confines of legal analysis or being just an advisor to their clients. To put it bluntly, law firms are not very entrepreneurial. As a result of these obstacles illustrated by the field of electronic discovery, I believe to develop Virtual or Online Law Firm Version 3.0 which is a scalable online legal solution, will require a good dose of creativity to work within these five areas and it may not be a law firm which develops these solutions.
So what does this mean for us here at 1-2-3 Law Group which is a law firm. Today there are at least a half dozen areas which we are targetting for continued improvement in 2008. I also believe, despite the weaknesses in the law firm model for entrepreneurship cited above, that 1-2-3 Law Group is aided in our pursuit of Virtual or Online Law Firm Version 3.0, because entrepreneurship is a strength of our business. For example, my background in the legal field has been focussed in entrepreneurship instead of purely the practice of law. I have been able to work with many other entrepreneurs both within and outside the legal field. Case in point is my involvement in creating and promoting entrepreneurship among technologists within Pittsburgh at Devhouse Pittsburgh. This project has nothing to do with law and everything to do with creating new technology. Through a series of national relationships with other thought leaders in the field of law firm practice, electronic record management, and automated form creation. All of the participants in 1-2-3 Law Group are entrepreneurs having started and owned their own businesses. I firmly believe 1-2-3 Law Group is well situated to continue to explore Virtual or Online Law Firm Version 3.0. What this solution will look like when we get there is a different story, but for the exploration of bridging the gap between Version 2.0 and Version 3.0, I am comfortable with 1-2-3 Law Group’s structure.
The good news for 1-2-3 Law Group’s customers and potential customers TODAY, is unlike a new piece of software, Virtual or Online Law Firm Version 2.0 does work well here in Western Pennsylvania and can provide a working laboratory to develop more of the tools and processes to take online legal services to the next level of Virtual or Online Law Firm Version 3.0. Together we can work on improving the online legal experience for the benefit all legal customers. That is our “holy grail” here at 1-2-3 Law Group and one which we will continue to pursue.
Feel free to post comments below if you have thoughts on this subject.