I’m going to provide online legal service, especially for those who are making e-commerce. I’m licensed professional lawyer and have 10 year working experience with hard cases. Problem is that it not easy to get serious clients from web. I put advertises on freelance sites but people from India, Pakistan etc. makes extremely low bids. I just can’t believe that it is possible to make a solid contract for 15$!
For the moment I offer such services:
Protect your intellectual property or trademark;
Act properly according to copyright;
Compose water strong contract;
Create company including offshore company.
What kind of legal services can be useful working online?
No one is going to hire a lawyer for e-commerce who doesn’t speak English as their first language outside of the countries that you mentioned (India, Pakistan) and you’re not going to get people from those countries, especially freelancers, willing to pay big bucks for your services.
Not to mention the issue of jurisdiction. The only model I’ve seen work (well) is the establishment of a local law firm with local attorneys who outsource much of the research and other work overseas. Web developers tend to use very few legal services, usually just a contract here and there.
And even then most web designers tend to write their own contracts or use pre-written templates to give them the finish their after. At most I’ve contacted a lawyer to check a document here or there to ensure it’s as watertight as possible, I don’t tend to involve lawyers for anything related to copyright cases as 90% of the time, filing a DCMA to the right place will resolve the conflict (the web is surprisingly pretty good at acknowledging the law - except in cases where sites deliberately and knowingly infringe it - in which case you’ll need deep pockets to pursue it). I would agree that locally targeted services would probably be the best model to follow, you’ll get enough work from face to face deals then you will from offering some competitive legal aid service.
Everything that lawdepot.com has to offer. I remember when I started up and I couldn’t even afford a lawyer I would buy a bunch of templated stuff from there and get advice as well. It was a good start, I think they make decent money doing it. Now I alone probably make more than their whole company. Thanks lawdepot.com