Sep 19, 2011
Virtual Law Offices Battling in Washington, D.C.
WASHINGTON, D.C.-Virtual law offices are making headlines again.
The Washington Post tells the tale of a “nonconventional law practice” that’s making inroads in the Washington, D.C. market. The story features Axiom Law, a legal services provider that’s billing about half the going rates of its larger law firm counterparts by tapping into virtual office technologies.
“Axiom is not technically a law firm: its attorneys don’t do litigation or give legal advice. But they do offer lower rates (typically between $150 and $275 per hour) for project-based work on transactional matters, contracts and regulatory and compliance-related research—the type of work businesses want done by experienced, skilled attorneys but don’t want to pay big firm rates for,” writes Catherine Ho, a reporter at the Washington Post.
Axion Law is essentially a virtual law office—and this virtual office-based law firm has clients like Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse. Most of the attorneys in the firm are pulling in $200,000 a year in salary. If that doesn’t give credibility to the virtual law office trend, what does?
Then there’s Burton Law LLC, a Centerville, Ohio-based virtual law firm that’s planning to move one of its attorneys to Washington, D.C. later this year to establish a new location. According to the Dayton Business Journal, the attorney that’s heading to D.C. expects to hire more lawyers in the capitol region to build a team there.
So it looks like the battle is on for virtual law firms in D.C. But D.C. is hardly the only place that’s seeing the rise and momentum of virtual law offices. This new model is spring up in cities across the country—and virtual office technologies are helping to make it happen.
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