virtual legal assistance
Law Practice Magazine Mention
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.
Read MorePartnering With a Virtual Legal Assistant, Part 4 (last one!)
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!!)
Laurie Mapp, Owner Halo Secretarial Services Contact us for more information on virtual legal assistance!
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Partnering With a Virtual Legal Assistant, Part 3
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!
Laurie Mapp, Owner Halo Secretarial Services Contact us for more information on virtual legal assistance!
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Cloud Storage for Lawyers
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!
Laurie Mapp, Owner Halo Secretarial Services Contact us for more information on virtual legal assistance!
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Practice Management
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?!
Laurie Mapp, Owner Halo Secretarial Services Contact us for more information on virtual legal assistance!
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Partnering With a Virtual Legal Assistant, Part 1
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!
Laurie Mapp, Owner Halo Secretarial Services Contact us for more information on virtual legal assistance!
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