Should I purchase Legal Services from a Website?

Question: Do you recommend purchasing legal services (i.e. legal documents) on a website like Freelancer.com or Elance.com? Why?

Answer: Finding an attorney who does the sort of work you are seeking should be relatively straight forward. What you want is a business attorney in your state who has experience in drawing up these sorts of documents.  You can call your state’s bar association or a local bar association and ask for a recommendation. You can ask business colleagues who they have used. You can also search the web for attorneys. The search would be something like, your state, “business attorney” “website documents” or “terms of service.” If you tell me what state you are in, I can ask some of my colleagues to recommend someone for you.

Do I recommend you use freelancer or elance…well, I am not familiar with these sites. If you can find a good lawyer who knows what he is doing on these sites, have at it. I don’t think it matters so much where you find your lawyer that you have a good one. But having a good one from the start is key.

I don’t recommend you just buy legal documents from a fill in the blank service. No doubt you will think, well of course she doesn’t she is a lawyer. But aside from a vested interest, I have another reason. The legal documents you can buy on those fill in the blank sites make assumptions that you are a run of the mill case. They cannot point out issues you might never have thought of when it comes to making certain you have the right legal issues covered.  Most people are not run of the mill. They have different requirements. And it costs a lot less to have the documents done correctly than to (a) hire someone to review and fix them later or (b) deal with a lawsuit.

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