Now that you’ve read Part 1 of Partnering With a Virtual Legal Assistant, I bet you’ve made a short list of virtual legal assistants to contact but you aren’t exactly sure how to proceed next. How do you decide who is the best choice for you? Do you interview them? Do you telephone, email, instant message? Do you just jump and hope it works out? What questions should you ask?

First, I’d recommend you carefully review the potential virtual legal assistant’s web site and/or blog. A lot is revealed about someone in their website and if they have a blog it will likely be a fabulous source of information on their practices and opinions. For example, one of my clients had questions about how information would be protected, but before she asked me she read my blog post about using a project management system with SSL security and realized I had it fully under control!

I also definitely recommend going through some sort of interview process or discussion to see if the virtual legal assistant is a good match for you. Here are some questions you may want to address:

How much experience does the VLA have (in legal in general and as a virtual legal assistant specifically)?

Does the VLA have any certifications – paralegal diploma, virtual assistant certifications, ethics check?

What kind of hardware/software set-up does the VLA use? Does she use a PC or a Mac?

How does she charge fees – hourly, by the project, retainer? Is there a monthly minimum? Does she like to be paid by paypal or other?

How do you get instructions and documents to the VLA?

Does she truly understand about confidentiality and protecting both your and your clients’ information?

The answers to these questions will definitely help you determine if the particular virtual legal assistant has the capability to meet your needs. There is more to the decision though. At least in my opinion, one part of equation is going to be chemistry. That’s why an initial phone call may be helpful to see if you think your personal style will mesh will with the assistant’s. Our gut instincts are often very accurate in helping us decide if a relationship, business or otherwise, is going to be successful.

Another, possibly controversial, step you may want to take is doing a quick google search of the prospective virtual legal assistant.  Now, a virtual assistant is a contractor, not an employee, but still you may want to read Donna Seale’s series about using social networking sites as part of the hiring process while you’re at it.

Any other questions about the actual choosing of a virtual legal assistant? I’d love to answer them! And stay tuned, next week’s installment of this series will address contracting the VLA and establishing a good working relationship!

As usual I was spending a little time after dinner tonight catching up on some Twitter. I read this tweet from @SamGlover which sent me on over to the recently re-launched Lawyerist. There are tons of interesting posts to read there, but the one that really caught my eye tonight was one that talked about what applications, software etc Sam uses to run his law practice.

I not only enjoyed reading what Sam uses for his legal practice, but also the different choices made by the commentors. So I decided to put together a quick post outlining the various applications/software I use to run my virtual legal assistant practice.

• Calendar: Google calendar/wall calendar combo
• Tasks/to-dos: Teamwork PM
• Contacts: Gmail
• Email: Gmail/mobile Gmail from smartphone while on the go
• Word processing/documents: Word 2007, Open Office, PaperPort
• PDF Creation: Adobe/CutePDF
• Timekeeping/billing: Quickbooks
• Bookkeeping/accounting: Quickbooks/accountant
• Backup: External hardrive and SugarSync (love how SugarSync securely lets me access all from laptop/desktop/mobile phone)
• Client/Project Management: TeamWork PM (256 bit SSL)
• Blogging/Website: Wordpress self-hosted

Like Sam and several of his commentors I’m a big fan of cloud computing. I like to be able to access my work from anywhere – my main computer is a laptop for that very reason! And while I know not everyone trusts “the cloud”, I research applications quite carefully before choosing them and feel pretty confident that I’ve made choices that will protect my clients information and my own.

So how does your office run? Does your work live in the cloud at all?!

Welcome to my series on partnering with a virtual legal assistant! If you are a solo lawyer, or part of a smallish law practice, and you know you need some administrative help, this is a great place to start.

A virtual legal assistant (aka virtual paralegal or virtual assistant specializing in legal assistance) can provide a truly wonderful solution to a lawyer’s needs. A virtual legal assistant is an independent business owner who will provide basically any services an in-house legal assistant or paralegal would provide, but the services will be provided on a contract basis. You may hire the VLA to work on an hourly basis, a per project basis or some other arrangement that is mutually agreeable.  If you need some information about what services a virtual legal assistant can perform take a look at this list.

Part 1 of my Partnering with a virtual legal assistant series addresses a simple, yet clearly critical, question. Where do you find a fabulous virtual legal assistant (aka VLA)? Well, if you’re here anyway, obviously you could just check out my services! But really, you probably want to look at several options so I’m going to suggest some general resources and some individual virtual legal assistants you may want to consider:

Previously I’ve suggested that Twitter is one great way to look for a virtual assistant, and that still applies to looking for a virtual legal assistant. Virtual paralegals are not quite as large of a subgroup on Twitter as general VAs, but there are some great ones who love to Tweet. I suggest using a site like Twellow to find a Twittering VLA.

Another option for finding a great virtual legal assistant is to utilize a virtual assistant directory/forum. Most offer a listing of their members and may note any specialties the VA may focus on, allowing you to weed out any without a legal background. A few of the leading virtual assistant directories are:

Virtual Assistant Forums (by specialty)
VAnetworking Directory (by location, but not specialty)
IVAA’s Member Directory (by specialty)

Similarly, if you want to work with a virtual assistant who belongs to one of the above types of virtual assistant organizations, you can look submit a Request for Proposals (RFP) on their sites, but be prepared for a lot of responses, of which several may be people who want to do legal work, but won’t necessarily have a legal background.

You definitely should consider checking out a few of the following virtual assistants who I happen to know specialize in legal/paralegal services:

Tina Hilton of Clerical Advantage

Dawn Draper of The Virtual Paralegal

Andrea Cannavina of Legal Typist

Kate of Kerans Virtual Assistance

Aretha Gaskin The Virtual Legal Assistant

Marion of The Satellite Secretary

And of course, as with almost any service provider, a good place to “look” for them is to ask your own inner circle. Do any of your colleagues recommend a particular virtual legal assistant? Does your favorite legal blog author recommend his/her virtual paralegal to others? You’d be surprised at the number of people who are familiar in your regular (aka offline!) life who are familiar with the concept and might even know someone who provides such services. Just the other day I was at my local credit union and I was so impressed to learn my banker is familiar with virtual assistance!!

If you have any suggestions to share or questions you’d like addressed in this series in the future, please leave a comment or email me at laurie@halosecretarial.com!

I’m preparing to write a post series on how to find and start working with a virtual legal assistant. My general plan for the series is to address:

• Where to look for a virtual legal assistant
• How to interview and choose the right virtual legal assistant for your practice
• How to actually start working with the virtual legal assistant you have chosen
• What to do if your chosen virtual legal assistant is not working out

I’m open to any suggestions or questions you may have on the topic of working with a virtual assistant though – so please feel free to comment or drop me an email (laurie@halosecretarial.com) if you have anything you’d particularly like to see addressed.

Also, if you are looking to work with a general virtual assistant, don’t worry! Most of the tips will be applicable whether your are a lawyer, an entrepreneur or a freelancer!

One part of the series will run each week on Tuesdays, so please check back regularly.

Yesterday I was able to help a great friend out. I don’t often have the opportunity to do that for this friend, she’s very independent and has things under control. But yesterday she couldn’t afford to miss any meetings at work and she needed someone to sit at her house and wait for a repair person.

Since my laptop is my office I simply took it over there with me and happily worked away. She has a secure internet connection and I had the passcode, so I was all set.

It was a nice change of scenery for me too – which was great!  Just another awesome benefit of having my own (very portable!)virtual legal assistant business.

I know this topic has been done to death – what should we call ourselves, is a virtual assistant a good name etc. I’ve addressed it before myself and  I’ve never really been able to come to a satisfactory conclusion although obviously I did choose my business name as Halo Secretarial Services not Halo Virtual (although I do own domain names for both, lol!) I even had a great suggestion not long ago to call myself a practice project manager after I wrote this post on project management for lawyers (hat tip to @matthomann for that suggestion – still thinking about it!)

I had someone find, and hire, me today though by doing a local search for “Spruce Grove Secretarial Services”. Awesome!! I rank #1 on Google for that (not exactly shocking – it’s a small city), but I realize I don’t rank so highly for Spruce Grove Virtual Assistant, let alone just “virtual assistant”. Partially just because I’ve mostly marketed online, not in my own town. I did send out post cards to lawyers in Edmonton and elsewhere in Alberta to let them know that a local virtual legal assistant was available, haven’t had any response from that yet. I also think though that despite the fact that many who do admin work don’t like to be called a secretary, it is still a very well known and widely used title. And ultimately, as long as my clients understand what I can do for them and happily pay a fair rate for the work I do, that’s enough for me. A title is just a word and words can be so limiting. So call me a legal assistant, a secretary, a practice manager, etc. etc. – it’s all good!

Anyway – just wanted to share my excitement about the search results and the new client. I’ve had a great couple of weeks for new clients and I’m so thrilled my practice is growing.

I just read the tuition announcement from Solo Practice University (courtesy of founder Susan Cartier Liebel via Twitter).

I’ve been keep an eye on all the amazing faculty announcements and developments happening over at SPU recently and I have to say it sounds like such an amazing concept! I can’t imagine a better way for new lawyers to learn about running a solo law practice. Topics that will be covered include blogging for your law practice, business strategies, virtual law practices, marketing for attorneys, technology, along with many in-depth courses on specific legal areas like accident law, trial law, entertainment law, estate planning and so many other great topics!

I also was so impressed to see that a virtual legal assistant will be on the faculty. Aretha Gaskin is the owner of The Virtual Legal Assistant and a respected member of the virtual assistant community. Having a professional virtual legal assistant educating new solo attorneys on the benefits of utilizing virtual legal assistants and virtual paralegals can only be good for our industry.

I think Solo Practice University is a model for virtual education and I personally would love to see something similar in the virtual assistant industry! There are plenty of learning programs, books, and certification processes available, but most are over-priced and several offer little value at all. There are definitely some good (and reasonably priced!) books available, but to have an interactive community of learning and support like what SPU is offering would be amazing. And if the legal community can provide it at such a reasonable price, the virtual assistant industryshould be able to offer it at a price that is affordable to those just starting out or considering their options.

Anyway, if you have recently hung your solo practice shingle, or if it’s a move you are considering, I highly recommend you check out Solo Practice University!

What can I say? It was too exciting to be on tv, even if just for a short interview!  Here’s the link to CTV Edmonton’s Twitter story from Monday, March 2nd, featuring yours truly.

Interestingly (to me, probably not to anyone else!) the story was about using Twitter and discussed the angle of how I’ve networked on Twitter to the advantage of my virtual legal assistant business. Interesting because they actually found me only because of my personal twitter account, not my business one! Now I’m sure that’s not a reason to have two accounts (as per some interesting discussions on Twitter recently), but I stand by my choice to keep my personal tweets fairly separate from my business ones!

I’ve talked about Twitter pretty regularly on this blog. I always  share that it is my absolute favorite place to network. Still, every time I talk to “real-life” friends or acquaintances I have a hard time helping them understand exactly what the appeal of Twitter is.

I started my virtual legal assistant business last fall officially, but I started networking earlier in the year to try and make connections within the online legal community and to learn from other virtual assistants. I was pointed to Twitter by several bloggers and last July I created my first Twitter account. I was immediately enchanted and saw what an interesting place to “hang out” it would be. Don’t get me wrong, I’m no visionary and I didn’t realize all the business benefits it would have at first, I just knew I liked it!

In August I connected with my first client – via Twitter. Other opportunities arose also, guest posts on blogs I respected, participation in events, and even a mention in an article for a legal journal. I followed more and more people, started using applications like Tweetdeck and Twhirl and eventually started a second Twitter account so I could have a more personally-oriented Twitter experience.

I then found more clients through Twitter, some long term, some for just short projects, but all great people who I’ve very much enjoyed working with. I think a big part of my success in finding clients on Twitter is the way I interact. I try to follow the unwritten rules of having a business account on Twitter. I don’t spam my followers with links or direct messages, I don’t spend much time self-promoting. I simply interact much as I would at a business conference. If someone asks, I tell them about what I can offer them. I share links and retweet interesting information. Although I save most of my mom stuff for my personal Twitter account, I do mention my children or the weather occasionally. It is very clear that my business account is run by a real person. My picture is my avatar and I respond to other people’s questions and messages promptly.

So my secret to success isn’t really a secret obviously. I’m real and I take time to really participate. And I’m grateful to be rewarded! And on the topic of rewarded, last week I had my most surprising and exciting Twitter-related experience yet. I received a telephone call from an anchor at my local television station. She had found my personal Twitter account and was planning a news feature about Twitter. I answered a few of her questions (thinking that was all the interaction there would be) and then she asked to come to my home to interview me! So last Thursday I was interviewed and later today I should be able to see myself on tv!! The link should be available by tomorrow and I will share it here on my blog!

Now, maybe you’re thinking that is just one person’s experience. Maybe you still aren’t on the Twitter bandwagon and can’t for the life of you figure out why you should hop on. Here are a few interesting links to check out to help convince you of the amazing benefits of this simply and yet utterly complicated social networking application.

1. From Copyblogger, this is a must read, how businesses have utilized Twitter
2. Use Twitter to monitor keywords important to your business
3. Build an effective business profile on Twitter
4. Twitter enlightenment for business owners

Stay tuned, I’m sure I’ll be posting more about Twitter and my business again soon!