Overview
Legalzoom.com – online legal documents, reviewed by lawyers, without lawyer prices. When you need an incorporation, last will, copyright, even a divorce, LegalZoom has you covered!
The basic idea is that a lawyer (a famous one – Robert Shapiro) had an illegitimate child with a brilliant nerd programmer, and LegalZoom was born. You go online and fill out a bunch of easy questions on web forms and wait for your documents to arrive in the mail (or come back from the state, if LZ sends them for you). They charge a healthy fee for these documents, but much less than a lawyer would charge you for the same thing.
Love it! No product fulfillment (except legal document packages), endless room for expansion (there are more legal documents in this world than there are numbers to count that high), minimal man-power required (all the work is done up-front when creating the document template).
The company isn't positioned in so much of a niche as it is a first mover in an enormous industry – with no major competitors. In fact, if you think about it, there are no big names in the legal space at all! Online, or off. Perhaps pre-paid legal comes to mind – but that's a totally different type of service. Seriously, is there any huge legal company that springs to the average Joe's mind when you mention the industry?
They're positioned to service legal needs worldwide. I don't know anything about the legal industry in America, much less the rest of the world, but it seems to me that if you can do it here… you can do it there!
Where's the beef?
It's a beef-steak! Lots of people – an Alexa rating of 10,387 mean an approximate 20,000 visitors a day. At the average 2.5% conversion rate (total guess, it's probably higher), and a high average package price of more than $100 (educated guess, but again, probably higher), they're making mucho mooola! That's Spanish for "I'm looking at several Carribean islands that are for sale right now… but they must have a private airstrip because I don't do the helicopter thing anymore."
Reasons for success
- First mover in enormous industry. There's just not really anyone to compete directly with them. There are plenty of other places that will form an incorporation for you. There are plenty of places to get your will. They have a direct competitor in CompleteCase that will help you to get a divorce. But, there is absolutely nobody that does all of this stuff under one roof like LegalZoom.
- Celebrity connection with Robert Shapiro (of OJ Simpson fame) brings credibility and exposure (just see the list of news outlets they've been featured on). For my money, when he goes on TV he's one of the best interviewees in the world…
- Big brains, and big connections. Have a look at their 'about us' page. Not a big deal (…yawn…), but they've got one celebrity, one former member of the Supreme Court of California, 2 Harvard MBA's, a Yale grad, couple UCLA Law grads, blah blah blah. I think some of these guys' pets might have prestigious degrees…
- Easy process. It's a no-brainer to fill out one of their questionnaires. I've done it a few times, so it must be easy!
- Customer service. They really push their customer service from their site, which makes sense when you're selling a complicated product like they are.
- Smart marketing
What kind of marketing do they do?
- PPC – they're pretty much at the top of the pile for any search relating to the products they sell.
- Traditional press – Robert Shapiro is a draw for television interviews.
- Radio – They're sponsored by morning drive programs.
- SEO – The google query "site:legalzoom.com" shows 27,400 pages returned. They've obviously got a robust content publishing system in place.
How to steal this idea
I think the keys to this type of business are:
- Big market
- Complicated service, made easy
- Undercut traditional service model pricing
- No real need to be face-to-face
Some of the traditional service industries that might be right for this type of business are:
- Insurance – being done by individual companies… but is there an insurance aggregator out there?
- Real estate – Zillow.com just rolled out… I'm very excited to see how these guys plan to cut out real estate agents for good. This site looks very cool, but due to the demand on their servers today, I've been unable to check it out!
- Employment – Why is there not a company that runs a prospective employee through a questionnaire and standardizes the results for the prospective employers??? Every time I hire someone, I spend hours and hours of time trying to evaluate the resumes.
- Advertising – It seems to me that a company could fill out a questionnaire about their products/services, and get published in multiple offline sources for one low package price.
- Transportation booking – see my company RideOnTime.com . The process of getting a limo or taxi in a new town WAS very complicated and hit-or-miss. Not anymore!
Standard disclaimer
The data and analysis in this blog are complete guesses, not remotely researched, and should not be taken seriously. This is meant only to show the basic business model of the site, and why I think it rocks. If I've royally screwed the pooch, feel free to let me know, and I'll acknowledge my stupidity in a future post.
Labels: business models