Legalzoom for legal documents?
August 23, 2013 10:05 AM Subscribe
I will be helping an elderly relative prepare legal documents. It seems like LegalZoom is a helpful and convenient resource for setting these up. Am I missing something?
They need to set up their financial power of attorney in case of incapacitation, and a living will for medical power of attorney. There isn't much property and the agents for each section have been selected. Legalzoom walks you through all your options and double-checks it for you. It seems pretty straightforward. What reason would there be to see a lawyer rather than go through the questionnaire and use the online resources of legalzoom? Has anyone had or heard of a bad experience with legalzoom for stuff like this? (With legalzoom specifically, I'm aware that sometimes legal matters go horribly wrong in situations like this whether the docs are prepared by a lawyer or not!) If we do prepare these documents ourselves, is there anything we should be aware of from your experience?
They need to set up their financial power of attorney in case of incapacitation, and a living will for medical power of attorney. There isn't much property and the agents for each section have been selected. Legalzoom walks you through all your options and double-checks it for you. It seems pretty straightforward. What reason would there be to see a lawyer rather than go through the questionnaire and use the online resources of legalzoom? Has anyone had or heard of a bad experience with legalzoom for stuff like this? (With legalzoom specifically, I'm aware that sometimes legal matters go horribly wrong in situations like this whether the docs are prepared by a lawyer or not!) If we do prepare these documents ourselves, is there anything we should be aware of from your experience?
Best answer: Here is a blog post from a California attorney that addresses the question. Essentially, it boils down to the fact that LegalZoom is not an attorney and thus cannot give you legal advice specific to your circumstances. Sure, you might be OK using LegalZoom documents, but you might not. As you point out, an attorney can screw things up too, but at least in that situation, you've got recourse. Legalzoom won't give you a refund if something goes wrong, and accepts no responsibility for any mistakes:
"At no time do we review your answers for legal sufficiency, draw legal conclusions, provide legal advice, opinions or recommendations about your legal rights, remedies, defenses, options, selection of forms, or strategies, or apply the law to the facts of your particular situation. LegalZoom is not a law firm and may not perform services performed by an attorney. LegalZoom and its Services are not substitutes for the advice of an attorney.
LegalZoom strives to keep its legal documents accurate, current and up-to-date. However, because the law changes rapidly, LegalZoom cannot guarantee that all of the information on the Site or Applications is completely current. The law is different from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, and may be subject to interpretation by different courts. The law is a personal matter, and no general information or legal tool like the kind LegalZoom provides can fit every circumstance. Furthermore, the legal information contained on the Site and Applications is not legal advice and is not guaranteed to be correct, complete or up-to-date."
And one more thing: probate law (the law of wills) varies highly by jurisdiction. Do you want to risk something being screwed up when incapacitation or death actually happens? An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, etc.
posted by sevensnowflakes at 10:47 AM on August 23, 2013
"At no time do we review your answers for legal sufficiency, draw legal conclusions, provide legal advice, opinions or recommendations about your legal rights, remedies, defenses, options, selection of forms, or strategies, or apply the law to the facts of your particular situation. LegalZoom is not a law firm and may not perform services performed by an attorney. LegalZoom and its Services are not substitutes for the advice of an attorney.
LegalZoom strives to keep its legal documents accurate, current and up-to-date. However, because the law changes rapidly, LegalZoom cannot guarantee that all of the information on the Site or Applications is completely current. The law is different from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, and may be subject to interpretation by different courts. The law is a personal matter, and no general information or legal tool like the kind LegalZoom provides can fit every circumstance. Furthermore, the legal information contained on the Site and Applications is not legal advice and is not guaranteed to be correct, complete or up-to-date."
And one more thing: probate law (the law of wills) varies highly by jurisdiction. Do you want to risk something being screwed up when incapacitation or death actually happens? An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, etc.
posted by sevensnowflakes at 10:47 AM on August 23, 2013
Best answer: LegalZoom is an interesting solution to a legitimate problem: attorneys cost too damn much. In my opinion, LegalZoom is an early solution, a first-draft, "nice try but we're not quite there yet" solution. The truth is, LegalZoom probably works fine for many people in many situations. You mentioned that sometimes legal matters go horribly wrong even with an attorney's help. That's true, because there are bad attorneys and because sometimes mistakes happen. But in most situations, a bad attorney's mistake won't sink you. That's how bad attorneys make their livings. It's only when something tricky arises that the mistake becomes a problem.
So it's not unreasonable to compare using LegalZoom to hiring a bad attorney. Many people will use it and be just fine. Grandma's estate was modest and simple. Nobody questioned Mom's power of attorney, they just wanted to see the document. Sara and Joe could have divided their marital assets more equally, but they got divorced and everybody is getting along just fine. Et cetera. If you actually read the document you print out from LegalZoom, you'll be in better shoes than the majority of people who eschew any kind of legal help and instead just "wing it." But you're getting what you pay for. In many cases, a good attorney could have gotten you a better or quicker or cheaper result, and in those unfortunate cases that do arise, a good attorney might have avoided the problem altogether.
I'll give you an example. A few years ago, I drafted a power of attorney that needed to be valid in two states. You can find sample POA documents all over the web, and I could have just used one of those. I could also have used LegalZoom and either picked one state or printed out both. (Lawyers, nevermind the problem with the latter.) But each of these states has a statute requiring that specific language—different for each state—must be included in a POA for the document to be valid. If I hadn't included that language...? Well, everything probably would have been fine, because as it turned out, nobody questioned that document. But if they had, then parallel-universe-bad-attorney-me would have been in hot water.
Legal documents are tricky. End-of-life documents can be especially tricky, because we're trying to nail down exactly what the person wants to happen, and by the time it becomes relevant, the person ain't around to ask. So we try to cover our bases now, and there are a lot of bases, and you can imagine how tangled things get with a congressroom full of JDs trying to make sure every "What if?" base is covered and then doing it again five years later, and amending that three years later, and starting from scratch in another ten years. The logic is this: If you spend the money on a good attorney now, you're paying to prevent the eventuality of needing to spend a lot of time and money on a legal issue later. Mostly that logic holds up, and LegalZoom hasn't yet trumped it.
posted by cribcage at 10:52 AM on August 23, 2013 [3 favorites]
So it's not unreasonable to compare using LegalZoom to hiring a bad attorney. Many people will use it and be just fine. Grandma's estate was modest and simple. Nobody questioned Mom's power of attorney, they just wanted to see the document. Sara and Joe could have divided their marital assets more equally, but they got divorced and everybody is getting along just fine. Et cetera. If you actually read the document you print out from LegalZoom, you'll be in better shoes than the majority of people who eschew any kind of legal help and instead just "wing it." But you're getting what you pay for. In many cases, a good attorney could have gotten you a better or quicker or cheaper result, and in those unfortunate cases that do arise, a good attorney might have avoided the problem altogether.
I'll give you an example. A few years ago, I drafted a power of attorney that needed to be valid in two states. You can find sample POA documents all over the web, and I could have just used one of those. I could also have used LegalZoom and either picked one state or printed out both. (Lawyers, nevermind the problem with the latter.) But each of these states has a statute requiring that specific language—different for each state—must be included in a POA for the document to be valid. If I hadn't included that language...? Well, everything probably would have been fine, because as it turned out, nobody questioned that document. But if they had, then parallel-universe-bad-attorney-me would have been in hot water.
Legal documents are tricky. End-of-life documents can be especially tricky, because we're trying to nail down exactly what the person wants to happen, and by the time it becomes relevant, the person ain't around to ask. So we try to cover our bases now, and there are a lot of bases, and you can imagine how tangled things get with a congressroom full of JDs trying to make sure every "What if?" base is covered and then doing it again five years later, and amending that three years later, and starting from scratch in another ten years. The logic is this: If you spend the money on a good attorney now, you're paying to prevent the eventuality of needing to spend a lot of time and money on a legal issue later. Mostly that logic holds up, and LegalZoom hasn't yet trumped it.
posted by cribcage at 10:52 AM on August 23, 2013 [3 favorites]
Georgia, for example, has some oddball things specific to wills, property and probate
Word, word, wordy, McWord. The hoops we are jumping through and the weirdness of it all, to sell our house are mind boggling.
A lawyer to do it correctly is money well spent.
posted by Ruthless Bunny at 11:46 AM on August 23, 2013
Word, word, wordy, McWord. The hoops we are jumping through and the weirdness of it all, to sell our house are mind boggling.
A lawyer to do it correctly is money well spent.
posted by Ruthless Bunny at 11:46 AM on August 23, 2013
LZ is ok for some things, i used it once to found an oregon nonprofit corporation for the sole purpose of causing a regime change in our local electric utility cooperative (regime...changed!).
end-of-life documents are not one of these things. by the time the error is noticed, the testator no longer has capacity to make a will, the principal's capacity to make a power of attorney can be questioned. these documents have to be perfect or else you're fucked, and there is no substitute for a local attorney knowledgeable in the field.
posted by bruce at 12:02 PM on August 23, 2013
end-of-life documents are not one of these things. by the time the error is noticed, the testator no longer has capacity to make a will, the principal's capacity to make a power of attorney can be questioned. these documents have to be perfect or else you're fucked, and there is no substitute for a local attorney knowledgeable in the field.
posted by bruce at 12:02 PM on August 23, 2013
Best answer: This is a NYT review from a few years back about doing wills with software.
I don't know if those programs have since taken care of the issue, and I'm a long, long way from an estate lawyer, but I remember reading a bunch of cases in my estate law textbook about wills that forgot to provide for kids born after the will was made. Like, it seems a pretty basic point about drafting wills.
posted by joyceanmachine at 12:12 PM on August 23, 2013
I don't know if those programs have since taken care of the issue, and I'm a long, long way from an estate lawyer, but I remember reading a bunch of cases in my estate law textbook about wills that forgot to provide for kids born after the will was made. Like, it seems a pretty basic point about drafting wills.
posted by joyceanmachine at 12:12 PM on August 23, 2013
Personally speaking, I know several attorneys whose major source of income is untangling the messes people have gotten themselves in with LegalZoom.
posted by Ghostride The Whip at 12:13 PM on August 23, 2013
posted by Ghostride The Whip at 12:13 PM on August 23, 2013
LegalZoom (and the like) are not the same as a bad lawyer. A bad lawyer can be disbarred (or jailed) for fucking up, and since LZ and friends aren't lawyers and don't give legal advice you will only have yourself to blame for any mistakes.
posted by sideshow at 2:14 PM on August 23, 2013
posted by sideshow at 2:14 PM on August 23, 2013
I think the point is that if your paperwork gets screwed up, you probably don't care very much whether the attorney who made your mistake loses his license to represent future clients. That doesn't remedy your issue. He may or may not have malpractice insurance that you may or may not have a claim against, and that might make you whole, but that's a deeper issue and certainly not one that I'd handwave by saying, "Ehh, it's cool, he's got insurance so you'll be covered."
I'm not sure which jurisdictions jail attorneys for "fucking up," assuming we're not defining "fucking up" as "committing an independent felony." Mine don't. And you don't get disbarred for making a mistake, even a very bad one.
It would be a disservice to clients if we were to tell you, generally speaking, that you can count on being left with anything other than "only yourself to blame" if you hire subpar counsel. Don't get me wrong, we want to say that. We try to make it so. That's why we have rules, professional standards, continuing education, malpractice insurance, etc. But in practical terms of the way life actually works, often your attorney's mistake is something you'll have to live with. That's something you should know before you hire an attorney, or LegalZoom.
posted by cribcage at 3:15 PM on August 23, 2013 [3 favorites]
I'm not sure which jurisdictions jail attorneys for "fucking up," assuming we're not defining "fucking up" as "committing an independent felony." Mine don't. And you don't get disbarred for making a mistake, even a very bad one.
It would be a disservice to clients if we were to tell you, generally speaking, that you can count on being left with anything other than "only yourself to blame" if you hire subpar counsel. Don't get me wrong, we want to say that. We try to make it so. That's why we have rules, professional standards, continuing education, malpractice insurance, etc. But in practical terms of the way life actually works, often your attorney's mistake is something you'll have to live with. That's something you should know before you hire an attorney, or LegalZoom.
posted by cribcage at 3:15 PM on August 23, 2013 [3 favorites]
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A lawyer in their state would be versed in the minutiae relevant to that particular state. Georgia, for example, has some oddball things specific to wills, property and probate. The cost doen't have to be particularly egregious, but I'd strongly consider using an attorney if possible. An attorney should be able to tell you over the phone what your documents should roughly cost to draw up.
posted by jquinby at 10:10 AM on August 23, 2013