The SmartLegalForms.com Story
by Richard S. Granat

Richard S. Granat, Founder SmartLegalForms.com What We Do

SmartLegalForms, Inc., (originally Network Legal Solutions)was established in 2000 to provide people of moderate means effective access to the legal system. Our legal solutions include free legal information, smart legal forms for pro se litigants, some of which are free, and through our DirectLaw division, a virtual law firm platform that enables law firms to offer "unbundled legal services" for a fixed fee over the Internet.

A New Way of Buying Legal Services

We believe that for the average consumer there is a better way to buy legal services than simply accepting the stated hourly rate from an attorney, with no upside limit on the amount of legal fees spent on a matter. Instead, by combining self-education strategies, self-help smart legal forms, and legal services that are offered for a fixed fee for a specific project, it is possible for a consumer to limit their exposure to incontrollable legal fee expenditures. This idea doesn't work for every type of legal matter, but it can work for many kinds of legal transactions.

History

A bit of history to put these ideas in context. I founded SmartLegalForms, Inc., with the idea that Internet technology could be a new platform for the delivery of legal solutions and legal services.

From the outset of my career it became clear to me that the cost of legal services was beyond the capacity of most Americans. At an earlier time in my working life, I helped to establish the National Legal Services Program, the federal program that provides legal services to low income individuals. Here I experienced first hand the exclusion of poor people from our system of justice.

In 1996, when the Internet was first beginning its growth, I created the People's Law Library of Maryland at the University of Maryland School of Law to provide free legal information over the Internet to Maryland’s residents. I also assisted in the development of a set of family law forms to be used in the Maryland court system by “pro se” (self-represented) parties. Again I witnessed the huge demand for legal support in the family law area as hundreds of individuals lined up at the local Maryland courts to get their forms and brief legal advice from law students.

These projects influenced the focus of our company as a vehicle for enabling affordable access to the legal system. This continues to be the mission of our company today.

Three Ideas About the Delivery of Legal Services

Our experience has resulted in three insights that are reflected in the design of the SmartLegalForms Web site:

(1) In certain situations, and depending on your personal capabilities, just having access to the correct legal form can yield a satisfactory or “good enough” result -- a way for you to resolve your legal problems without spending a fortune on legal fees;

(2) In many other situations, you would benefit from legal advice/guidance to select and use a legal form correctly; and

(3) In more complex and conflicted situations, you may need to be fully represented by an attorney.

This Web site will help you choose which of these alternatives suits you best, depending on your individual circumstances.

We offer fully interactive legal forms at the lowest possible cost from this Web site using our SmartLegalForms technology powered by Rapidocs, a world-class web-enabled document automation solution.

At SmartLegalForms.com, you can see your form being assembled instantly and you can save it as a Word file or print out immediately after assembly. You can revise your form and print it out again.

SmartLegalForms.com offers the two best, low-cost alternatives to solve a legal problem:

free legal information plus low-cost, interactive legal forms that you can see being created as you answer our online questionnaire. The forms are available for immediate download;

legal advice or “limited legal services” from an online law firm that offers legal forms bundled with legal advice for a flat fee that is often less than you would pay to a non-lawyer document preparation company.

In 2009, we launched the first network of virtual law firms offering limited legal services for a fixed fee to support this business model. These law firms are powered by our DirectLaw virtual law firm platform, which was based on the my own experience in launching one of the first virtual law firms in the United States in 2003. Almost all of the lawyers who operate these law firms share our commitment of providing affordable access to the legal system.

We hope that the SmartLegalForms.com Web site provides you with legal solutions that you can afford. We have a great team that most of whom have worked for SmartLegalForms, Inc., for over ten years and dedicated to helping people solve their legal problems at the lowest possible cost.

We hope that you will find that the SmartLegalForms.com Web site provides you with legal solutions that you can afford.