Our Technology

Our Virtual Law Office: Legal Services for the Digital Age

Getting legal advice quickly and efficiently is a serious pain point for small businesses who can’t afford to bring on an attorney in-house. In an ordinary legal engagement, even seemingly small tasks — like document creation — have complex processes: multiple in-person meetings, tons of paperwork, manual re-entry of critical facts, redundant faxing or file sharing, double-checking on status and next steps…all of these steps create frustration and cost for business owners.

At General Counsel Online, we digitize and streamline legal processes to save business owners time, money and headache. We deliver our services virtually, and they come tied neatly into a Retainer and Service Package model. We combine topnotch legal expertise with personalized client care and industry-leading technology. The result is a far more time- and cost-effective, ultra-responsive, on-demand legal service that enables the active participation of our clients.

Virtually Connected

We believe in a transformed client experience. Leaving behind an antiquated in-person approach to legal services, GCO instead uses technology to engage with our clients virtually. We empower client-attorney interactions with state-of-the-art technologies and tools to remain directly and continuously connected. The best part? Your access to these tools is included in your fixed-price and retainer fees, so you don’t need to worry about software subscriptions.

We didn’t make the pieces, we just put the puzzle together

We use a combination of industry-leading software to put control back into the hands of our clients. Have an urgent question and need to get a hold of us quickly? Need to hop on a conference remotely? We empower you to get your needs met with technology that keeps us connected. The best part is, you get all of these tools for free.

Every Client is assigned its own Slack® channel, accessed via single sign-on from within the GCO Client Portal. With it, we can securely and confidentially exchange documents, comments, images, programs and even conduct ad hoc videoconferences – without ever leaving our ongoing timeline of digital conversations. The Slack mobile app will also augment the mobile-ready GCO Client Portal. Slack has a great, fully featured web app, native Mac and Windows apps, and iOS and Android apps. As a GCO Client, you get it all free.
Zoom web conferencing lets us meet with you and your colleagues when and where you choose, sharing desktop screens or on-the-go via phone or mobile app.
WooCommerce adds powerful, simple eCommere capabilities that hide the complexity of store operations, so we can focus on legal services.
Calendly integrates with Zoom to provide a seamless scheduling experience.
WPForms helps both of us prepare for meetings, by allowing you to get the essential facts and objectives on the table in advance.
The eSignature application by ApproveMe allows us to provide secure, authentic and irrefutable signatures, fully compliant with Pennsylvania’s Electronic Transactions Act as well the Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce Act.
Finally, Microsoft 365 enables document versioning, storage and search and will in the near future support collaborative authorship, access control and contract administration.

Collaborative, Efficient, and Productive Legal Consultation

Getting legal services from GCO is a highly collaborative and efficient process — so you can be sure you’re informed and involved every step of the way. To make things easy, you’ll find your client history (including documents and communications) in your Client Portal. There, you can also see updates to your files in real time so that you don’t have to go hunting for updates or resources. Our goal is to give you tools to conveniently collaborate, communicate and access our schedule — so that, ultimately, we deliver a better, more efficient client experience.

A Note About Security and Confidentiality

Client confidentiality and security are essential to General Counsel Online. Of course, GCO will never, under any circumstances, divulge Client information (unless expressly permitted by our Client or compelled by law). But as a citizen of the internet, the firm must actively go further.

The GCO site runs on a software/hardware platform that mandates key UNIX / Apache application and file system security, the most up-to-date platform components, continuous intrusion detection and access control and security rules that are updated weekly to ward off attacks.
All data moving between your browser and our site is encrypted by means an EV SSL Private/Public key certificate using SHA-256 and 2048 bit RSA encryption keys, as well as Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) support. Our firm has been verified and issued by certificate authority Sectigo (formerly Comodo).

We store no credit card information on our site, and no data passes unencrypted through our server to the Stripe payment system. We use 2-factor authentication for registration during the Retainer process.
Our world-class third party applications also use state-of-the-art security measures. Our single-sign on (SSO) connection with Slack uses the most current SAML 2.0 standard and 256 bit encryption for signing assertions and requests. Slack security itself, which serves some of the largest corporations in the world, is extensively certified.
Zoom, which we use for web conferencing, is certified by SOC 2, FedRAMP, GDPR, CCPA, COPPA, FERPA and HIPAA. Audio, video and screen information is sent encrypted. Recorded meetings are voice-watermarked to guard against unauthorized sharing.
Calendly, which we use for scheduling, never accesses your email or address book and does store any personally-identifiable information. Its security is similarly robust.
Our eSignature program, by ApproveMe, provides a unique key document identier that provides a tamper-proof audit trail for each signed document. eSignature is compliant with the Electronic Signature in Global and National Commerce Act (“ESIGN”), the Uniform Electronic Transactions Act (the “UETA”) and Pennsylvania’s version of it, the Electronic Transactions Act.