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One of the most frequent complaints I get from my founders is the high cost of hiring business lawyers. It is not unusual to run up bills of $50,000+ before the first round of funding on basic legal work, such as setting up the corporation, allocating founder shares, etc, etc. We are not going to solve that problem today. It is the basic cost of doing business in the US. Finding and working with good start up lawyers such as Gunderson and Wilmer Hale, who defer fees until funding is your best option.
LawPivot, on the other hand, is a useful tool to supplement those expensive lawyers. The site matches "lean" (read: poor) start ups with lawyers who may be able to help them with legal questions. You visit the site and pose your question, such as the difficulty of protecting certain types of intellectual property, and some smart lawyer or lawyers gives you some "free" advice. Make no mistake, the lawyer is interested in having you as a paying client in the future.
LawPivot has developed sophisticated algorithms (their words) to funnel your questions to the appropriate lawyer, based on experince and quality of past respeonses. Companies can ask up to three free questions a month (for the moment). A subscription fee (less than $100 per month) is forthcoming soon. That is quite a deal when you consider even an associate at a top law firm can run you $400 per hour.
LawPivot can be best thought of as a useful supplement to you current lawyer, perhaps for questions that are simple and you don't want to pay a lot for the answer, or areas outside their expertise, such a labor laws in California
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