Self-Help Legal Revisited - On The Quick and Dirty Trademark

Well, despite my pleas, Legal Zoom continues to make money in record amounts, as their marketing budget grows and the efficacy of their seldom-updated forms continues to dwindle. A little while ago I reproduced their lengthy disclaimer here (which is a lot easier than trying to find it on their site) and tried to point out some of the pitfalls in the “service” that Legal Zoom offers - but by preying on the public’s fear of overwhelming legal fees, general disdain for attorneys and unwillingness to read fine print they’re still able to sell an outdated and mostly useless forms library at an astonishing premium.

Additionally, I discovered that Legal Zoom does actually employ a surprisingly large number of actual lawyers. Unfortunately, these lawyers are not engaged in actually serving Legal Zoom’s clients - but rather are engaged in the full-time job of defending the company against lawsuits. I guess Bernie Madoff’s legal defense team needed something to do. Okay, okay, I’m obviously kidding. But if the disclaimer wasn’t enough to scare you off maybe the army of defense attorneys can do the trick. Those same attorneys are doing all they can to keep any bad press for LZ, well, from the presses.

After I sent out my original piece to my legal network, I received a note from an Intellectual Property (IP) attorney who specializes in trademarks that exposed yet another impossible promise that Legal Zoom is making in its advertising that is creating messes for real IP attorneys to clean up. He wrote:

I just had a discussion with a client about LegalZoom last week - he recently heard a LegalZoom ad on the radio saying, "Get a trademark in minutes." Talk about misleading. In addition to the points you raised nicely in your article (even a hair stylist asks the customer what they need), no one (not even me, an IP attorney) can get a 'trademark in minutes' because the Trademark Examiner won't even pick up the application file for months...

What’s more, a quick review of the Trademark services offered by LZ reveals that no matter how much you pay them, you’re still filling out the application yourself. Have you ever seen the trademark application? It’s daunting even for an attorney. And if you’ve got questions, you’ll be stuck reading the tutorials provided (for free) by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO). LZ does purport offer a LegalZoom Peace of Mind Review - a concept so amazing, they’ve actually trademarked it themselves! This service includes:

Complete information. Our document specialists will contact you by phone and email if additional information or clarification is needed.

Internal consistency.

Spelling, grammar and punctuation. We do not rely solely on software spell checkers. Every document is proofread by a document specialist.

Correct capitalization and lowercasing where required.

Proper pagination and blank space elimination.

Complete words. We spell out abbreviations or symbols in English.

Professional and consistent font usage.

Correct residency information. Indicating the proper state is critical to ensure the document conforms to your state's requirements.

Full names. We verify that full names are given (first and last) and that all names appear consistently throughout the document.

Correct shipping addresses and email addresses to ensure timely delivery.

Wow. Capitalization? Professional font usage? The use of full names? No wonder they can charge $170 bucks for this. That’s full-on proofreading! Does this list really give you any “peace of mind”? I sure hope not. The reality is that they’re holding this out as a review that’s just as good has having an IP attorney look at it, and it’s not. And when it comes back with errors, guess who has to do the fixing and the extra waiting? And guess who’s not getting their money back for their “Peace of Mind Review”? That’s right.

LegalZoom is right about one thing: intellectual property registration can be essential to the success or failure of your business, and it makes sense to invest in something so important. Unfortunately, they fail to mention that IP registration can often be a challenging and nuanced process that is both lengthy and difficult. As I always say: if it’s important enough for you to ask legal questions, it’s important enough to ask a lawyer. And the only person you should take the advice “you really don’t need an attorney” from, is an actual attorney.