The quarterly publication of the International Legal Technology Association
Issue link: https://epubs.iltanet.org/i/11430
W e spoke with David Goldenberg, a founding partner in Virtual Law Partners (VLP), a brickless-and-mortarless model for collaboration and client service that seems to have a great head start on that future. ILTA: Tell us, David, how did VLP get started — what led you to the virtual model? David: We owe a large part of that vision to our late CEO and founder Craig Johnson. Two of his former colleagues, who were quite familiar with his legendary skills as a Silicon Valley attorney, technologist and entrepreneur, approached him in 2008 looking for ideas on how to grow their small practice. Craig, who was retired at the time, took that opportunity to explore ideas that had been germinating in his imagination. He pondered how technology, which had matured so much in 10 years since he had founded his last law firm, Venture Law Group, could be leveraged to support a virtual practice for attorneys who preferred a non-traditional environment. Out of those conversations came the concept for Virtual Law Partners. The three developed a website with a virtual and scalable law practice — a business model that was appealing and easy to sell to the attorneys. Built as a platform for the partners’ legal practice, VLP would take a percentage off the top to manage the practice, rather than the traditional model in which all partners share all the expenses and all the profits. Besides that business model, another obvious difference between you and a brick-and-mortar firm is that you don’t have to carry the high costs of lease space, build-out and staff overhead. But what are the cultural differences? Technology has leveled the playing field between the virtual environment and the traditional one. In both traditional and virtual firms, when you need to confer with a client or get a question answered by a colleague, you do it via e-mail, IM or the phone. That’s just the way most lawyers practice regardless of the size or type of our firm. Of course, depending on the type of services they provide, traditional practices still need meeting spaces. But one of VLP’s founding tenets was to exclude the types of practice areas that didn’t lend themselves well to the virtual model. We don’t do litigation, for example, so we don’t need conference rooms for depositions. Have there been any unforeseen benefits and/or challenges you’ve encountered along the way? One challenge we faced that I don’t think big firms have been focused on is building culture among attorneys who don’t see each other very often. One way we tackled the issue early on was to create a Virtual Cultural Committee. Led by our Chief Cultural Officer, this group is dedicated to ensuring that we maintain a cultural bond among our partners. We believe this kind of attention on firm culture is critical to success at VLP and an important reason our attorneys stay with us rather than opting for solo practice or working for another kind of virtual environment. 68 www.iltanet.org Peer to Peer Another challenge was the unexpected passing of the man we discussed earlier, Craig Johnson. There were transitional issues, as you would expect, but an amazing thing happened. Our attorneys, many of whom Craig was instrumental in helping bring into the firm, bonded and have largely stayed at VLP rather than disperse, as often happens in such a case. To what do you attribute this? I honestly think it’s because of their belief that VLP truly offers a better way to practice. I find this quite amazing in an era when partners often move back and forth in their own self-interest, when the whole notion of family-type unity within a firm seems to have vanished. At VLP, there’s an immensely strong and abiding spirit among our partners. That’s a real testament to the strength of the bonds that have been built and the partners we’ve gathered here. While we’re on the subject of virtual firm culture, I’m intrigued about the position, Chief Cultural Officer. Tell us more. One of the firm’s founding principles was to have this Chief Cultural Officer and a committee — a group devoted to figuring out how partners could work together, interact with each other and bond. Our CCO is amazing. She fits in well into any meeting and is excellent at absorbing and summarizing the issues — to get the zeitgeist of the situation — and provide a solution or a creative answer to a particular need. She just has a natural ability for facilitation, and she has great insight. She has put together some of the best team-building events I’ve ever participated in or seen. You said earlier that you’ve shied away from some practice areas because they didn’t fit well into the virtual model … Yes, although we certainly remain open to adding any services in the future that evolving technologies might support. Conversely, what areas did you identify upfront that were absolutely a perfect fit for your virtual firm? When we started in 2008, our eight founding attorneys had all come either from the corporate and securities startup space (handling financing rounds and forming small companies rather than doing hundred million dollar mergers) and also from the tech transaction space (commercial transactions for technology companies). We all had come from big firms, and we were accustomed to working in very small teams, a partner and associate to handle financing rounds and maybe a legal assistant to handle the closing. We simply didn’t need large teams or large rooms and lots of paper. That was the kind of work we did and how we were used to working, so carrying it over to VLP was very straightforward. You mentioned paper. Typically, firms generate and maintain a lot of paper, and indeed, the law practice is a custodian of records which, of course, has tremendous compliance and risk issues associated. Tell us about paper and records management in your virtual practice.