@Reid- Welcome, and please come back often.

On the other hand, I wouldn’t mind finding a small local firm with a younger attorney trying to jump start his/her career that I could work with.

Any recommendations would be great. A+ BBB rating preferable. Thanks.

Rather than reiterate what Mr. White and Mr. Warne have said in response to your comments, I will point out something else: not all attorneys charge an hourly rate. Family law attorneys do, by and large, because there’s no way to gauge how many hours an attorney will spend on custody and divorce matters. It is impossible to know how many hours they will have to spend arguing that their client should get the stupid birdbath in the division of assets (yes, that actually happened). For that reason, many people are forced to represent themselves.

Estate planning, on the other hand, lends itself well to flat fee billing. I worked at an estate planning firm during law school and my employer set his rates based on the complexity of of the client’s estate planning goals and their financial circumstances. He charged less for a young couple with a newborn and few assets than for an older couple that wanted to provide for their family members and their horses. For my former employer or Mr. White, posting rates online would serve no valid purpose because they cannot explain to someone online or over the phone what their rate will be without knowing how much and what kind of work is required. The law is not a one-size-fits-all approach.

As an attorney, I practice consumer law, including debt collection defense, plaintiff’s side consumer protection cases, and Chapter 7 bankruptcy. I charge flat fees for defense work and bankruptcies, but the price varies based on the individual circumstances of that case. For clients who cannot afford full representation or only want assistance with a particular task, I offer what’s called “unbundled legal services,” meaning I provide limited-scope services for that client (so long as it is allowed in my jurisdiction for that type of situation). My retainer agreement is one to two pages and is tailored to the specific circumstances of my client’s case. The agreement is in plain English and doesn’t include boilerplate language that doesn’t apply to the client’s situation and would serve no purpose but to confuse the client.

That is the joy of being an attorney licensed to practice law in Minnesota, one who can provide individualized services that meet the client’s needs. Mr. White enjoys that same ability to serve clients. And if one of us screws up, the client can seek redress in a court of law. We can be sued and our malpractice carriers can be forced to compensate for our errors. Who will LegalZoom.com customers (they are not clients) sue when their boilerplate documents don’t accurately reflect their wishes and cause harm to themselves or others (such as their intended beneficiaries)? Who will they sue when their employment agreement gets them sued for discrimination? Your disclaimer makes clear your company takes no responsibility for its errors, although a court of law may disagree.

Sincerely,
Anne M. Hansen

P.S. To save you the bother of tracking down my credentials, I graduated from William Mitchell College of Law (St. Paul, MN) in May 2008 and obtained my license to practice law in Minnesota in October 2008. Like Mr. White, if I do not know the answer to a client’s question or am uncertain of the best method of protecting the client’s legal interests in their individual circumstances, I can call upon colleagues here in Minnesota to provide guidance. That’s what lawyers do, they help each other provide the best representation possible. Who do your customers call upon when they don’t know how best represent themselves as they’re entering data on your legal forms?

There is nothing worse for a company than when one of its employees tries to defend its company and in the process only hurting its image more. I recommend you seek the advice of a public service firm before publicly posting on behalf of your company as in my opinion they would have stopped you from embarrassing yourself.

While I can you see why you would think you did a good job in defending your company and in turn trying to lower the public confidence in a small St. Paul firm let me show you how in my opinion the general public read your post:

“Dear small law firm, your comments said the exact truth about our giant company and it did not make us look very good so now we are mad and we are going to try and change the subject of the discussion and make you look bad in the process so we can safe face and hurt you back”

Mr. Rampenthal, while there is no doubt in anyones eyes that your company does provide some sort of service to the public, your comments to this post/subject were childish, petty and small. I would expect much more from a company and a person of your experience. All you did here was give people another reason as to why they should choose another brand to work with other than Legal Zoom. Who would anyone want to work with a brand that acts the way you just did? Luckily for you I doubt this blog gets much traffic so you are safe to respond the way you did without much public backlash.

With that said in my opinion from what I read this blog post was about the image your company tries to portray to the public and Mr. White simply tried to protect the public and let them know the exact truth so the public can make their own judgement. Your brand actually wasn’t hurt by Mr. White’s comments as all it did was provide clarity on the services your company provides. But sadly you did not see that and instead of responding in a professional manner you tried to make it personal and throw Mr. White and his experience under the buss in the process.

For that I say, “Shame on you!”

The only thing that hurt your companies image these past hours was not Mr. Whites comments but in fact it was you.

Hopefully in the future Legal Zoom will think better about how to promote and defend its services.

Just my opinion.

Sincerely
John Warne

thank you for taking the time to give us your input. I’m kind of flattered, honestly.

Let me start by revising a couple of things: first, you are correct; not all estate planners dislike your company, just nearly all of the estate planners that I have talked to about it. And second, I should avoid using the word “hate.” Too polarizing and cumbersome a word. So I apologize for that.

I understand that not all EP lawyers with blogs write about LZ, but a lot of them do. As you said, blogs are a way to help our clients. And personally, dispelling notions about what LZ is through your disclaimer is a way to help clients, and hopefully grow my business as a result. My post was designed to showcase the true nature of your company: a document distribution service/data entry website. This is important becuase your company is the big dog in the industry, and when everyday people think about getting a will put together, they typically think of LZ right away. I felt it necessary to give the few people who read this blog a moment of pause in that regard. Not because your company provides its service poorly, but because most people don’t understand what the service that you provide actually is. This isn’t because your company is evil; in fact it is probably a testament to your business plan and marketing strategy. Bully for you, I say.

But my main gripe still stands. Where I noted above that:

“Legalzoom advertises itself as a one-stop resource for legal services. Its commercials make it out to be an attorney-substitute service that satisfies your legal needs at a reasonable price. But its disclaimer makes clear that it is nothing more than a document warehouse. It treats major concerns like “legal sufficiency” as a trivial matter that you as the consumer needn’t worry about, so they simply bury it in the fine print.”

This is obviously my opinion, sir, but I stand by it.

You point out something about me and my firm which is completely fair game:

I have been in practice for less than a year. This is true, but it is something that I cannot control. I don’t hide that fact from clients, either, and I believe that my rates reflect my level of experience. I will say, though, that I am fully qualified to provide legal advice and estate planning guidance in the State of Minnesota. And that is really the issue when it comes to will drafting or estate planning: being qualified to give legal advice and perform legal services for the client with whom you are working. Your company can’t do that because it isn’t a law firm, and that is my chief point. So while you and your company are certainly more experienced and accomplished than I am in many ways, you aren’t licensed to provide legal advice to any clients in Minnesota. And I am.

I respect your input, Mr. Rampenthal, and I thank you for posting. You are always welcome here!
Tyler White