Richard Granat

Co-Chair, eLawyering Task Force of the American Bar Association’s Law Practice Management Section

Founder/CEO, DirectLaw, Inc.

Richard is interested in developing ways of delivering legal services to the broad middle class through DirectLaw, Inc., a virtual law firm provider and SmartLegalForms, Inc., an intelligent legal forms company. He is interested in start-ups in the legal industry and serves as an advisor  to AttorneyFee.Inc., Law Pal, Inc., and LegalForce,Inc., new companies entering the legal industry with the intent to disrupt the legal market.

Previously he created the first virtual law firm in Maryland in 2003, which was the foundation for DirectLaw, Inc., and was the founder of The People’s Law Library of Maryland, a state-wide legal information resource for Maryland’s citizens. He also serves on the ABA’s Standing Committee on the Delivery of Legal Services of the ABA and is a Fellow in the College of Law Practice Management. Richard has been involved in developing innovative legal services delivery systems for over 30 years, first as part of the initial working group that created the National Legal Services Program, and then later as Director of the Center for Legal Studies at Antioch Law School in Washington, D.C., the nation's first clinical law school, and later President and Dean of the Philadelphia Institute for Paralegal Training, the nation's first paralegal school. He was the founding CEO of Automated Legal Systems, Inc., an affiliate of The Philadelphia Institute, and one of the first legal software companies to publish legal applications for the personal computer in the early 1980s. He is an acknowledged expert on the delivery of online legal services.

Richard named a "Legal Rebel" by the American Bar Association Journal in 2009, and was awarded the Louis M. Brown Lifetime Achievement Award for Innovation in the Delivery of Legal Services in 2010. Richard has taught at the University of Maryland School of Law, the District of Columbia School of Law, Rutgers School of Law of Law, courses in Computers and the Law and Law Practice Management. Richard is a graduate of Columbia University School of Law (J.D.), the University of Pennsylvania (M.S. in Organizational Development) and Lehigh University (B.A.).