{"id":609,"date":"2007-03-19T13:06:29","date_gmt":"2007-03-19T17:06:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/shlep\/2007\/03\/19\/document-prep-stores-walk-a-fine-line\/"},"modified":"2007-03-19T13:06:29","modified_gmt":"2007-03-19T17:06:29","slug":"document-prep-stores-walk-a-fine-line","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/shlep\/2007\/03\/19\/document-prep-stores-walk-a-fine-line\/","title":{"rendered":"document prep stores walk a fine line"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>There is an interesting article in the <em>St. Petersburg Times<\/em> this morning about non-lawyer stores that provide help with filling in standard legal forms, at a price much lower than an attorney&#8217;s charge.\u00a0 &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/sptimes.com\/2007\/03\/19\/Southpinellas\/DIY_stores_walk_fine_.shtml\">DIY stores walk fine line between law help, outlaw<\/a>: They can offer document prep but not advice,&#8221; March 19, 2007.\u00a0 I was quoted because I&#8217;m a contributor to <em><a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/shlep\/\">shlep<\/a><\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0I believe that competent consumers can benefit from unbundling some legal services; that is, hire an attorney for part of a task, such as legal advice and drafting of a Small Claims Statement of Claim, but attendance at hearings by yourself.<\/p>\n<p>The document preparation services are more dangerous, because they carry the risk of non-lawyers giving advice, and because it is often not possible for a layman to determine when a standard form won&#8217;t do. The Internet is making it easier for consumers and document preparation services to perform some legal tasks. Lawyers need to use technology to show consumers when a lawyer&#8217;s advice is beneficial, and we need to use technology to make our advice cost effective, if we are going to compete.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There is an interesting article in the St. Petersburg Times this morning about non-lawyer stores that provide help with filling in standard legal forms, at a price much lower than an attorney&#8217;s charge.\u00a0 &#8220;DIY stores walk fine line between law help, outlaw: They can offer document prep but not advice,&#8221; March 19, 2007.\u00a0 I was [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":516,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[991],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-609","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-items"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/shlep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/609","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/shlep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/shlep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/shlep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/516"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/shlep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=609"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/shlep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/609\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/shlep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=609"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/shlep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=609"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/shlep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=609"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}