Virtual Law Offices - a brave new world

New Jersey - where I am licensed to practice - has a strict rule: you must maintain a "bona fide office" for the practice of law.  A place where you can be found, where files are kept, the phone answered.  R. 1:21-1(a).  Despite a recommendation by the State Bar Association's small firm practice committee that the rule be eliminated the rule remains in place.  Its vitality has been declared in Opinion 718 by the state Supreme Court's Advisory Committee on Professional Ethics (on which I serve) and its Committee on Attorney Advertising.  Like the Court which it serves, the Committee was unable to embrace the idea of a lawyer who could be found only online, whose files might exist only in the "cloud".


Now comes the Pennsylvania Bar Association's Committee on Legal Ethics and Professional Responsibility.  In an advisory Ethics Opinion 2010-200 the Bar Committee (which does not have the force of law) embraces Virtual Law Offices as consistent with the Rules of Professional Responsibility.


I recognize that the world is changing, and that there are resources for management of the "virtual law practice" - a website authored by Stephanie Kimbro, who has been embraced as the first Xemplar Attorney by LexisNexis .  I bought my first laptop twenty years ago - and tossed out the yellow pads from the first day.   But I am left uneasy by this embrace.  It is a brave new world that has such people in it.  


The Pennsylvania committee declares that in its opinion:

• An attorney may maintain a virtual law office in Pennsylvania; 

• An attorney may maintain a virtual law office in which the attorney works from home, and associates work from their homes in various locations, including locations outside of Pennsylvania; 

• An attorney practicing in a virtual office is not required to list  a physical address in advertisements and on letterheads; 

• An attorney with a virtual office is not required to meet with clients at the address listed in any advertisements and/or in the geographic location where the attorney will perform  the services advertised, but must disclose to the client all of the information required under the Rules of Professional Conduct; 

• An attorney may use a post office address in advertisements and  letterheads, but may not state that services are performed at the address where the post office box is located; 

• A virtual law office must disclose information specifying where the services advertised  will be performed, but need not disclose the specific address where each attorney is located; 

• An attorney practicing in a virtual office may not state that his or her fees are lower than those of traditional brick and mortar law offices, but may state, if accurate, that the firm’s overhead may be lower than traditional brick and mortar offices, thereby possibly reducing the fees the firm charges clients;  

• There are no additional precautions necessary for an attorney practicing in a VLO to comply with his or her duty of confidentiality beyond those required of all attorneys; and, 

• An attorney practicing in a virtual office at which attorneys and clients do not generally  meet face to face must take appropriate safeguards to: (1) confirm the identity of clients  and others; and (2) address those circumstances in which a client may have diminished capacity