Starting a new business can be quite tricky and expensive especially when you have to think of overhead costs. Setting up a law practice is no different; it is a business in the true sense of it. Therefore, when there are limited resources, other options need to be explored. One of such options, is the virtual office. This is Part I of a 3 Series article. Watch out for the other parts.

What is a Virtual Office?

A virtual office is a work environment, which is not tied down to a specific location. It has been defined as an environment that enables a network of co-workers to run a business efficiently by using nothing other than online communication technologies. It is also a common term for shared office services, which normally includes business address, mail & courier services, phone services, fax services, answering services, web-hosting services, and meeting & conference facilities.  (Answers.Com).

What do you need to set one up?

Technically, your virtual office is wherever you are; it could be in your home, inside your car, on the beach, anywhere you find yourself. You are not tied down to a specific address. However, you might find it necessary to create a workspace at home, where you can work uniterrupted. If you are running your office from home, you might not want your business to have the same address as your home. So what do you do? There are a few options: you could either rent a post office box for your business, use a friend’s office address or use a Commercial Mail Receiving Agency (I do not know how readily available these are in Nigeria).

If you decide to operate this way, you will require certain equipment to successfully run your virtual office.

• Computer: If your work involves a lot of traveling, you might consider getting a laptop computer. Laptop computers range in price from the brand names like HP to Dell and other home grown computers like Omatek and Zinox. However, if you do not do much traveling, a standard Destktop system will do the job.

• Internet Connection: A very good internet connection is imperative. With a USB flash drive, you could probably go to a cybercafe and get all your work done. But with the high rate of cyber crime, it is not expedient or even wise to expose highly confidential material, such as you will be dealing with. You need some degree of security and that will be guaranteed – to some extent, by getting your own private internet connection. In Nigeria, there are a couple of ISPs; the most affordable seems to be the Starcomms broadband. However, I have used DOPC (Direct on PC) provided by Unwired for several months now and I’ve found their services satisfactory but they are only available in Abuja, Lagos and Port Harcourt.

• Printer: A black and white 600-1200 dpi laser printer if your final documents require crisp, high quality black and white output. Laser printers also provide the fastest output, so if you know your volume will be high you should also consider a laser printer. A color laser printer if your documents need high quality color illustrations, photos, or charts. These are quite expensive so make sure you compare the print quality with a less expensive ink jet printer. An inkjet printer if you need good quality text, color charts and graphs, or photos. With ink jet printers, the paper that is used often makes the biggest difference in the print quality. Get paper that is best suited for the job you are doing. Also, try to get a test print from different models to compare quality before you buy. Ink jets can provide very good quality but are not as fast printing as laser printers. (How Stuff Works)

• Scanner/Copier/Fax Machine: You will need all of these at one point in time or the other. You can request the soft copy of documents from your clients, but there are certain others that you will need to photocopy and maybe scan, such as Court processes, Leases and other such documents.

For the same reason, you will need a Fax Machine. This is because, a good percentage of your clients are people you will most likely never see. This affords them an option to scanning. In the alternative, there are several fax to email services on the internet such as eFax, which enable you for a minimal fee, to receive fax messages as emails. Free Fax to Email, like the name implies, offers free services.

• Alternative Power Supply: Let’s not forget that this is Nigeria we are talking about. You cannot afford to rely on the National Power supply (Power Holding Company of Nigeria). They are erratic. Your clients reside in different time zones and countries, they would find it hard to understand that you did not meet a deadline due to a lack of power supply. Therefore you need either a generator or an inverter; or in most cases both.

Software:

• An email address: This definitely goes without saying. There are several free email services on the internet such as Yahoo, Hotmail and GMail.

• A website/blog: This is your presence on the internet. It is where your clients will find you. Read this on how to create a blog.
• A word processor: The most popular is Microsoft Word. But this is quite expensive. A lot of people use Lotus, however, I personally use Star Writer by Sun systems. It works just fine for me and because it is open source, it is also free.
• Spreadsheet and database programs: Microsoft Excel, Intuit QuickBase and Star Base, which is free.
• Presentation Software: Microsoft PowerPoint or Star Office
• Antivirus: This is necessary to protect your system from harmful virus especially since you will be connected to the internet. Some good ones are Norton Antivirus, Mcafee and Avast.
• Adobe Acrobat Reader:
• Graphics/Image Editor:
• Internet Browser: You can use Internet Explorer but my personal preference is Mozilla Firefox.

This is it for now. In the next part, the following questions will be answered:

How do you hold meetings? What if you need an assistant, how do you employ?

Let me know if this article was useful to you. If there is anything you would like to know about Virtual Offices, drop a comment and I’ll blog about it.

If you would like to download the free Open Office suite, click here.