Hello, I am Tessa Shepperson, the author of this blog.

I am interested professionally in the internet and the future delivery of legal services via the internet, as this is how I have worked for quite a few years now.

In November 2001 my Landlord Law site was launched and I have been running it successfully every since.  It is a legal information service for private residential landlords and tenants, and provides information, tenancy agreements and other forms, and fixed fee legal services (to name some of its content).

During the time I have been running Landlord Law there have been many ups and downs, and I have tried various new initiatives with varying degrees of success. However the basic model of an online subscription information service worked from day one, and I now earn the largest proportion of my income from members subscriptions.

The future of the legal profession in England and Wales is hot topic, as the Legal Services Act looks to bring many changes to the way legal serices here are regulated.  As a solicitor of over 20 years I believe that solicitors are the best people to provide legal services. After all we have all had to pass extensive examinations in law before being allowed to practice at all, we have to do continuing education every year and provide professional indemnity service as a condition of being allowed to continue in practice, and we operate under a strict code of conduct which includes strong ethical standards.

However in this new 21st century things are changing. The internet is with us and all businesses must take account of it to survive. And now web-sites alone are not enough. We are in the era of web 2 with blogs, social networking sites and who knows what else? Openness is all the range.

However solicitors do not fit easily in this new scheme of things as our instinct and training is towards confidentiality and discretion. Also as we charge for our time, not widgets, the prospect of giving away legal advice and information for free is rather a scary one. The prospect of others giving away legal information for free is even more scary as it threatens our very existence.

However although this new internet based world has threats, it also has massive opportunities for those willing to embrace it. I believe there is huge scope for solicitors to provide online services to the public. I also think it is important that we do this, as otherwise the opportunity will be taken up by others. And this would be wrong. Solicitors should be out there, innovating and providing services to the public direct rather than just taking the leavings or paying for clients to be referred by other non solicitor organisations such as claims farmers.

There is a lot to learn and understand though, about this new internet connected world. When I first started this blog I thought I had a lot of the answers.  Since then I have done a lot of reading around the subject and have decided that I have a long way to go still.

However if I feel this, having worked online for over nine years, then solicitors who have not had this advantage must feel even more confused and intimidated by it all.

In this blog I will be writing about the things I have discovered about working online, discussing web-sites and books I have found helpful and generally writing about my voyage of discovery, which has only really just started.  It will be nice to have you with me for the journey.