What happens when a virtual lawyer joins forces with a bricks-and-mortar law office and attempts to create a new, hybrid organization that leverages technology to better serve the clients and provide everyone with the freedom to be as untethered as they want to be?
I live in an online world, untethered and rife with technology to make the practice of law more effective. My life is my own, and my business is merely a portion of that life.
In other word, it’s the ideal work-life balance. That is to say that it’s a work-life integration. It gives me the opportunity to live my life holistically, to nurture my professional aspirations without sacrificing my personal needs.
But could this business model work for a traditional bricks-and-mortar law firm, one that has operated for 20 years in midtown Manhattan? Can people working in that law firm be brought into the 21st Century willingly to improve their lives and their client relations at the same time?
That was my question when David Shaev and I started talking about how we could work together. Since 2006 David and I have worked together on an informal basis, with me coaching him in his business operations and both of us referring work to one another.
Could we create a hybrid animal of sorts, a traditional law firm that has the flexibility to operate virtually as well?
As of this week, I’m the Managing Attorney at Shaev & Fleischman. Headquartered in the Empire State Building in midtown Manhattan, one of our goals is to create a working environment that allows staffers and clients to interact in a way that makes them both more comfortable.
How we share information and communicate is important in this profession, and the world has changed rapidly in the past decade or so to the point where sitting behind a desk at the end of a long commute is counter-productive and arcane.
Our challenges are not insignificant. David has operated his firm for two decades, and some of his staffers have been with him for nearly the entire time. Their habits have been built over a long period of time, and their patterns are deeply ingrained.
I’ll be blogging about my experiences here, so you’ll get to see how events unfold over time. I’m looking to you, my loyal readers, to give me your take on things and your feedback. Watch me fall on my face or succeed, and I hope you’ll follow me on this incredible journey.
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