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	From the November 3, 2000 print edition

Local law firm sets up 'virtual office' for Silicon Valley business

The outrageous cost of doing business in Silicon Valley has impelled a local law firm to establish a virtual law office, instead of a physical one, in order to attract more clients from that technology-rich section of the country.

Siskind, Susser, Haas & Devine, an international immigration and nationality law firm with offices in Nashville and Memphis, has devised a plan to vie strategically with Silicon Valley, Calif.-based law firms without shelling out an enormous amount of money for office space or for hiring attorneys in Silicon Valley.

The law firm believes Silicon Valley is an important place for it to do business, because technology firms there hire a large volume of foreign workers through the U.S. government's H-1B visa program, which is for bachelor-degree holders in specialty professions.

Web site pioneer

Thus far the virtual office concept is working. Siskind, Susser's Web site (http://www.visalaw.com/), which was one of the first Web sites in the country set up by a law firm, attracts a great deal of Silicon Valley business to the firm.

With two bulletins offering immigration information, "it's probably the best known immigration Web site in the country," says Charla Haas, Siskind, Susser managing partner in Nashville.

In all, ten percent of the site's traffic comes from California, and it receives about 40,000 hits per month from the state. The firm also acquired additions to its client base when several Silicon Valley subscribers to the bulletins made requests to the firm for legal consultations, says Haas.

The savings of such a virtual office are significant. Attorneys just out of law school are demanding salaries ranging from $135,000 to $150,000 per year in Silicon Valley, while salaries for first-year associates in Nashville law firms have been hovering around $80,000. And office space in Silicon Valley rents for around $42 per square foot, while office space in the Nashville area is approximately $17 per square foot.

Since the Silicon Valley consultations are intended to be Web-based, clients can schedule appointments online at (https://secure.telalink.net/gsiskind/intake-ca.html), a service contained within the firm's main Web site. While Haas notes that most California clients don't have in-person contact, she also says that many technology-oriented people prefer to do intake electronically.

In addition, clients have online access to senior partners in the firm's Tennessee offices and are not relegated to paralegals or young associates as can happen at many large law firms.

But once in a while, personal contact is deemed necessary, and plans are in the works for a permanent physical presence in Silicon Valley.

In rotation, senior partners, mainly from the Nashville and Memphis offices, go out to California one to two weeks per month for in-person client consultations. Within six months to a year, after enough business is generated, Siskind, Susser expects to have an attorney from the firm practicing permanently in Silicon Valley.

But that doesn't necessarily mean a change in the virtual office concept.

"Because we are in a federal practice area, and it's almost entirely administrative, it made a lot of sense for us to try and have as much of the work done in Tennessee on these cases as possible as opposed to having the work done in California," says Greg Siskind, managing partner in the firm's Memphis office and author of the American Bar Association's The Lawyer's Guide to Marketing on the Internet. "It gives us a tremendous competitive advantage over firms that are looking for the same business."

Strategic relationship

BDO Seidman, LLP, a public accounting firm and consulting firm with an office in Memphis, permits Siskind, Susser to operate out of its suite location in Silicon Valley. Siskind, Susser have developed an "informal, strategic relationship" with BDO Seidman, says Siskind, in part because of similar work.

BDO Seidman does a lot of auditing of I-9 forms, the verification form that all employees in the United States must fill out after they are hired for a position. Siskind says BDO Seidman called on the law firm to do legal analyses based on the data the accounting firm collects.

The shared space in California will present opportunities for both firms to do I-9 work there as well, says Siskind. In fact, Siskind, Susser is also sharing some space with BDO Seidman in Memphis.

"We thought that our strategic alliance would be mutually beneficial, and it would be a way to offer our clients more value through exposure to his services," says Amy Howell, marketing director at BDO Seidman in Memphis.

Siskind, Susser also has developed a relationship with Silicon Valley Bank, which offers an informational Web portal for its small- to medium-size business customers.

Siskind says his firm is looking at additional technological innovations. It's currently testing a pilot project of private Web sites for clients who want to track the status of their cases online, and the firm hopes to offer such private sites across the board within three months. Siskind, Susser is also in the process of hiring its own internal programmer.

REACH SARLES at jsarles@bizjournals.com or 615-248-2222, ext. 114.

Copyright 2000 American City Business Journals Inc. Click for permission to reprint (PRC# 1.1654.359399)

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