I was interviewed some time back for an article in the Canadian Bar Association Practice Link and today I’ve seen it for the first time, thanks to a tweet from Kate Kerans, another Alberta-based virtual legal assistant. The article title is Invisible Assistants and while I’m not sure I like that (somehow it seems a little cold) it is a nice informative article about virtual legal assistants and the value they can provide to a solo lawyer or a lawfirm. For example, a quote from the article:

A VLA’s tasks could include preparing a rough draft of affidavits or agreements, proofreading and formatting documents, conducting and summarizing legal research, liaising with clients, and transcribing audio and digital files. And the advantages of lawyers hiring VLAs are proving tangible.

For one thing, there are none of the overhead costs associated with having a staff person on hand. Kerans’ hourly rate may be higher than a regular legal assistant’s, but it doesn’t include paying for office equipment, benefits, sick days, vacation days, bonuses, and so on. Plus, she bills for only the time she works. “I find my clients are usually quite surprised by how much I do in an hour,” she says.

The writer of the article, Alison Arnot, definitely seems to have “gotten” what a virtual legal assistant can provide in the way of value. So nice to see!

Only one little comment about what she took from interviewing me:

Mapp’s clients, however, are not in Edmonton, where she lives, or even in Alberta, but in the United States.

Most of my current clients are in the United States, but I am of course totally open to working with Albertan or Canadian lawyers! In fact I would love local clients (have had a couple for general admin, but not legal yet!) it’s just an opportunity that hasn’t come up quite yet. Maybe soon?!

My poor neglected blog. I was away for a week and while I fully intended to try and get a post or two up while on vacation it totally didn’t happen! We got in later each day than I had expected and there just wasn’t time for much at all, let alone blogging about virtual legal assistance! Disneyland was great though and we got in a couple of trips to the beach, although the weather wasn’t so hot!

I learned a couple of lessons about attempting to work while on vacation with three small kids and two other adults. It doesn’t work so well. I definitely was able to check my email 1-2 times per day and respond to urgent messages. I also was able to complete a couple of projects and tasks for clients. I felt guilty about missing so much work time and would have liked to have made more time for my business, but also felt guilty about holding up the rest of my group when I was trying to get things done. So first lesson is that vacations of one week should probably include as little work as possible!

I also learned I should communicate a little better with my clients. I let them all know I’d be away, but didn’t send out last-day reminders which I think would be an improvement they would appreciate. Not that I’m planning another vacation for this summer (other than a long weekend to BlogHer in July!), still it’s important to plan a little better.

I’m very happy to be home though and once I’m caught up on a couple of things I might even have more time to blog and twitter again! In the meantime, here are a couple more vacation pics that I thought I’d share.

The startup phase of business is hard, and it will be even harder if you haven’t planned properly for your expenses. Whether you, like me, are running a virtual legal assistant business or you are opening your first law practice, there are a number of things you need to consider when you sit down to establish your start-up budget.

Clients

I’ve been in business for approximately 9 months. I still am nowhere near full-time billable hours – and billable hours are the key, as you aren’t being paid for all that marketing time!! You may already have leads on clients, but in all likelihood you need to give yourself at least 6-12 months to really build up a decent clientele.

Also in relation to clients, you need to realize that funds will take time to start flowing. You may choose to invoice on a weekly basis to have some cash in hand, but many virtual legal assistants bill on a monthly business.  Once you send out the invoice it may take a week or two to receive funds.

Startup Expenses

You will always have some expenses, but never quite so much as at startup. You may need to invest in equipment like a good computer, a printer or a scanner. You will want to consider adding specialty software like accounting software or graphic design programs. Then there is the cost of your website, hosting and the design of a logo or marketing materials. For some more detailed info about start-up costs for a virtual assistant business check out this article I wrote for Virtual Assistant Hub – there’s even a spreadsheet to help you plan!

Money in the Meantime

Once you’ve spent some time planning how much money you need to start your business you’ll want to spend some time planning where you are going to get that money. Maybe you have personal savings you can access, maybe you have family willing to loan or invest in your business, maybe you can talk to your bank about a small business loan. According to this article, lack of sufficient start-up capital is the cause of more than 70% of business failures.  Even if you have a supportive spouse, family or friends to back you financially, you will need to keep a close eye on your income versus your expenses, to make sure your new venture does not become a money-sucking pit.

It is wonderful to have a positive attitude and a strong belief in your ability to succeed when you embark on the adventure of entrepreneurship, but don’t let financial issues drag you into reality. Be prepared and know exactly what it’s going to take to help you truly succeed in building your business!

p.s. this post was inspired by a great article at Law Practice Today written by Erik Mazzone. His tips are well worth checking out, especially if you’re starting a law practice. Erik is an experienced practice management advisor who blogs over at Law Practice Matters.

I think one of the most commonly asked questions about virtual assistance, particularly virtual legal assistance, is when is the time right for a business owner to start partnering with the VA. There is no wrong answer to this question, as ultimately the time is right when you are ready to start alleviating the administrative burden.

Still, I would say the earlier you are able to start the relationship the better. You may not need a lot of help early on in running your business, or at least you may feel like it’s an expense you aren’t ready to take on. Really though, a virtual assistant can cost a very small amount, especially at first, as you do not have to use a lot of their time initially. You may choose to partner with a virtual assistant who will work with you on an hourly basis with no set time commitment or a very small retainer of say 5-10 hours per month. Even at $40 per hour (just an estimate) you might only pay $200 to $400 per month to have someone who can really help you stay on top of things!

A good reason to partner with a virtual assistant sooner rather than later is that you will be able to get a good system and processes in place so that as your business grows and you get busier and busier you already have a reliable relationship in place and you aren’t then trying to start a search for some help when you can’t find the time at all. I know finding time is often an issue, and was reminded of it this morning when I read Nicole Black’s post at her Sui Generis blog about Saving Time and Money (she offers one solution for this via lawtechTalk, might want to check that out too!)

Don’t worry if you are already busy running your practice and you realize that maybe you should have found a virtual legal assistant a few months ago. It may be hard to fit in the time for researching and beginning the relationship, but it will be time well spent. Just remind yourself that an investment of say 3 hours now to find the perfect virtual assistant for you should pay off in many saved hours almost immediately and on an ongoing basis. And definitely don’t think it should take you a lot of time to find the perfect person to collaborate with – start with my series on partnering with a virtual legal assistant (link is to part 4, and that link contains links to all articles in the series) and honestly you should be able to make a choice within a week or so, just split the search effort up into a few days and you will be ready to go sooner than you thought.

Well, what are you waiting for? Go find the help you need now!!

I received an exciting tweet from @SteveMatthews this week, sharing an article from the current issue of ABA’s Law Practice Magazine (the innovation issue), in which he mentioned Halo Secretarial as an example of the innovative possibilities of virtual legal assistants for law practices. What an honour!!

There were several fascinating articles in the issue actually. Innovation is an interesting topic in law, as so often innovation simply means catching up to the mainstream! I highly recommend you check out some of the articles, you can see the index here to see what topics were covered.

This is part four of my series on partnering with a virtual legal assistant. Check out parts 1 (where to find), 2 (the interview process) and 3 (getting started) if you haven’t already!

Ok this is it – hopefully your relationship with your new virtual legal assistant is working out wonderfully! But sometimes it doesn’t. Maybe you’ve had someone misrepresent themselves, maybe the VLA has had an unexpected major life change and cannot continue the relationship, maybe you just don’t like them.

The best part of working with a virtual contractor rather than an employee is that you don’t have to continue the relationship if it isn’t working. Look at your contract to confirm, but you can probably simply stop working with them at any time. You’ll need to pay your last invoice and then you can re-start the process of finding the right virtual legal assistant for your practice, probably with a better idea of what you want and need.

This seems like a good time to address a couple of miscellaneous ideas that occurred to me as my series progressed:

• Sometimes a virtual legal assistant is NOT your best choice. If you need someone full-time, if you prefer someone available at your beck and call or you really want someone in your office to answer the phone and greet clients – you probably should hire an in-house legal assistant rather than a virtual one.
• I’ve addressed the use of a virtual legal assistant in a rather broad manner. Realize that not all individuals who call themselves “virtual legal assistants” are capable of the same things. Some people have more experience or more ability than others.
• The world of work is constantly evolving. I hope that some of my thoughts on partnering with a virtual legal assistant may be applicable to telecommuting assistants or paralegals (ones who are “employees” rather than business owners) although in my experience few such arrangements are truly available to support staff at law firms or government agencies.
• I cannot stress the importance of good communication in a virtual relationship enough – check, re-check, clarify and clarify again as needed. Better safe than sorry!

I hope you’ve enjoyed my series on partnering with a virtual legal assistant – please feel free to email me or comment if you have any questions (or if you want to discussing partnering with Halo Secretarial as your VLA!!)

Yay! You’ve selected the perfect Virtual Legal Assistant for you. She knows her stuff and you are more than ready to hand over some of the work. But how, exactly, do you get started? I can tell you from experience that for some of my clients this has been the hardest part!!

Well the first thing to do is to get a contract signed. Personally, I offer a standard Contract for Services to my clients, which sets out my fee for services, the types of services I’ll be performing, clauses about confidentiality, etc. Personally I’m open to signing a client provided contract if they prefer, or making some changes to my contract as needed. I would not work with a virtual legal assistant without a contract, especially as pertains to confidentiality agreement clauses.

After you’ve signed the contract you’ll want to give your VLA her first project or two. I recommend you start slow. Give one or two very simple projects. Ask for a weekly time report or a per project time report, to make sure the time spent matches your expectations.

Have a weekly telephone call or email check-in to discuss what is coming up in the next week so you can both be on the same page. Share your calendar or details of upcoming travel, conferences etc. Ask questions to clarify as carefully as possible. Be prepared to promptly answer questions so that your virtual legal assistant isn’t left hanging while a deadline looms.

Probably the most important thing to realize is that the relationship is likely to evolve and grow as you work together over time. Trust takes time to build. You may find you planned to have your new virtual legal assistant perform just a few hours of assistance per month and as time passes you realize how much of a benefit it is and start to use significantly more time.  This is a great time to check and see if she offers a discount for retainer clients or for clients who use a minimum number of hours within a month.

Do you need a reminder of what types of work your virtual legal assistant can do for you? I’ve written on the topic before, and really your VLA can probably do anything you would have an in-house assistant do, but here’s a quick reference list for you:

• Research (case law, marketing research or even interesting links for use on your blog!)
• First drafts of legal documents – everything from court pleadings to wills
• Correspondence
• Document review
• Project management
• Scheduling of appointments
• Email monitoring
• Updating your calendar
• Reviewing and organizing trial materials

And don’t forget to consider how you are sharing information with your virtual legal assistant. Send her things by courier, fax or secure workspace – don’t send confidential information simply via email! I love my project management application for this – I now exclusively use TeamWork PM for my clients and it’s fabulous for sharing documents, sending messages and managing deadlines!

Next week will be the last installment in my series on partnering with a virtual legal assistant. I’ll be addressing some miscellaneous concerns and answering any questions that have come up – please let me know if there is anything specific you want to see!

I love reading articles like this one from Law.Com’s Legal Technology section (hat tip to @nikiblack for pointing it out!) It reminds us all, lawyers and businesses like mine that serve lawyers, to look at how we are storing our files and protecting them.

What kind of security do you have in place on your computer? What kind of backup do you use?

Personally I have a couple of systems in place. I do password protect my computer files. I don’t send confidential data via email and I have a couple of backup methods in place. I use both an external hard drive and SugarSync, a platform that allows me access to my documents across all of my computers and acts as a continuous backup on those computers. I can also access my documents from any computer or even my mobile phone with my username and password. I also always use strong passwords (ie – not my name, my kids names etc!) that contain letters, numbers and characters. Better safe than sorry!

I know there are a lot of lawyers out there who are, understandably, concerned about cloud applications and storage methods. I think with the right research though you can find the right service providers and detailed information to help you see the many benefits of utilizing some cloud apps in your law practice. I know they are key to helping me easily run my virtual legal assistant practice!

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!