Get an answer from a lawyer, quick and cheap

A friend of mine recently had a legal question and was trying to avoid lawyer’s fees. Basically, she just needed to know if a particular document needed to be filed with the court to be legal, or whether it could just be notarized. She didn’t want to go to a lawyer and ask. She felt not only would this be costly, but they’d tell her, “Oh, yeah, you need all sorts of stuff only a lawyer can do for hundreds of dollars” when maybe that wasn’t necessary. She and I both had spent hours researching this on the web, but we found nothing that answered her question. Apparently it’s not a common situation.

I found a service online called JustAnswer, where you just type your question into a box, sign up for an account, make a deposit of $15 (or more, if you feel you can afford it) and wait for a lawyer to answer. Now, the deposit is there just in case you like the answer you get well enough to pay for it. If you don’t feel the question’s been answered, you don’t have to “accept” the answer. I doubt you would get your deposit back in that case, but I guess you could use it to ask another question. [see comments] In any case, I had the $15 to spare and I wanted to help her out, and I knew it would really put her at ease to know one way or the other what she needed to do.

I asked the question, and got an answer within three minutes. Since I had said up front that my friend was trying to avoid lawyer and court fees, I was impressed that the lawyer who answered said she could totally do it all without a lawyer, but did need to file the document with the court to make it legal. This struck me as an honest and straightforward answer. I wrote back to ask precisely how to file with the court, and was told (again, within about 5 minutes) that she should just call the court clerk for instructions, and it should be very simple and inexpensive. I then accepted the answer, which meant the lawyer got paid, and added a tip of $5 just because I was that happy with the response and felt my friend could’ve spent far more on a consultation and not gotten a better result.

I feel this service is worth recommending if you just need a question answered by a lawyer, as opposed to needing a whole lot of advice from one. It’s also amazing to get an answer at 11pm on a Friday night instead of having to wait until office hours on Monday morning. If you try this service out, please let me know in comments how it worked out for you.

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Posted in Do It Yourself, Frugal on December 24, 2008