Azeez+Yusuf

__**Advantages**__ 1. Client convenience: clients don’t need to visit your offices; they can instruct you using the computer. 2. Work flexibility: work when you want – break free of traditional firm hours. 3. Work from anywhere: turn your laptop into your entire office and work from anywhere in the world, and staffing convenience – a virtual law office easily enables telecommuting and virtual assistant arrangments. 4. Global reach – not restricted to local clients. Can market and deliver legal services anywhere in the world. 5. Job protection – it’s a way to adapt to the changing practice of law. Law is changing; some people see it becoming commoditized. Embracing technology could very well be an excellent method for job protection.

1. Less personable – no person-to-person contact. You don’t watch the body language of clients; often a way of further understanding clients’ communications. Also, you may miss working with people in person. 2. End up competing on price. It’s not always fun to compete strictly on price. This need not be the case if you work in a micro-niche legal area. 3. Fewer resources. You most likely won’t have the human, technology, and other resources a larger firm has. 4. You’re very reliant on technology – if problems arise, not good. If you systems crash, business grinds to a halt. This really isn’t a unique problem to virtual law offices because most firms these days are extremely dependent on technology – a crash affects a traditional firm as much as a VLO. 5. Restricted to certain types of law. You can’t deliver 100 percent of legal services electronically in most litigation matters.
 * __Disadvantages__**

**What is a virtual law office?**
1. A virtual law office is a when legal services are delivered solely electronically via the internet, telephone, online meetings, video conferencing, e-mail, fax, and even cloud computing document storage and sharing websites. Some might argue that a pure virtual law office requires no verbal contact between lawyer and client. I’m of the view that if the legal services can be delivered without in-person presence, that qualifies as a virtual law office. http://www.thepaperlesslawyer.com/a-virtual-law-office-advantages-and-disadvantages

2. A virtual law office allows the practice of law to escape the confines of a traditional lawyer’s office. Under the traditional practice format, a client speaks to a lawyer’s secretary to set up an appointment and then meets the lawyer – who sits behind a big mahogany desk, talks at the client for twenty minutes, then sends out a bill for several hundred dollars. http://www.cikmarketing.ca/tag/virtual-law-office/

3. A **VLO** is a law office that provides services to clients via the internet. Clients are able to ** REQUEST A LEGAL SERVICE ** directly through the **VLO** http://c2lawblog.com/category/virtual-law-office/

=Homework Week 2--Document Automation=

Saves time: frees time for the attorney and his/her staff to do other things rather than create documents from scratch. Improves accuracy: once the template is perfect, those areas of the document will be perfect. System integration: most document automation services integrate with existing programs. Reduces costs: by taking less time to create a document, attorney's and their staff can be more efficient with their time. Allows others to benefit from an attorney's expertise in a particular area.

FIVE pitfalls/problems/barriers to Document Automation
Errors in the document due to mistaken input. Requires a very sophisticated level of the law to account for every variable. Changes in the law might be hard to program for. Might result in UPL violation. If a company goes out of business, your template might not be compatible with another service.

Test at least two document automation websites: tsc.orrick.com: Pretty good program. I like how it allows you to download different formats for your review. However, I did not like how Chrome was not a compatible browser. WSGR: I like this too. But I don't like the interface as much as I liked the orrick one. Also, I didn't like how there was not a finish now button.