Online legal help - Brief Article

Black Enterprise, August, 2001 by Cristina Gair

Think you're ready to ditch your offline lawyer? Think again

Before launching her public relations and marketing firm, the M & M Group, Taneshia Nash Laird headed online to find information about setting up her business as a limited liability company (L.L.C.). By doing preliminary research, she knew which questions to ask before she even walked into her attorney's office.

For Laird and other entrepreneurs, online legal resources offer a wealth of information for free or for a nominal fee. "I'm sure I've saved thousands of dollars," says Laird. She estimates that she's saved about $3,000--money she would have paid an attorney to provide standard contracts for clients and freelance employees. That's no small change when you're launching a business.

With the easy accessibility of online legal services that provide advice as well as ready-made contracts, some might decide to forgo a consultation with an attorney. But this could be a costly mistake.

"Online legal forms make me very nervous," says Catherine J. Lanctot, professor of law at the Villanova, Pennsylvania-based Villanova University School of Law. "There's no way for a layperson to know if a standard form can address their individual situation." Lanctot, who is also the author of the Duke Law Journal article "Attorney-Client Relationships in Cyberspace: The Peril and the Promise," suggests using online services to research what a draft should look like and then consulting a lawyer afterward with the draft in hand.

"The research I do on my own has helped my attorney more than a few times," says Laird. "I've sold a domain name, negotiated the terms myself, and then forwarded a domain name agreement that I purchased for $25 from Law.com to my attorney."

Attorney John Ventura of the Rio Grande Valley, Texas-based Law Offices of John Ventura believes online legal services can be helpful. "It's getting a lot of information to a lot of people inexpensively," he says. "Sometimes you may read enough to realize you don't need an attorney. Or [the research] helps you when you meet with the attorney, so that you can get to the heart of the matter and truly understand what's the best for you." For a flat fee, Ventura has acted as the advising attorney for both business owners and consumers at Mycounsel.com, a legal-advice site.

But Lanctot has some concerns. "If someone's giving you legal advice, but they aren't licensed in your state, it's useless," she says, because each state has its own extensive set of laws. She especially cautions those seeking legal advice to make sure that the advice giver is a practicing lawyer, and that it's clear whether they are providing general or specific information. A good place to start is the National Bar Association (www.nationalbar.org). But if the legal site features a disclaimer, then "no one's standing behind the provided information," Lanctot warns.

Getting Started

If you're interested in online legal services but aren't sure where to start, consider these sites:

Research: Bankruptcy Law (www.abiworld.org) >>LexisONE (www.lexisone.com) >>Martindale-Hubble Law Directory (www.lawyers.com) (www.martindale.com) >>Matthew Bender & Co., part of LEXIS Publishing (www.bender.com) >>Westlaw (www.westlaw.com) Resources: LawGuru.com (www.lawguru.com) >>LawInfo.com (www.lawinfo.com) >>LegaldotNet (www.legal.net) >>Nolo (www.nolo.com) Advice: FreeAdvice.com (www.freeadvice.com) >>LegalOpinion.com (www.legalopinion.com) >> Mycounsel.com (www.mycounsel.com) Forms: Law.com (www.law.com) >>LegalZoom (www.legalzoom.com).