Today's Date: Add To Favorites
Do-it-yourself Legal Services Booming
Law Center | 2008/01/06 11:15
Tax giant H&R Block Inc. has a lock on one of life's two certainties. Now it is going after the other.

Two months ago, the Kansas City firm launched a new service --online and in-store software packages designed to help everyday people to write their own wills, trusts and estate plans at home without help from lawyers.

Selling do-it-yourself legal kits isn't a new idea.

An estimated seven in 10 Americans have no formal wills other than to follow individual state formulas for dividing property or providing for heirs. Of those with formal plans, the average age of the wills, when opened for final reading, is about 20 years old and potentially outdated by changes in estate planning law or family circumstances.

Block and others see potential business opportunities in the void.

Block has been peddling versions of its new WillPower and Home and Business Attorney through its tax offices and other outlets since at least 1996. Some competitors, notably Nolo.com in Berkeley, Calif., publisher of Quicken estate planning and legal documents, have been providing self-help legal information and forms to nonprofessionals since the early 1970s. Newer players, such as LegalZoom.com, a Los Angeles online service co-founded by O.J. Simpson attorney Robert Shapiro, even fill out the forms.

Competitors don't provide many precise sales figures. Nolo has disclosed that its Quicken WillMaker Plus sales increased nearly 33 percent during 2006. LegalZoom says that it has served 500,000 people since its opening in 2000, and that sales have been growing 50 to 75 percent a year. We The People, a storefront franchise that helps people fill out legal forms, has grown to more than 100 locations, including one in the Kansas City area, from just 25 seven years ago, according to its Web site.

These providers offer information or educational material, but they stop short of advising buyers in order to avoid what in many places would amount to practicing law illegally. They also cost a lot less than traditional legal help.

Basic, commercially available do-it-yourself wills and estate planning documents in most states run between $20 and $120. Hiring a lawyer to do the same work appears to run between $700 and $1,500 in many places, but can vary widely.

Which choice is right for you depends on your circumstances, authorities say.

"Those little kits could work if you have the training, education and expertise to use them properly," said Lee Davis, a Johnson City, Tenn., lawyer and president of the National Association of Estate Planners & Councils.

However, there also is lot of potential for someone insufficiently versed in legal matters to create major problems for heirs, for example by leaving out something important or using incorrect or ambiguous language, Davis said.

Hiring a lawyer also becomes an increasingly better idea if your estate becomes bigger or more complicated, or if your or your heirs' circumstances are changed by death, divorce, remarriage or some similar event, Davis said.

"Kits just don't cover all those conditions," he said.

Spending less than $20 for, say, Block's basic will and trust software or less than $40 for the expanded package, with software that helps fill out many other legal documents a household head or small-business owner might need, can be economical even if you need a lawyer's help with the final product, countered Jason Bass, a digital products manager at Block.

"We aren't a substitute for an attorney," Bass said, "but using the software to pull together and organize your records ahead of time will produce a significant savings in legal fees."

That is because organizing the documents is cheaper than paying your attorney's staff to do it, he said.

Block's new software products, linked with Acendi Interactive, a San Francisco developer of RocketLawyer.com and other legal self-help technologies, bridge a gap between traditional forms that consumers fill out themselves and new services like LegalZoom, in which the service fills out forms based on questionnaires the clients complete.

But, again, "we can't give advice and we don't," said Mike Turner, a LegalZoom spokesman.

Wills, trusts and other estate-planning documents generally are private documents that in all 50 states can be drawn up without a lawyer. Virtually anyone 18 or older can make a will.

But some rules vary. Kansas law doesn't recognize so-called holographic, or handwritten, wills, while Missouri law doesn't say whether it does. Individual states also have slightly different rules about witnessing the documents and notarizing some of them.

Many authorities broadly suggest using a lawyer, rather than online software or a legal kit, if your estate exceeds the $2 million exemption, above which federal estate taxes kick in. Online software or a kit probably is sufficient for simpler or smaller estates, particularly if most of the property being distributed is personal property.

But that isn't always true. Wills and trusts are so intrinsically private that "we really don't have a good idea what sizes are involved," said Turner.

On the flip side, even simple estate planning could get complicated. The current $2 million exemption from estate taxes, for example, is scheduled to jump to $3.5 million next year, disappear entirely in 2010, then drop back to $1 million after that.


[PREV] [1] ..[5542][5543][5544][5545][5546][5547][5548][5549][5550].. [8286] [NEXT]
All
Class Action
Bankruptcy
Biotech
Breaking Legal News
Business
Corporate Governance
Court Watch
Criminal Law
Health Care
Human Rights
Insurance
Intellectual Property
Labor & Employment
Law Center
Law Promo News
Legal Business
Legal Marketing
Litigation
Medical Malpractice
Mergers & Acquisitions
Political and Legal
Politics
Practice Focuses
Securities
Elite Lawyers
Tax
Featured Law Firms
Tort Reform
Venture Business News
World Business News
Law Firm News
Attorneys in the News
Events and Seminars
Environmental
Legal Careers News
Patent Law
Consumer Rights
International
Legal Spotlight
Current Cases
State Class Actions
Federal Class Actions
A man who threatened to kill..
Ford cuts 2024 earnings guid..
Kenya’s deputy president pl..
South Korean court acquits f..
Supreme Court grapples with ..
Supreme Court leaves in plac..
Kentucky sheriff accused of ..
New rules regarding election..
North Carolina appeals court..
A court in Argentina orders ..
Mexican cartel leader’s son..
Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs jailed ..
Alaska man charged with send..
Protesters storm Mexico’s S..
Google faces new antitrust t..


Class action or a representative action is a form of lawsuit in which a large group of people collectively bring a claim to court and/or in which a class of defendants is being sued. This form of collective lawsuit originated in the United States and is still predominantly a U.S. phenomenon, at least the U.S. variant of it. In the United States federal courts, class actions are governed by Federal Rules of Civil Procedure Rule. Since 1938, many states have adopted rules similar to the FRCP. However, some states like California have civil procedure systems which deviate significantly from the federal rules; the California Codes provide for four separate types of class actions. As a result, there are two separate treatises devoted solely to the complex topic of California class actions. Some states, such as Virginia, do not provide for any class actions, while others, such as New York, limit the types of claims that may be brought as class actions. They can construct your law firm a brand new website, lawyer website templates and help you redesign your existing law firm site to secure your place in the internet.
St. Louis Missouri Criminal Defense Lawyer
St. Charles DUI Attorney
www.lynchlawonline.com
Lorain Elyria Divorce Lawyer
www.loraindivorceattorney.com
Legal Document Services in Los Angeles, CA
Best Legal Document Preparation
www.tllsg.com
Car Accident Lawyers
Sunnyvale, CA Personal Injury Attorney
www.esrajunglaw.com
East Greenwich Family Law Attorney
Divorce Lawyer - Erica S. Janton
www.jantonfamilylaw.com/about
St. Louis Missouri Criminal Defense Lawyer
St. Charles DUI Attorney
www.lynchlawonline.com
Connecticut Special Education Lawyer
www.fortelawgroup.com
  Law Firm Directory
 
 
 
© ClassActionTimes.com. All rights reserved.

The content contained on the web site has been prepared by Class Action Times as a service to the internet community and is not intended to constitute legal advice or a substitute for consultation with a licensed legal professional in a particular case or circumstance. Affordable Law Firm Web Design