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By Zusha Elinson SAN FRANCISCO - Craig Johnson, the Silicon Valley lawyer-entrepreneur who brought you the Venture Law Group, is onto his next big thing: a virtual law firm. Johnson and 14 other lawyers unveiled the new firm, called Virtual Law Partners, on Friday. The idea is to have more work-life balance, work from home, save on overhead, charge clients less, and forge a new model for the legal industry. "It just seems like an idea whose time has come," Johnson said by phone on Monday, sitting outside his Portola Valley home. "Billing rates at large law firms have just gone up and up — it's not unusual to find partners in the Bay Area billing $600, $700 or $800 an hour ... They have to pay high salaries for associates, high profits per partner, and they feel they have to have prestigious offices — it's just a situation that can't continue." Johnson, 61, co-founded Venture Law Group, or VLG, in 1993. After a strong run representing startups like Yahoo and Hotmail, often in exchange for equity, the firm struggled after the dot-com bust and merged with Heller Ehrman in 2003. The new firm, VLP, will target all types of companies for all types of legal work aside from litigation. Although working remotely isn't new for lawyers, Johnson said VLP is different because it aims to be like the other top firms in the country, with hundreds of lawyers, just without offices. Peter Zeughauser, a law firm consultant and founder of the Zeughauser Group, said the VLP model may have a place, but it won't be the next big thing. "I think Craig is brilliant," Zeughauser said. "But I think if you look at VLG, it wasn't the next big idea — nor is this." Zeughauser said that while the office-less model works for smaller matters and small groups of lawyers, heavier infrastructure is necessary for the type of work done by big law firms. But at least one general counsel was intrigued by the idea, especially the lower rates. "It's very rare that you go to a law firm these days and have face-to-face meetings," said Alastair Short, general counsel of 3Par, a Fremont-based computer storage company. "If what a virtual law firm means is that there's no central office and the lawyers work from home and that would save me money, I would be happy to use them."
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A Feast
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