More questions, keep reading below . . .
How Much Should I Pay for Legal Forms?
You should be spending approximately 5 to 10 percent of your gross revenue on legal matters. Legal spending is analagous to insurance. Your legal budget could be spent on a lawyer, on legal books, on legal forms, on anything that helps you understand and handle the legal issues relevant to your business.
Usually, learning about the legal issues that affect doesn't cost anything, but failing to could cost you a bundle.
Hiring an experienced lawyer to write a contract similar to a Coollawyer form would cost between 3 and 10 hours of the lawyers time at a rate between $150 and $500 per hour, with a retainer of at least several thousand dollars.
Finally, think about it. How much is it worth to you to protect your intellectual property? To limit liablity for sales of your products or performance of services? To ensure that you get paid? All of the forms on this site are under $100 each -- many are under $40. It's worth AT LEAST that much.
"Yeah, But Contracts Don't Hold Up Anyway!"
Well, actually, contracts do work. The liability limits work. The warranty waivers work. You can use them to get money you are owed. If written by an attorney, most contracts hold up. To what degree and with what result can vary, but mostly they work.
Online contracts also work if the steps set forth in case law are followed. It is important you either purchase from a site with specific legal instructions or hire an attorney knowledgeable in this area. Case law has set forth certain steps for online agreements to be valid and, if not followed, there is little chance that these contracts will protect your business.
Can't I Just Copy Legal Forms from Others' Sites?
Copying legal forms and contracts, just like other content, is, in most cases, copyright infringement. For more information, see the Copyright section of the Law Library. So, no, with few exceptions, you can't just copy the forms. You need to buy them which gives you a license to use the legal forms. Of course, nevertheless, free downloads of business forms, free legal forms collections, free legal forms online are around if you want to take the risks.
What Should I Look for in Legal Forms?
Has an Attorney Written the Legal Forms?
Many sites will say that attorneys have drafted their forms. Do they provide the authors names? Their credentials?
If not, how can you tell if an attorney really wrote them? You can't verify their licensing with the State Bar. You can't verify their graduation with their law schools. You have no way of knowing. Is it worth risking your business with so much unknown?
Can You Verify the Attorneys' Experience?
When you look at any site from which you are buying a legal form, you want to be sure that you can review the experience of the attorney(s) author(s).
Why Experience Is Important
The attorneys' credentials are important because you want to confirm that the author has had experience with the legal form you need.
For example, if you're buying a will or trust form, you don't want to buy it from this site - which has forms written by a business, technology, intellectual property attorney. You want someone that knows wills and trusts well. Otherwise, your will could fail and the default law might apply instead. Then your Cousin Jeanie would get everything instead of the Fund for Porsche Restoration as you intended. Is it worth copying or downloading free legal forms online, free legal forms collections, free printable legal forms, forms from unreliable sites, when that is the risk you take? Do you want to risk your business and the validity of its contracts to save a few bucks?
What Does An Attorney's Experience Contribute?
Rings on a Tree
Good legal forms are created by attorneys over years of practice and years of deals. Each time a deal went wrong, a confusing phrase later caused a dispute with the parties, something should have been included but wasn't, a case was reported that set forth new law, the attorney learned of a statute which he or she was unaware of, the legal forms should reflect that history. Each of these bits of knowledge adds a ring to the tree.
Good forms have many rings. Some times, that's why good legal forms are longer -- even thought it may appear unnecessary. Some times, forms can be concise versions of the longer ones with the rings much closer together -- leaving just a couple pages with the important stuff.
How About If Lots of Attorneys Wrote the Forms?
Certainly you've heard the expression "Too many cooks spoil the broth." Some websites hire attorneys in each state to write legal forms for them, so there are at least 50 authors to their forms (and cooks to their broth).
Having so many different attorney authors spoils the broth. If you buy more than one legal form for your business, you see the results: different fonts, margins, lengths, formats, different legal clauses and different legal opinions that even conflict at times. If their authors disagree on the legal wording, how can you trust it?
Presenting contracts which vary in appearance and in your legal position to clients and business partners makes your business look unprofessional and can sabotage smooth negotiations. On one document, you've taken one position, but in another you take the opposite. The other side may notice. If so, this greatly weakens any arguments you had justifying your position - either of them.
How About the Sites Which Have You Talk to the Attorney First?
Some sites allow you to "speak to an attorney" in your state who will provide you with advice and legal forms. If you speak to an attorney from these sites, it is unlikely that the attorney you speak to has written the forms you will purchase.
Some times she will not even have read the form. She may not even agree with how it is written.
Will the attorney tell you? No. Will she rewrite the form to agree with his or her legal opinion? No. These sites make their money based on high volume and short calls. Rewriting forms and giving variation in legal opinions take valuable time which cuts into profit.
How About the Sites Which Have Contracts from Deals between Big Companies for Sale?
You said that copying contracts was copyright infringement . . . aren't these sites infringing? Well, I did say that. In this case, it's not clear and of course, they still may be sued.
Why isn't it clear? Sites that offer contracts which are from major corporate deals, with the parties named, are reprinting public information which is available for free through the SEC filings of such corporations at www.sec.gov in the EDGAR system.
Information submitted to the federal government is available to everyone under the Freedom of Information Act and therefore such information often loses intellectual property protection. Additionally, the federal government is exempt from owning copyrights under the Copyright Act. Between these two legal concepts, it's tough to get a clear picture of whether this would be copyright infringement or not.
What is clear is that buying their forms is silly if you can get them for free! If you're going to buy publicly available forms, at least be sure that some value is added to what you purchase.
Conclusion
Legal forms are a way to spend less, take more risk, but have security. Legal forms by the author are available for purchase here.
By downloading the forms' pdf previews you can view legal forms online exampls, free legal forms collections and see free downloads of business forms in preview mode.
Legal documents online, Free Legal Forms Online, free legal forms collections, free printable legal forms are available on the web, but you are assuming the risk of poor quality in using them.
1 Readers are cautioned not to rely
on this article as legal advice as it is
no substitution for a consultation with an attorney in your
state. Based
on jurisdiction and time, the law varies and changes.
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