Robert Frost says:

Frankly, I find the questions to Rocket Lawyer (Charlie Moore) as well services Legal Zoom, posed by the moderator to miss the point. Matters presented to a lawyer online miss the benefit of a face to face interview. One cannot read the body language or readily do follow up conversation that comes in a open discussion. Ask yourself how often email communications are misconstrued by poor punctuation or inability to articulate the question or giving the wrong slant on a situation. Often much more is discovered about an event in conversation than in answering specific questions. Even on the many legal listserves that exist even lawyers fail to fully state the facts and the responses provided result are inappropriate for the needs of a client. Often a client’s perception of events is skewed to his or her point of view and inaccurate. This cannot be detected in an online interview.

Most of the online wills and trusts programs pose questions that may be pertinent to a situation or may not be. However due to the program an answer that may be partially accurate may result in the program directing a person to a string of questions resulting in the wrong solution or the wrong language in a document. Once the Skype type interview is more perfected then one can actually provide services to a client that are more inline with the information a client would receive in an attorney’s office. Even then the media interface may be so insulating that accuracy suffers. It is wrong to say the a $10.00 will is serviceable. I can write a one paragraph or one page trust and present it to you. The trust will work but it will it be suited to your situation, highly unlikely.

An attorney does not need a plush office or other surroundings to do his or her work. However, there is a reason history has always called the attorney profession the “practice of law” for the law is ever changing.

The $10 will may work for some people but recommending the $10.00 document may take an hour of extraction of factual information.

Robert M. Frost