PHYSICAL OR VIRTUAL LAW OFFICE SPACE?

The legal profession is under tremendous pressure today to control costs and keep fees low. Rent is one big component of law firm expenses, and in an increasingly virtual world it is a cost that is often no longer necessary

Having a physical office offers still some advantages. If space is limited at your home, a place of business can help you better separate work from your personal life. A physical office with conference rooms, framed diplomas, and other lawyerly appointments also might make some potential clients feel more confident. And attorneys who still cling to physical file cabinets and Bankers Boxes need room to house them.

However, in a world where clients are pushing back on fees and administrative expenses and also demanding 24/7 access, the benefits of a physical work address start to become less important. A virtual law office – in which most legal documents and other information is stored and shared digitally rather than in physical cabinets – can help you meet today’s cost and customer pressures. In fact, we advise that even attorneys with physical offices acquire legal document management software and build some capability to access and share information this way.

Just as with any significant business decision, attorneys contemplating a virtual law office must weigh whether the benefits are worth the investment. For law firms, a virtual practice delivers a number of potential cost savings:

• Switching to a virtual law firm ecosystem means going largely paperless, which significantly decreases the hard and soft costs of maintaining legal documents and paper files.
• Legal document management and storage costs for active (home or office space) and inactive (off-site) files are whittled down substantially, since virtual law office storage space costs far less than physical storage space.
• Time is no longer wasted searching for hard-copy legal files and documents; automated, global search functionality finds them almost instantly. This savings in unproductive time gives attorneys more hours for billable work.

One of the biggest benefits of legal cloud hosting is that it gives legal professionals everything they need at their fingertips, wherever they are. A laptop, tablet, and smartphone take the place of a firm’s own filing cabinets and servers. The requirements for physical space become minuscule, and a virtual law firm can operate easily from a home office or small share of a conference space.