Money-Making Game: 'Second Life' First?
A Canadian law firm claims to be the first to establish an office on Second Life, a 3D virtual community that has attracted millions of participants from all over the world.
Davis LLP is staffing its Second Life office with lawyers from the firm’s Video Game law & Interactive Entertainment Group, the firm reports in a press release posted on its law blog.
“The virtual world of Second Life gives us the opportunity to interact with our current and potential clients in a unique way,” says Dani Lemon, a lawyer at the firm who will be known as “Lemon Darcy” at the new virtual office. “We also aim to generate business leads and attract job candidates for our bricks-and mortar business through Second Life.”
Others lawyers reportedly have already found the virtual world a potentially lucrative game to play, as discussed in an ABA Journal feature story.
For intance, Stevan Lieberman, a Washington, D.C., intellectual property lawyer who is known on Second Life as “Navets Potato,” has a virtual office and advertises its services in a Second Life classified. However, “his listing also directs viewers to his real-life law firm Web page,” the magazine article notes. “As of December, he had picked up about $7,000 in business from Second Life.”
In addition to Lemon Darcy, the Davis firm’s “avatars,” as participants who establish graphic characters on the site are known, will include: “BarristerSolicitor Underwood” (aka, in real life, Sarah Dale-Harris); “PabloGuzman Little” (Pablo Guzman): “IPand Teichmann” (Chris Bennett); “DaveS Blackadder” (David Spratley); and “IP Maximus” (Chris Metcalfe).
