There is a sea change happening in the legal profession. It addresses the issues about as squarely as I have seem them addressed to date. In addition, review the response by counsel for LegalZoom to an opinion issued by the Pennsylvania Bar Association’s Unauthorized Practice of Law Committee in 2010. The author of the above article on Google/Rocket Lawyer is CEO of LegalOnRamp. Take a look also at a collaboration service primarily for inhouse counsel, but expanding.
PANDORAMAN SERIES
Susskind, who is both a lawyer and a professor in the U.K., has written the following series of books, and has been right so far in virtually all of his predictions: Take a look at Richard Susskind’s book entitled “The End of Lawyers? Rethinking the Nature of Legal Services” (Oxford University Press, 2008). My clients are welcome to use them now at no charge without having to pay Rocket Lawyer or anyone else.ġ5. Frankly, I have thousands of model documents on file most firms do. The attorney can review and revise the result. If documents are to be involved, counsel can point them to appropriate models and let the clients do a draft if they wish. It seems to me that a smart client will consult his/her/its regular counsel first regarding whatever their legal situation is. That free consultation could easily take an hour.
PANDORAMAN PROFESSIONAL
Lawyers who are willing to claim that they will offer “discounted” legal fees-a violation of the Rules of Professional Conduct (see Comment 4 to Rule 7.1)-pay for the privilege of getting clients who, after having decided they can’t quite do it themselves, have paid the website a small sum and expect unlimited services for next to nothing in return. The second way these sites make money is by treating both lawyers and clients as commodities, making both pay to be referred to each other (while carefully skirting rules banning referral fees). Documents become mere commodities, purged of any legal context or legal counsel. Sites like Rocket Lawyer and LegalZoom encourage people to become do-it-yourselfers by leading them to think they can save money by using “document vending machines” to meet their legal needs.
PANDORAMAN DOWNLOAD
Folks who think they can download a standard will and trust form and do their own estate planning who think that by filing a state trademark they are being smart who think securities laws are just an irritant and who will raise money for their business by downloading a private placement memorandum template and maybe reading a little about Reg D or Rule 147. Sites like Rocket Lawyer and LegalZoom make money by catering to a specific segment of society: The do-it-yourself crowd.
The resultant uniform codes have saved businesses and individuals untold billions in legal fees by avoiding the need to have lawyers draft and review the same types of documents over and over again. There’s a lot to be said for simplification and standardization after all, NCCUSL has been trying to simplify and standardize state laws for years.