From time to time, every small business owner will find they are in need of legal assistance. For more complex issues, engaging the services of an attorney is an absolute must, but for more rudimentary legal issues such as incorporating your new business, crafting a demand for payment letter, or even engaging someone for a document review, there are a number of online legal services available that are a fraction of the cost of engaging the services of an attorney. These sites might not be able to provide personalized or customized services but for day-to-day legal issues, they can be a great resource.
Legalzoom
Legalzoom is probably the best known of the online legal resources. In 2011, 490,000 legal documents were ordered through the site. While the site doesn’t offer a free trial, it does allow the flexibility of choosing a low cost monthly subscription or a la carte purchase of documents. Business documents are divided into categories for starting your business and running your business and are easy to locate at a glance. Users who are in need of legal advice can subscribe to the The Business Legal Plan for a reasonable $22.99/month for a year.
Rocketlawyer.com
Rocketlawyer offers your first legal document for free. As with Legalzoom, once you have selected the document you need, it guides you through a series of questions that will help customize the document to fit your needs. After you receive your first free legal document, further services are available through a monthly subscription. The $39.99 per month Premium plan offers unlimited revisions and copies of documents from the library and advice from on-call attorneys. One caveat is the attorney call is limited to 30 minutes under the plan and will be billed separately if the call exceeds the 30 minute time limit. While the document library is comprehensive, the interface is less user friendly than Legalzoom so subscribers will spend a little more time digging for the document they are seeking. Rocketlawyer.com does have a mobile app so you can search and download documents while on the go.
Nolo.com
Nolo is one of the oldest online legal resources and as such has a reputation as a one-stop-shop for legal forms and attorney matching services. Nolo has a very up-front pricing system which makes it easy for initial pricing of legal information. The site offers several articles with free legal information and has a helpful lawyer directory divided by practice area to help business owners find and engage a local attorney. Nolo users can purchase software for estate planning, books on immigration law, guides for registering patents and essentials for buying your first home. The diversity of materials on Nolo is superior and more straightforward than most other online legal resources but for users who are looking for a more guided approach, Legalzoom or Rocketlawyer may be better choices.
