We hear a lot these days about the virtual lawyer and all the working from home stuff that makes handling a case about as urgent as putting out the washing. But is it really that good? Well, yes, for most.
Forbes ‘Brand’ recently ran an artice about virtual lawyer Eric Hsu of Clear Focus Law (great name, by the way) who services Washington State start-up types, who also mostly work at home.
He loves it. Files in the cloud and dishes in the washer.
“It fits in with my clientele,” Hsu said. “They work from home or they work from a virtual office, so we really identify with each other.”
Cloud-based, virtual, entrepreneurial, home office: These are not typical descriptors in the mammoth, slow-moving legal field. But for Hsu, working from home has given him the chance to build his business exactly how he wanted to.
When Hsu decided to start taking cases as Clear Focus Law, he was—and still is—employed at another full-time job. Starting and maintaining his business from a home office has allowed him to grow at his own pace.
“It’s scalable,” he said. “When I was first starting up and just taking a few cases, it still made sense [to launch the business]. Whereas, if I were to rent an office space, I would need to reach a critical mass before it made sense.”
Maintaining a personal life is a challenge for any entrepreneur, and Hsu faces work-life balance struggles just like anyone else. But working from home, he said, eases some of that stress.
“If I have to work on something when I have my kids, I schedule things very carefully,” he said. “If I have 45 minutes between when they go to bed and when I go to bed, I can crank something out. If I had to go to an office, it just wouldn’t work.”
Being small also allows Hsu to be nimble. Although he recently read up on the challenges and risks of firms moving to high-tech solutions in a law journal, he’s long been communicating with clients through a secure, third-party, digital platform and storing his documents securely in the cloud.
