Ensuring Digital Signature Lawfulness for Legal Services in United States

How to eSign a document: digital signature lawfulness for Legal Services in United States

all right today we're going to be talking about the outlook for remote legal jobs in 2023 and Beyond I'm really excited about this topic because I've got some data for you some hard numbers today that is going to show you what we're seeing in remote legal um here at lockler you know our goal is to help create opportunities for contract attorneys freelance lawyers to find Opportunities to work with other lawyers who need your help and need your services and so today we're going to talk about what the Outlook is for those jobs the ways to find jobs and all the ways that we're striving very hard to help you succeed with your career as a freelance lawyer so without further Ado let's get this started hey William from is that Louisiana I love that okay all right so I'm going to share my screen here and we're going to go here one second and all right thanks for bearing with me while I get that set up so all right folks today we're going to dig into the outlook for remote legal jobs in 2023 and Beyond because we do have some data that shows some projections for the years ahead um but before that I just kind of wanted to set the stage by by asking you know do we have any daydreamers out there in the audience have any of you ever been sitting at your desk at the law firm as a young associate maybe daydreaming about all the things you could do with your legal career if maybe someday you'd go in-house or maybe someday you'd become a professor or someday you'd start your own firm or if you just want to travel the world and be a full-time freelancer you know the exciting thing to me is that with a lot of degree you really can do anything that you put your mind to and so that's one of the most exciting and challenging things is to figure out what you want to do with your legal career and the cool thing is that more and more attorneys are turning to a full-time freelance career as a full-time contract attorney full-time freelance lawyer whatever you want to call it it means the same thing it means that it's a lawyer who does work for another lawyer in an outsourced freelance capacity to support the other attorney's firm that can be written work it can be appearance work it can be a lot of different things we'll talk about that but for any of you daydreamers out there the exciting thing is that there really has never been a better time to take the plunge and you know launch your own career as a freelance lawyer and because there's a huge demand for legal services and a huge demand for remote legal help so today we're going to cover a couple of things we're going to cover the demand we're going to go through what kinds of work are in demand what what work you know busy lawyers need help with we're going to talk about some of the benefits of a freelance legal career and probably most interesting to a lot of you how much money can you make as a freelance lawyer like really how much money can you make and then lastly but certainly not least we'll talk through some of the options of ways you can find work and build your career as a freelance lawyer so away we go okay all right so you probably already know that you know the pandemic in so many ways gave a Kickstart excuse me gave a Kickstart to forcing legal to go remote we had no choice some lawyers who had resisted technology and resisted new ways of doing things were forced into it when they suddenly found themselves having to figure out how to work from home when their team was all worked for working from home too and so you know remote really led the way we went we went fast or excuse me we went remote very fast and for a lot of lawyers we've stayed there we've seen the advantages to that and you know for that reason it's fair to say that um you know the pandemic really permanently changed the way uh where and how we work um and it's exciting you know lawyers finally recognize the benefits of cloud-based technology and the mobility that it would provide to them their teams and their clients and so uh you know this is the new world folks if you haven't already jumped on board and embraced this new remote work lifestyle then you definitely need to give that another shot but okay what are some of the data that we see around remote work this is really fascinating so this chart comes to us from our friends at Clio from their 2022 Clio legal Trends report it's a free report if you haven't read through it it's a super easy read they've got a really fun interactive copy on their web page now that you can access Clio but this is showing that over the span of January 2019 to July of 22 that's the reports time period that the number of legal professionals working exclusively from an office has dropped quite a bit um you know Leo has found that today fewer than 30 percent of lawyers continue to work only from the office meaning exclusively from the office so I mean comparing that to where we were in January of 2019 that is a massive massive change and along the scenes lines you know that those changes extend to other members of a law firm too beyond the lawyers um probably the most so these are um these are percentages by groups and probably the most dramatic shift and the most dramatic change was in the hybrid Group which um is where about 10 percent of firms fall into hybrid before 2020 80 of those firms their team members worked exclusively from the office but now by um April or by mid 22 fewer than half work exclusively from an office so we're seeing a big push to remote and you know this is what most lawyers want they prefer remote and virtual work a lot of them prefer meeting with clients virtually too which is interesting so this is you know some data to show where legal has gone with remote if you were curious I think we all hear a lot of conversation about these topics but it's interesting to have some actual data to support them and it's great that we've gone remote because this is really what a lot of our clients want as well they want the option for a virtual meeting when it's not necessary to meet in person um and so uh you know this is this is good data to see as well but it's also what our clients want now some more data that came out from the Clio legal Trends report is they found that the demand for Legal Services reached a record high in 2022 surpassing the you know the dollar amounts we saw in 2019 even in many ways 2021 was a rebound year where legal was getting back on track we were figuring out this new normal and uh 2022 saw a huge growth in demand for Legal Services across the entire industry caseloads were up about 10 percent which is a big number so this shows us that there's a lot of work out there and in fact that's one of I think the big takeaways I want to share with you today is there's a lot of legal work out there and there's a lot of unmet legal need that is still out there as well and at the same time we can be confident from the data that remote work is here to stay and so these are really the two big reasons why we remain very bullish on remote legal work and only see continued growth in the future of course the data we see internally here at law clerk also shows us that but we hold that a little close a little close to home still um but I do have some data on remote legal work from a couple of other sources that I thought you might find interesting so there's a company called research on markets they um just do research globally and they are projecting a growth of about 30 percent for the global legal Outsourcing Market between now and 2027. so that's a growth of 30 in just a few more years you know and now we're 2023 so uh you know at the end of the next four years we're going to see see this grow a huge amount it's already a huge I mean the legal industry as a whole is gigantic it's bigger than the US airline industry bigger than the motion picture industry and so knowing that the demand for Legal Services is growing illegal's gotten remote it makes sense that we could see as much of a third as a 30 growth between 2020 2021 and 2027 I'm sorry guys I just can't talk today but this was just one um research study that found this and I you know one is great but when you can find two that shows very similar data that's really encouraging so this one comes from a different research company called Grandview research and they are also projecting nearly a 30 growth they but they're projecting a 27.5 percent growth in legal what they call legal process Outsourcing it's legally Outsourcing so this would include both you know paralegal Outsourcing attorneys everything but again it matches up with the fact that we're seeing continual growth in the demand for legal services that uh legal is recognizing all the benefits of a remote Workforce and they're also recognizing this is what lawyers want with their career so um this is another resource that is out there if you want to dig some more into the numbers and the growth go check out Grand Grandview and you can get a copy of their full report so what this is a big question that we get you know what work are attorneys Outsourcing specifically to other freelance lawyers because that's as you know is our Niche here at law clerk we help match up busy firms with our Nationwide network of freelance lawyers for that overflow work and we are seeing you know really in a nutshell everything that's the spoiler we're seeing everything get research outsourced you know when we first started the company we of course we knew we would see a lot of family law on bankruptcy and criminal law work of course but we didn't expect to see the volume of really complex mergers and Acquisitions and Deals and really high level uh litigation Supreme Court level litigation going through the site and attorneys getting help from other talented attorneys so in a nutshell we see everything uh you know of course we see I would I don't have an exact number but I would estimate about 65 to 70 of the work that comes through the site is litigation so you know 30 35 is on the transactional we see a ton of research work discover free help with pleadings correspondence and blogs and marketing type materials even some like firm Administration type work if you need help updating your engagement agreement you know a lot of lawyers don't have time for that so they hire a freelance lawyer to help with employee handbooks or you know work from home protocols or even you know forms for new hires so the sky is the limit and attorneys are definitely getting very creative with maximizing the use of their own time and maximizing the ways they're leveraging the talents of freelance lawyers like you what are the benefits of a freelancycle career I probably don't need to go that through that with this audience because you all know it you get to choose the kind of work you want to do you get to choose how much you want to work and when and with who and where you want to work and all of those things they're you know those are the big benefits of the choosing a freelancycle career and we are seeing more and more lawyers take the plunge to move to a full-time freelance career you know legal has not been immune to the so-called great resignation um you know last year the again this is from the 2022 Clio legal Trends report and they found that 37 percent of lawyers surveyed either had left or were considering leaving a job for a better pay and lawyers surveyed about half say they prefer working from home so you know lawyers um you know this to me was interesting because money and pay wasn't the biggest it was a big factor but the numbers on it weren't like you know over 50 percent the larger number was um the preference on working for from home a few more reasons on why lawyers are leaving of course we've already hit on better pay they want better work-life balance that's a big one they want more flexibility in their schedules they want more control over their schedules maybe they dislike the manager they want to work for themselves they don't want to have to have that partner that they're dealing with day in and day out maybe they dislike the colleagues or they want to relocate and be close to their family but still do high level work maybe they're relocating to a small town where they wouldn't have the same opportunities as they would if they were working in office in a big city and some just want to scale back on work whatever the reason there are so many reasons to embark on a freelance legal career but you know if you find yourself resonating with one two three of these you're not alone and these are just a few of the reasons why more and more lawyers are turning to a full-time freelance career and having a lot of success with that um but again more and more I I think probably the biggest push for this is just wanting to have control over your schedule and having more flexibility to make your career Bend to your lifestyle rather than having to bend your lifestyle to your career okay so without fail I'm sure a lot of you here are curious to know more about how much can you make with a freelancycle career um sorry just taking a quick look to see if we had questions in the chat looks like um not yet so how much can you make okay my short answer to this is it's up to you you can make as much as you want as a freelancer I think that when you are considering embarking on a freelancycle career whether that's part-time or full-time you need to come up with what is the number that would help support you and your family and your lifestyle and then work towards that and then you can always increase or decrease depending on what you have going on but there are countless Freelancers out there who share stories with us about how they are now making as much if not more money as a full-time freelance lawyer than they did working at a law firm one such freelancer um I don't know if she's on here today let me do a quick scan uh nope she's done on here today but you know one such freelancer was healthy who's from Wisconsin and she shared on her LinkedIn um this post that in October of 21 she resigned from her Law Firm job she wanted to become a full-time freelancer because it was a better fit for her young family she was pregnant the time talk about a leap of faith I switched jobs to a different firm when I was five or six months pregnant and that was very nerve-wracking but she had her baby took some time off began really launched the whole time we go freelance career excuse me in April of 2022 and then she posted this in July so between April and July of last year she had revved up her freelance legal career um you know working directly with a couple of attorneys directly and then also with law Clerk and she exceeded this was this post was the week that she exceeded what she had made at the law firm in her prior job so just in a few months coming off on maternity leave she was able to match her Law Firm earnings with a much more flexible lifestyle that aligns with the needs of her young family so I just love this post which is why I wanted to share it so how can you make this happen for yourself okay probably one of the first things you need to know is you need to know your value as a freelance lawyer okay and if you're not sure what that is then we have some data to help you again this is from our friends at Clio their legal trans report this was a survey that they did of uh the respondents to find the kind of average billable hour Nationwide so the green line is the lawyer rate the average billable hour ing to Clio in January of 2022 was 313 dollars an hour now for some of you in some areas that would seem very low other people that might seem too high but don't don't fear Cleo also provided an appendix at the end of their report that goes into the details of hourly rates by state okay this is just a little snippet of that full report but you can go find your average hourly rate by state there's even a chart that then does an adjustment to that based of cost of living and how that is different across the country and last but not least in the report they also go into the average hourly rates by practice area now they don't combine those with average hourly rates by practice area by each state these are nationwide but you can look at the two pieces of data together to figure out what could you charge for your service as a freelance lawyer what would be reasonable all right so let's go through a couple of examples to see how this might look so first example number one let's pretend that you're a freelance lawyer in California I know we have some of those on here today and let's say that your practice area is IP okay so we're going to go back to this data from Clio and uh so this is the range of rates they found for law firms for lawyers and non-lawyers if you're an attorney in California now we're going to add in our hourly rate by your practice area so over here the hourly rate for a lawyer who does IP work is 368. so you can see over here the hourly rate in California in general is 358 a little bit of a premium for an IP practice area so that gives you kind of a ballpark of what your services might be worth at a market rate now keep in mind these are hourly Market rates that would be charged to a client of a law firm not a freelance lawyer so we have to do an adjustment what adjustment do we have to do so A good rule of thumb is that we find most hiring attorneys or most hiring law firms are generally willing to pay about 30 to 40 percent of the market rate okay so if the billable rate to a client the market rate is you know 100 an hour then the Freelancers rate is going to be about 30 to 40. okay that's easy math here but let's go into this a little bit more so let's say you've got California freelancer and IP they could very reasonably charge 368 an hour I just took this rate from the IP um and 30 of that so that'd be on the Lower Side would be a hundred and ten dollars an hour for hourly type freelance work of course some work is Project based and we'll go into some examples of that too but this could be a very reasonable rate for an IP freelance attorney in California so taking these numbers let's say you decide you know for your lifestyle your your goal is to Bill and collect 80 hours a month okay that's that's less than a full-time uh Law Firm job that would be uh revenue of about 8 800 each month and over the course of a year that's over six figures that's over a hundred and five thousand well it's 105 600 okay these are real easy numbers you see now I hope that this shows you how you can kind of play with this to see okay if I'm doing freelance work in this area or that area um you know because maybe you have experience in a couple different areas of law and you're not sure which one you want to freelance and you could look at the value of the service based on these average rates and this data and then you can convert it into a freelance rate and then play around with hey if I work 10 hours a week 20 hours of work 30 hours a week what kind of income could I make as a freelance lawyer okay and keep in mind you're going to have a ramp up period until you hit that steady level of work but this is doable folks whatever you know you're looking for in terms of flexibility and lifestyle and compensation it's doable you just have to put your mind to it okay so this was one example uh let's go through another one just to further illustrate how this would flow so let's say now you're in Ohio and you practice in civil litigation you want to do litigation work litigation support work there's huge demand for that okay so hourly rates for Ohio uh for a lawyer the average is 238. and for civil litigation Nationwide the average is 306. so we've got kind of a range here between 238 and 306 Nationwide for civil litigation okay now of course other factors are going to come into what is a reasonable rate for you to charge for freelance work your years of experience if you've been doing this 20 years you're going to charge more than if you've been doing this two years um you know your your track record if you have had if you first chaired 200 trials you're going to charge more for that expertise than if you've never first shared a trial or second shared a trial so there's all sorts of other factors that go into Computing that rate but I hope at least this is a good starting point to give you some ideas and to help yourself work through this all right so back to this one again we're not charging Market rates for freelance work we're charging probably about 30 to 40 percent of that with adjustments based for experience Etc okay so if we're in Ohio practicing civil litigation I think a very reasonable market rate to consider would be 270 an hour that falls between the 238 and the 306 okay I just went with 270. so again taking 30 percent of that on the lower end 90 an hour would be a very reasonable rate for a freelance lawyer in Ohio to charge for work related to civil litigation okay so let's say you want to work 120 hours a month you want to work 30 hours a week which I hear so many lawyers say I wish I only had to work like 30 hours a week like I think a lot of lawyers daydream about a 30 hour a week lifestyle probably because that would be likely half of what they're working at a law firm setting so you know if you worked and collected 120 hours a month at this rate um you could bring in almost eleven thousand dollars a month over the course of a year almost 130 000 I mean that is a really good living especially if you're in Ohio and this is a part-time gig and you still have time with your family and time to so focus on your own health and well-being I just think this is a really appealing route for so many lawyers to break away from that traditional in-office Law Firm model so that's another example that you can consider all right so I've been talking through hourly work examples because of course we lawyers we love and we hate our billable hour but that is For Better or Worse the way a lot of legal work gets done but I want to walk you through and make sure you're familiar with the three ways you can get freelance legal work through law clerk.legal because of course that's what I'm all about getting you work at lockhart.legal so option one is project-based work okay this has been our bread and butter since day one since the company started we have offered project-based work the way a project works is a busy attorney logs into their account posts a piece of work as a project and connects with a freelance lawyer to get that one piece of work done this is done at a flat fee rate per project the hiring attorney just says hey I need this work done I'm willing to pay this much and so when you look at projects consider if you have the expertise to do the work but also know that isn't an hourly rate that is a flat fee rate for the entirety of the work I want to tell you about my most recent project that I did because I am an attorney I still have a small practice in addition to my work at law clerk I had one of my estate plan clients needed a Consulting Services agreement he had retired and he wanted to start some Consulting work I said great I knew I could get that on Lockhart so I posted it as a project I paid a premium because I knew there was a probably a very smart freelancer out there who had already done this work and had a template and can do this and in a pretty quick amount of time but I did still pay a premium the freelancer I hired for this project is full-time freelance lawyer well really like a part-time freelance lawyer because he also is a ski instructor in Colorado and so he um apologized he he he got the work done to me like almost two days early and he was like embarrassed that he didn't get it back to me the same day because he had been teaching ski lessons to little kids that morning and I was like well that is really cool so you know here's one of our Freelancers who is living the dream as a ski instructor in Colorado but also doing freelance work and getting I mean he got paid a very good rate for that that single project that he did probably enough money for groceries for I'm gonna guess a month if he's got a family but um anyway so that's an example of project work you do one piece of work it's like a one-off thing where you help a lawyer tackle this item on their to-do list okay the next way you can get freelance to go work through law clerk is through our new hourly associate program okay hourly associate is just what you would think it is you are connected with a lawyer who needs your help in a one-to-one working relationship and they will from time to time send you work when you do work and build time to them through law clerk you will be paid an hourly rate the hiring attorney does set that rate so know that when you're looking at these opportunities but this is a great program for you to find someone to get regular work it's not going to be you know it's not always going to be 20 hours a month it could ebb and flow it could be 10 hours some months 30 hours some months but it is a way that you can pick up a good amount of work and of course over time if you prove yourself and you prove your good work with this attorney they're going to lean on you even more you're going to become their go-to and they're going to send you even more work okay so this is kind of our middle option is this hourly program and I can tell you this is sparking huge demand this is the way lawyers know how to assign work to an associate whether it's in their office or it's outsourced so we expect over the next few years to see a ton of work coming to freelance lawyers through our hourly program so definitely check that out and keep an eye on those opportunities last but certainly not least the third way that we offer for freelance lawyers to get work through law clerk is through our remote associate subscription program this program is for ongoing steady more predictable amounts of work where you're matched again with one attorney and a one-to-one working relationship and the program starts at 30 hours a month and can go up to 160 hours a month or more um the program has two parts it is intended primarily to help busy attorneys with support for the written work or they need some extra help but if certain specifications are met um it can evolve into what we call a full attorney program where you would actually be able to make Court appearances take depositions all of those types of things for the attorney as long as certain requirements are met so you know subscription is really the next level of ways that um you can get work as a freelance lawyer but also you can support these growing firms so again just as a recap the spectrum of ways you can get help or get work through law clerk begins a single project a one-off kind of middle option is the hourly where it can kind of ebb and flow the volume of work or a subscription is an ongoing pretty steady amount of work from one attorney so these are the three ways that we can help you find more work as a freelance lawyer okay so now I'm going to have a little Yoda moment here okay one of the biggest questions that freelance lawyers ask us is how can I get more work through law clerk they know it's competitive we have a huge Network Nationwide we have a lot of talent so it is very very competitive I have two pieces of Yoda advice for you to help you hopefully get more work okay number one when you apply for work you have the option to leave a note for the attorney don't copy and paste something from your resume don't copy and paste a can response onto every single thing you apply for take the time to leave a customized thoughtful note highlighting your experience with this type of work why you can do an amazing job and sell yourself a little bit as to why you can really help them it's going to really make you stand out a lot of our hiring attorneys tell us that really they don't go look at your resumes they look at the notes they look at your ratings and that's how they decide who to choose for projects or subscriptions maybe not subscriptions they do look resumes for that but leave a customized professional note highlighting why you are the best person for the job okay number two on your resume because again for ongoing work through hourly and subscriptions they are looking at resumes you want to make sure the resume reflects the work you actually did okay here's what I mean by that um let's say you know you have the resume the standard resume that shows that you clerked for this judge between these dates and then you were at this firm and that firm and that firm it's not going to say that when you were at the first firm you know a quarter of your workload was family law work or uh that at the next firm and a half of your work was immigration work you really want to reflect uh the practice areas you were working in in any trial experience that you may have had if you're a litigator so maybe go take another look at your resume and see if you can paint a clearer picture of the actual work you were doing when you were part of these different firms and that's going to help you also get work because if you know you have some experience in family law work but your resume doesn't show that anywhere like the words family law or not on your resume it's going to be hard for the hiring attorney to understand why you would be good for that um that fit okay or for that work so last but not least because we are definitely committed to helping you get more work I want you to know that we are going to be um soon little little teaser here uh revamping the profiles of our freelance lawyers on law Clerk and so an enhanced profile Builder tool is on the way um early 2023 so stay tuned and when that rolls out you'll be hearing all about it and we'll definitely encourage you to take advantage of the new Tools in our updated profile Builder to enhance your profile so that you will hopefully get selected for more work through law Clerk okay hopefully by now you've seen we are committed to finding more work offering different ways for you to get work as a freelance lawyer so that you can build that freelance legal career that you've maybe day dreamed about um you know whatever that might look for like for you I really want to encourage you to Define your own measure of success and happiness as a lawyer and to take the plunge to go out and and start freelancing and working with other attorneys in that type of a role but you're not doing it alone I want to make sure you know that every freelance lawyer who signs up through law clerk to do freely and single work is match with one of our advisors these are our two advisors that Focus specifically on our freelance lawyer staugusti and Destin and so when you were when you sign up you'll be matched with one of them and they are fantastic resources to help answer questions uh to help you know make sure you you know when work comes available that is in your area of specialty and they're just they're great people so definitely take time to connect with them when they reach out to introduce themselves and is a good time to remind you that if you have not yet signed up to be a freelance lawyer with law clerk.legal there is no time like the president go to logclick.legal click on the sign up button there's no fee to sign up and there's no monthly fees to be a part of our freelance uh lawyer Network so you know that is step one if you've been toying with the idea of picking up a little freelance work whether that's just to supplement your income with a few projects every month whether you you know want to do 20 or 40 hours of work through an hourly or a subscription type program you know whatever it might be the first step is of course to sign up make that account build up your profile so that you'll be ready to go when you want to apply for opportunities so reach out to negusty reach out to Dustin you can also reach us at support law clerk.legal um so I hope that this was helpful today this is the time if you have questions go ahead and drop them in the chat or drop them in the Q a box I always think our freelance lawyers have the best questions after these webinars um if you enjoyed this video we have a lot of other video resources on our YouTube channel go follow our channel so you'll get notified when we have new videos that go live and I'd love it if you would connect with us on your favorite social media platform whether that's Instagram Twitter LinkedIn YouTube uh Facebook whatever I mean whatever it is we're on there go connect with us so that you can keep up with all of the latest law clerk happenings um that's the end of the main program today folks again I'm going to stick around if you have questions I'm happy to answer those if not I wish you all the best with your freelance legal career in 2023 and Beyond I know sometimes it takes a few minutes to type out those questions so I'm going to be patient I'll be hanging around all right here's a great question from Angie thanks for your question Angie how do hiring firms feel about the freelancer working from abroad um she says she's a bankruptcy attorney wants to move to Portugal but still wants to work any issues there um oh this is so fascinating Angie um I'm gonna say you know something like a bankruptcy practice that's fantastic because it's a national practice you could work with people all across the U.S we do have a number of freelance attorneys living abroad I can think of one in Italy up top of my head I can think of one in Costa Rica um and I know there's others but those are the the two that are coming to mind so it's there are firms that are very open to this I think the main things to highlight there is to be open about the fact of where you're working so that it's not a surprise and to express what your kind of usual working hours are if you've adjusted your lifestyle in your day to be you know to be available when the U.S based firm maybe wants to connect for a phone call or a video chat to talk about certain things but this can also be a big Advantage a lot of attorneys I've also I've especially I've heard of a lot of attorneys maybe on the West Coast Pacific Time say that they like to hire and work with Freelancers on East Coast time because they know they're going to be up early working before the West Coast people are even awake yet they can get a head start on that work so a lot of it people might see that as a big Advantage if they have someone like you available to kind of work in different hours and have a jump start on drafting motions or you know prepping different pleadings before the rest of us start their day so I we have seen a lot of firms be very open to that um I think that's an exciting idea to go live and work abroad and live the dream so all right okay all right lots of questions on the chat sorry let me get in here monocast what is the YouTube channel if you just go on to youtube.com and top type law clerk it'll pop up or easy to find Lindsay asked do hiring attorneys typically prefer to work with Freelancers who are barred in their state I'm going to give you a very lawyerly answer to that it depends some do some don't a lot of lawyers I talk to say I don't want to hire anybody in my state I want to hire the best most talented freelancer with experience in this area of law as my secret weapon so um now some attorneys obviously would need to hire within their state if it's a state-specific issue or if they were hiring through our subscription program for an attorney to make Court appearances or take depositions Etc but most attorneys are open to working with freelance attorneys in other states again it just kind of depends on the practice area and what their needs are you know in the practice area like family law we find that family law attorneys in a community property State like California are generally open to working with other freelance attorneys who are in other community property States because the laws are similar immigration practices National bankruptcy appellate practice there's a lot of things that it really doesn't matter where you're at and we are continuing really trying to encourage and educate our attorneys on why they should hire the best talent regardless of where the freelancer is located um great question from Mark he asked if we've considered adding a video into the Freelancers profile there is a video feature in the new profile Builder that's coming up so you're gonna like that it's on the way and then he asked how can I find out my rating through law clerk um I believe if you reach out to your advisor they can help give you some feedback on what ratings you've received for your work through law Clerk all right question from Jonathan who's joining us from Israel welcome Jonathan are we open to foreign lawyers too so at this point in time law clerk is only for U.S licensed attorneys both in the hiring and the freelancing side of course we have a goal and a big dream of expanding this service into other countries but for now we are limited to us-based attorneys or U.S license you can be a U.S licensed living abroad but you do need to be U.S licensed um another question from an attorney in Louisiana asking she says that the majority of opportunities she sees seem to be for other states like California and Florida is there a high demand for attorneys in Louisiana through law clerk what I would say is um we we do get some obviously Louisiana is a smaller Market but I would focus more on your practice area and if you're able to help your practice area your expertise in some of the larger States like Florida Texas California so definitely um you know try to shift the conversation more to the practice area and your experience rather than the state where you're located embarked these are great questions everyone thank you so much um Ellie Rose asked about Legal Assistant positions so again right now Lockhart is an attorney to attorney service so we help busy attorneys connect with freelance lawyers for outsourced work when they need help in that way um we are not venturing into the paralegal or Legal Assistant positions right now um there are a lot of services that do if you're looking for those opportunities I you know any of paralegals that are looking for uh freelance paralegal type opportunities I always like to send you to woven legal again that's woven legal and they specialize in very similar to what we do but just for paralegals on the legal assistance side look at a company called get staffed up get stacked up they provide a bunch of different Support Services we're kind of the only one for lawyers um and you know together we can um complement some of these other services to give the law firm exactly the help they need so check those out and there's some great opportunities there another question from Jonathan who again was joining us from Israel if um he said if our since our service is for U.S licensed attorneys what would be the preferred state of license really doesn't matter um you know uh we do see if you look at the population of the different states the highest demand for our services comes from the states of the bigger population so New York Florida Texas California New Jersey DC um I would encourage you to you know look at your different options and it follows very closely with general population in those States so all right here's another question uh from Mark Mark asked how would you describe the advocate role of the advisor in encouraging our selection um well number one we never tell our hiring attorneys who they should pick but um certainly our advisors work together that if they have gotten to know a freelancer who they know you know has had deep trial experience or or experience on whatever need the lawyer has that maybe hasn't been fully reflected in their resume or their profile they will communicate that to the attorney and encourage them to at least um consider them for the role so they they definitely are working to make sure and Advocate that a candidate is on the radar of the hiring attorney but we don't go so far as to be like you have to pick this person um definitely getting to know the advisors helps them know when you would be a good fit for work and and then lets our team help make sure you're highlighted and on the radar all right looks like the questions are slowing down these are great thank you again for you know committing your time today to join the Live program uh we will be adding the recording of the program to our YouTube channel so check that out and as always if I can be a resource you know don't hesitate to reach out to our team here at law Clark and we're happy to speak with you and do what we can to help you succeed with your careers freelance lawyer so I'm going to sign off for now thanks folks have a great rest of your day and if you haven't already done so come visit us at lockwork.legal very soon thank you foreign