Attorneys

The per­son writ­ing this book is an attor­ney, which means I’m biased. So when it comes to the ques­tion of whether you need an attor­ney, I’ll just give you your options and let you choose.

Option 1 

No attor­ney. Fig­ure things out on your own. There are lots of self-help books that will save you money.

Option 2 

Online services/no attor­ney. You can go online and find plenty of com­pa­nies who will give you the forms you need. They’re all over the place. Some might even have an attor­ney on call to answer your questions.

Option 3 

A local attor­ney. You can look through you phone book or ask around and find an attorney.

Option 4 

Vel­lum LLC. Vellum’s Inside-out legal ser­vices are unlike any other law firm or attor­ney that I’m aware of.

My opin­ion: Many peo­ple are very capa­ble of teach­ing them­selves, but I’ve seen too many instances when some­one tried to do things on their own and their lack of expe­ri­ence cost them dearly in the long run. It’s not good to be penny-wise and pound fool­ish. The other prob­lem is that there is a lot to learn. To learn every­thing you need to know about LLCs, trade­marks, employ­ment law, and sell­ing a busi­ness, takes a long time. The biggest cost is your time. But some peo­ple have done it on their own just fine.

The online sys­tems do a fine job for some peo­ple. But they’re mostly national com­pa­nies who don’t have expe­ri­ence with Alaska and its laws. They mostly pro­vide a one-size-fits all approach. It’s like walk­ing into JC Penny to buy a suit and find­ing out that they only have one size. The suit will fit a small part of the pop­u­la­tion, but the rest get a suit that’s either too big or too small.

Local attor­neys are famil­iar with Alaska, but they are expen­sive. Most attor­neys cut and paste old doc­u­ments and take a long time to do it, so you’re pay­ing for their inef­fi­ciency. There are a cou­ple of attor­neys who have tried to auto­mate things, but their efforts involve a para­le­gal whose salary is worked into the price you pay. I’ve yet to meet an attor­ney or law firm who has cre­ated any sort of full-fledged auto­mated system.

That’s where Vel­lum LLC and Inside-out Legal Ser­vices comes into play. Vellum’s sys­tem allows you to do most of the work on your own, but with attor­ney over­sight. And Vel­lum passes the cost sav­ings to you.

You get the peace and com­fort of know­ing that an attor­ney reviewed your work, caught any errors, and has opti­mized things for your sit­u­a­tion. And it all comes from a local attor­ney that you can meet with per­son­ally. It’s like hav­ing your very own legal depart­ment with­out the cost.