You may have seen on the website for the Law Office of Kevin C. Gustafson that I call it a virtual law firm. But what does that really mean? In this blog post, I will give you the overview of how I see the future of the practice of law and how a virtual law firm, as opposed to traditional brick and mortar law offices, is the best way to achieve your legal goals and save money at the same time.
Leveraging Technology
Since I was a kid, I’ve always loved computers and cutting-edge technology. My dad worked in a precision manufacturing facility, and as such was used to using new developments in hardware and software at work and brought that interest and excitement home. I got my first personal desktop computer when I was 14, after I had found the requisite components and vowed to build it myself. In college, while studying philosophy in class, at night I worked at a mobile computer repair business. For the various punk bands I played in when I was in school, I learned to code in HTML, Java, CSS, and other languages to make websites and other little applications.
When I worked as a paralegal I realized very quickly how much technology could make the practice of law much more efficient, much simpler, and much more accessible to the people who really need the support lawyers can provide as advocates. I realized just how inefficient most lawyers, and the practice of law generally, was. Sick of being forced to work with antiquated and ineffective processes, I’ve been lucky enough to have tested a wide variety of legal technology software in the last ten years – from research applications, practice management, e-Discovery review, docket reviews, to data analytics. Armed with that background, I have an acute understanding of how technology can unlock possibilities if used correctly, or simply lead an unsuspecting lawyer down a dead end. For instance, I worked as the product manager of Fastcase, a legal research application for five years after Law School. There I dove very deep in the weeds of legal software development and legal application product management.
As I return to practicing law as a solo virtual attorney, I am using this background to properly leverage technology where less tech-forward and/or larger law firms would just throw more people – meaning more money out of their clients pocket. That isn’t how it works when you become a client at the Law Office of Kevin Gustafson. Instead, you will immediately become aware of how I use technology in that you’ll receive an intake form via text message or email that allows you to fill out information that I will use in your case going forward. After that you’ll have access to all the documents in your case, you can send messages, pay your bill, see when the last action was taken on your case, sign documents and more with our client portal. In that Portal, you can do almost anything you’ll need to and won’t even have to pick up the phone.
A New Epoch in the Law
When I first learned how to do legal research, which wasn’t that long ago just in 2005, I learned the “old way”, which means going to the library, grabbing a case reporter book off the shelf, finding a case, and reviewing the subsequent treatment, if even possible. To be honest, I kind of liked it. It was fun to go to the library, to smell the books when they cracked open, probably for the first time in years. But the process quickly showed itself to be just an exercise in nostalgia. When I actually started working at law firms, I used web-based legal research applications like Fastcase, Westlaw, and Lexus. This was in the early days of the transition to more cloud-based technology, allowing things like electronic case filing and reviewing case records online.
While Court information was always technically publicly available, the ability for court websites to post new rules, for legal research companies to gather documents in centralized locations, for payment processors to be able to adapt to different ethics rules, for practice management software to allow lawyers the ability to better manage their cases and to better keep on top of their necessary activities has also created a very different kind of court system, and lawyer than existed even 20 years ago. It calls for a advocatus novi.
The Law Office of Kevin C. Gustafson is taking advantage of this revolution in legal practice, and aims to be at the forefront of this new age. Since the promise of technology is to decrease the cost of doing things, rather than pocketing the difference, the Law Office of Kevin C. Gustafson wants to pass the savings along to our clients, making the presentation I provide as high quality, but at a much cheaper and more affordable rate.
Text, email, Zoom, or FaceTime me
As time passes, and more adults have grown up in an age of email, SMS, DM, and other text-based conversation, I know that people may have become less comfortable with face-to-face or phone call interactions. I get it, and to a certain degree I feel the same way. Especially after the COVID-19 Pandemic, which really accelerated this process since we couldn’t meet in person, all of us I’ve gotten used to sending emails,texts, DMs, jumping on zoom and other video calls with one another. Even courts are holding hearings, conferences, depositions, and even trials remotely.
The Law Office of Kevin C. Gustafson is ready for however you feel comfortable reaching out. You can go to our website, check out our social media (@kevinglaw), send me an email (Kevin@Kevinglaw.com), send me a text @ 202-240-7292. Of course, you can always call me and we can set a meeting and sit down together if that’s what you feel comfortable with. But, if you’re the kind of person who wants to text her attorney, or email them documents, or go to a client portal and have everything you need to know then reach out to me however, you want to. I’m the lawyer for you.
Law Offices Of Kevin C. Gustafson 