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Jan 31, 2025
By Melanie Anzidei
Staff Writer | The Record
Law firms in North Jersey are going digital, jettisoning brick-and-mortar offices and establishing virtual law firms that bring services to clients from a distance using technological forms of communication, instead of traditional face-to-face meetings.
Virtual law firms allow lawyers who run them to be more flexible. These attorneys do most of their work through phone calls, emails, video chatting and other technologies. Oftentimes, these lawyers do much of their work from home — allowing them to drastically reduce overhead costs traditionally associated with having a physical law firm, such as rent or paying a secretary, and also enables a better work-life balance.
“It may be a growing trend,” said Timothy Anderson, a lawyer in Red Bank and also chairman of the Solo & Small Firm Section of the New Jersey State Bar Association. “It really gives lawyers a way to be more efficient and practice anywhere.”
There are no statistics as to how many virtual law firms there are in the state. According to data from two State of the Attorney Disciplinary System Reports, there were 95,807 lawyers in New Jersey at the end of 2014 and 93,757 by the end of 2013. Despite the growing number of Garden State lawyers, 28,937 law offices reported they had physical locations in the state in 2014, unchanged from the year before, according to the reports.
Virtual offices were made possible in 2013 after the state Supreme Court Professional Responsibility Rules Committee approved amendments to the state’s “bona fide office” rule, which had essentially required all lawyers to have a brick-and-mortar office. The 2013 ruling said “an attorney need not have a fixed physical location.”
Critics of virtual firms argued that a virtual office means clients wouldn’t have immediate access to their lawyers. But lawyers with virtual offices say having one doesn’t mean you don’t meet your clients face-to-face. Tech-savvy lawyers who go virtual usually rent out shared office spaces. These spaces, which could cost as low as $100 per month, include access to Wi-Fi, an escape from long-term leases and a formal location for lawyers to meet clients.
