AMERICAN BAR ASSOCIATION

1 1 AMERICAN BAR ASSOCIATION COMMISSION ON ETHICS 20/20 INVITED SPEAKER* & PUBLIC HEARING SCHEDULE February 5, 2010 9:00 3:30 Northern Hemisphere A1 5th Level The Walt Disney Dolphin Hotel Orlando, FL TIME SPEAKER 9:45 10:30 *Richard Granat, President, DirectLaw, Inc. 10:30 11:15 *Stephanie Kimbro, Kimbro Legal Services, LLC 1:00 Lawrence J. Fox, Philadelphia, PA 1:15 2:00 *Susan Hackett, ASSOCIATION of Corporate Counsel 2:15 Christopher McGeehan, Chicago, IL 2:30 Seth Rosner, Saratoga Springs, NY 2.

2 45 Samuel Crews, Columbia, South Carolina Written Submissions Received Not Attending Name John Kelly, Toronto, ON ABA Commission on Ethics 20/20 February 5, 2010 Biographies of Invited Speakers Richard Granat is presently Co-Chair of the eLawyering Task Force of the ABA Law Practice Management Section, is a member of the Section Council, and serves on the ABA Standing Committee on the Delivery of Legal Services. Mr. Granat is also a member of the Maryland and District of Columbia Bar and chaired the Law Practice Management Section of the Maryland Bar ASSOCIATION .

3 He has been involved in developing innovative legal services delivery systems for over 30 years, first as part of the initial working group that created the National Legal Services Program, then as Director of the Center for Legal Studies at Antioch Law School in Washington, , the nation's first clinical law school, and later as President and Dean of the Philadelphia Institute for Paralegal Training, the nation's first paralegal school. He was the founding CEO of Automated Legal Systems, Inc.

4 , an affiliate of The Philadelphia Institute, one of the first legal software companies to publish legal applications for the personal computer. He is also Managing Partner of Granat Legal Services, , a virtual law firm based in Maryland that provides services to pro se litigants in family and divorce matters. Prior to his involvement in the online delivery of legal services, Mr. Granat founded one of the first distance education learning companies, increasing revenues 20 fold in a five year period. He has also served as Vice President of University Research Corporation, a professional services firm based in Washington, He has taught at the University of Maryland School of Law, the District of Columbia School of Law, Rutgers School of Law of Law, courses in Computers and the Law and Law Practice Management.

5 He is a graduate of Columbia University School of Law ( ), the University of Pennsylvania ( in Organizational Development) and Lehigh University ( ). Susan Hackett, Senior Vice President and General Counsel joined the ASSOCIATION of Corporate Counsel (ACC) in 1989. Prior to joining ACC, Susan was a transactional attorney at the international law firm of Patton Boggs. She lectures regularly before a wide variety of legal audiences, and has authored articles (and has regular columns) on a number of professional and managerial topics for such publications as the ACC Docket, Legal Times, InsideCounsel, Corporate Counsel, The Washington Post s Online Corporate Law Center, National Law Journal, Litigation, Business Law Today, Law Firm, Inc.

6 , as well as for various law and business reviews, international legal magazines, and state bar publications. She served as a liaison to several AMERICAN Bar ASSOCIATION Presidential Commissions and Task Forces, including: the Commission on the Multijurisdictional Practice of Law, the Joint Committee on Lawyer Regulation, the ABA Task Force on Sarbanes-Oxley Section 307, and The Attorney-Client Privilege Task Force. Ms. Hackett is a 1983 graduate (dual in political philosophy and international relations) of James Madison College at Michigan State University, and a 1 21986 graduate of the University of Michigan Law School.

7 She is licensed in both Maryland and the District of Columbia. Stephanie Kimbro, ( , ) operates a web-based virtual law office in North Carolina. She practices law online from her home. She received the 2009 ABA Keane Award for Excellence in ELawyering and her virtual law practice has been featured in Law Practice Magazine, the ABA Journal, GP/Solo Magazine, Lawyers USA, The Federal Lawyer, NC Lawyers Weekly, and the Canadian Bar ASSOCIATION 's National Magazine Addendum. She is the co-founder of Virtual Law Office Technology, LLC (VLOTech) which creates and supports virtual law practices for solo and small firm practitioners.

8 In October 2009, VLOTech was acquired by Total Attorneys, a Chicago-based company providing services to legal professionals. In addition to practicing law online, Kimbro has authored an ebook: Practicing Law Online: Creating a Web-Based Virtual Law Office. She is currently writing a book on virtual law practice for the ABA s Law Practice Management Section. She also has presented CLEs for the ABA and the North Carolina Bar ASSOCIATION s GP/Solo and Small Firm Symposium on technology and ethics issues in virtual law practice.

9 Kimbro provides guidance and assistance to other attorneys interested in delivering legal services using technology and is also a faculty member at Solo Practice University, a web-based, legal education community, where she teaches a course in virtual law practice to over 100 online students. Copyright, Richard S. Granat, 2010 | | | | 1 Online Legal Services: The Future of the Legal Profession By: Richard S. Granat, Esq. President, DirectLaw, Inc. | Granat Legal Services, | Introduction This statement discusses the delivery of online legal services over the Internet, and how rules of professional responsibility can function as a deterrent to innovation in the delivery of legal services.

10 Certain ethical rules have the effect, in my opinion, of making legal services higher in cost than they should be, uneven in quality, and unresponsive to what the average consumer really wants. The legal profession is highly stratified, with the largest number of practitioners, who are either solo practitioners or who work in small law firms, serving consumers and small business. Our largest law firms generally serve large corporations and their interests. My experience has been primarily with solos and small law firms serving consumers and small business.