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Lawsuit Claims LegalZoom Is Practicing Law Without a License
Bob the Super Hamste writes "Fortune has an interesting piece about a federal class action law suit against LegalZoom claiming that its software is illegally practicing law without a license. The law suit seeks to recover money from LegalZoom for every resident in Missouri who has used LegalZoom regardless of how satisfied the users were of the service. Currently Missouri law states that an individual who paid money to a non lawyer for legal services is entitled to sue the provider for 3 times the amount paid."
And who wins here????? You guessed it, the LAWYERS!!!!
Their documents might hold up in court, but their company may not.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
What do you call a bus full of lawyers going off a cliff?
A comedy.
What if there's an empty seat?
A tragedy!
By Missouri law-
"Missouri's statutes define law practice as, among other things, "the drawing or the . . . assisting in the drawing for a valuable consideration of any paper, document or instrument affecting . . . [legal] rights."
So if I, all by myself, draws up a will, I'm breaking the law? According to TFA, every single page on the website has disclaimers that this is not true legal advice. Another interesting facet is if found guilty, would this affect EULAs?
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
No kidding - the twits filing the suit admits they weren't harmed by the service and just wants to reclaim their fees x3. This definitely qualifies as a top ten all time frivolous class action suit.
Something similar actually already happened here in Canada, rather ontario between the upper canada law society and non-registered legal experts who weren't paralegals but represented people in court for things like compensation claims, and so on. The law society argued that these people were practicing without a license, in turn the government passed a law making it so that they had to be at least paralegals. And in turn fell under the upper-canada law society, meaning that they now also had to pay yearly administration fees and so on.
It really wasn't about the quality of the people who were doing this. It was their desire to get everyone who was doing legal work all under their umbrella so they could milk money from them.
Om, nomnomnom...
That's pretty dumb. As far as I know, LegalZoom isn't practicing law so much as providing people with templates for documents where they can fill in bits that they want and delete other bits they don't want. This is not the same as giving people legal advice, or engaging in an attorney-client relationship with anyone.
Besides, if this is successful, it'll have a detrimental effect to authors and publishers who publish books with legal templates (Draft your own Will books, for instance), most of which are for really simple stuff like wills or simple contracts. It's going to deny the poorest people access to making these documents because it's going to force them to seek attorneys who are often too expensive.
My postings are informational and does not constitute legal advice. Act on it at your risk.
Unfortunately for the plaintiffs. the State of Missouri just announced that the case will be heard by their new AutoCourt software.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
Agreed. Now that lawyers realize that they can be replaced with a script, they are pissed.
There are no loopholes. It's either legal or it's not.
I disagree with that, they got lucky that they weren't harmed by it. They were still defrauded, assuming that LegalZoom did as alleged.
It's an obvious attempt at a chilling effect to destroy the site. I very much doubt that the idea to do this came from the plaintiff - the American legal profession will have been searching for an excuse to get a ruling against this site and now they've found a jurisdiction and willing shill.
'Don't worry' said the trees when they saw the axe coming, 'The handle is one of us.'
Lawyers dont like competition and are very good at suing cause thats what they do. I just watched a great doco on the dodgy legal tactics going on in the states called 'hot coffee' based on the well known McDonnalds/coffee lawsuit. Very much worth a watch.
Those who can, do. Those who cannot, sue.
The statute was obviously intended to deal with fake lawyers - yes there are people who will brave the social opprobrium of claiming to be a lawyer in exchange for money. However, provided that the website doesn't itself produce wills, deeds or other legal instruments, it should be in the clear.
This is a grey area - the law could have benefits in preventing the automatic generation of, say, RIAA-type fishing expedition claim documents. It would be interesting if a real lawyer were to comment on the EULA issue; there is probably a good reason why it is excluded.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
From my reading of the article it seems that one of the individuals is just using this as a money grab as he was pleased with their service.
Time to offend someone
So... does this mean they can sue every publisher of a legal advice book?
Like Nolo Press, home will kit sellers, "Incorporating for Dummies," etc?
I've read that in other countries the legal language is nowhere near as obscure and cryptic, that that is unusual to the US, and designed as a deliberate obfuscation by lawyers so as to make it REQUIRE a lawyer to do anything.
This space available.
A lawyer got burned is what happened.
Chances are there was a group of lawyers that sat around in an overly expensive office and drafted (read, photocopied) paperwork for six figure salaries. They then found a website that threatened to do everything they did for free. Now having lots of free time they decide to actually use their education and sue their competition out of existence.
Lesson: Never automate a lawyers or a congressman job. You can automate and outsource the entire rest of the country, but if you even look wrong at those professions you will be sued out of existence.
Well if they could used LegalZoom for their filing papers, I don't know the full range of services offered, it would only increase their awarded damage if successful. To me this seems like someone's get rich scheme.
Time to offend someone
In December 2009 LegalZoom customer Todd Janson, later joined by two others, filed a class-action against LegalZoom in Jefferson City. The plaintiffs don't claim to have suffered any injury from using the software. But Missouri law says that someone who has paid money to a non-lawyer for legal services is entitled to sue the poseur for a sum equal to three times what he paid. So the suit seeks that recovery for every Missouri resident who used LegalZoom since December 17, 2004—regardless of how satisfied they might have been with the service. The lead lawyer is Tim Van Ronzelen of Jefferson City's Cook, Vetter, Doerhoff & Landwehr.
They weren't harmed... just greedy.
Great point. Does WebMD really have their license to practice medicine? How about FreeCreditReport having having a CPA license? For that matter...is Wikipedia legal in Missouri? All of these sites are available to help, at the users discretion. None of them guarantee accuracy though all of them are regulated to a point where their usefulness outweighs their potential inaccuracies. If you don't like it, hire a real lawyer/doctor/accountant/nerd.
Well put. Now all we need is lawyer...
No kidding - the twits filing the suit admits they weren't harmed by the service and just wants to reclaim their fees x3. This definitely qualifies as a top ten all time frivolous class action suit.
Actually I'd guess it's more a move by lawyers in Missouri to drive LZ out of the state by making it to expensive to do business there. For many attorneys, simple legal documents are there bread and butter and if people start using low-cost DIY sites the attorneys stand to lose money or will be forced to lower prices.
Attorneys have been good at fighting any move to introduce competition - years ago they fought over advertising and even now limit what can be said. They created the idea that law school, instead of the old apprentice system where you read the law under an experienced attorney, was needed to be admitted to the bar (although some states still allow you to take the bar without going to law school under certain circumstances).
Of course, what they are doing is not unique to the legal profession. I just wish engineers had been clever enough to figure out a way to do the same thing so that "Engineer" could only be used by a "real" engineer. Yes, there are P.E.s but in most engineering jobs a P.E. is just a fancy title, not a job requirement.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
The founders (at least Robert Shapiro) are lawyers so there is at least some basis for these to be legit. I've used Legal Zoom in the past and it appears they do have lawyers, either in house or contracted, for each state but I can't speak from a position of authority on how their company is structured.
I'll meet you at the intersection of "Should be" and "Reality"
As a forms respository, it serves some purpose. If you have a problem, say needed a simple will, you can find a form that will allow you to present your will in the proper style to be recognized by people who know what a will is supposed to look like and what it is supposed to contain. And if all you need really is a simple will, then you got what you needed at a really cheap price.
On the other hand, there is nobody to tell you when you cross the line from needing a simple will to needing something more complex. So you have a simple will and think everything is fine. The same problem comes with every other sort of form they offer. If the form they cough up is all you really need it is a great and cheap service. But there is no judgement about what else might be needed. For that some sort of creative thought or at least more than just a passing familiarity with the local laws is needed.
Sure, lawyers cost money and you can hope until your dying day that you never need one. But as many people have found out, when you need a lawyer the first criteria should not be cheap. If you already know enough to be able to tell when you need a lawyer vs. a form repository then LegalZoom is a great service - but there are free form repositories so you don't need to use LegalZoom to get a standard lease form. What LegalZoom really has is advertising which your local library (another form respository) doesn't have. If you listen to much radio (ugh!) you will hear endless ads for LegalZoom - but you never hear an ad for the library. In that way LegalZoom is far more effective at gathering your support than the library is.
Maybe libraries should start advertising?
Lesson: Never automate a lawyers or a congressman job. You can automate and outsource the entire rest of the country, but if you even look wrong at those professions you will be sued out of existence.
Dead men don't sue.
Let me get this straight. These people are bringing suit because some software gave them legal advice?
So they are essentially taking the position that the software is an intelligent agent capable of giving advice.
So they are implicitly positioning the software as a legal person (the agent that gave the advice, presumably
by assessing input from the plaintiffs and making its own decisions about what advice to give.)
So they should be petitioning to sue the software itself. (And good luck collecting from it.)
Trying to sue whoever wrote the software and whoever operates it and gives it a server and power is
kind of like suing the parents and the landlord of the person who did you wrong.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
You mean they were lucky they were not harmed from advice received indirectly by an attorney? Hate to tell you this, but if this is illegal, so is most of the legal profession (as tons of legal advice is issued under "guidance of an attorney", which exactly what you get with the service). Additionally, I would be absolutely amazed if there isn't a disclaimer which basically states, if in doubt, contact an attorney. This service is not a replacement for an attorney. Typically these services double as a referral service. Not exactly surprising.
So basically, if you were injured, its extremely likely its because you're a complete fucking idiot too stupid to realize you shouldn't play in the highway.
Completely fucking frivolous. I hope this guy, and his lawyer, gets thrown under the bus and made an extreme example.
I'd like the court to explain why, in any other class action suit, the victim can lose hundreds of dollars and gets maybe $3 back. But in a case that costs lawyers to lose business, the class action suit can get the "victims" three times what they actually paid.