https://www.lawsitesblog.com/2020/02/upcounsel-to-shut-down-was-marketplace-for-freelance-lawyers.html
By Bob Ambrogi on
Lawyer marketplace UpCounsel is shutting down.
The San Francisco based company, which has raised a total of $26 million, including a $12 million Series B in April 2018, notified customers by email this morning that it will shut down permanently on March 4.
The company served corporations by providing freelance lawyers for anything from a one-time consultation to staffing a legal department.
It was cofounded by Mason Blake, an engineer who was its CTO, and Matt Faustman, its CEO and an attorney who previously represented startups in Silicon Valley.
Following is the email that went out today:
We want to thank you for your continued support since we first started UpCounsel in 2012. It has been a delight to work with each of you along the way, building innovative products to make the legal experience better. Pursuing our mission of creating a remarkable legal experience was made possible because of you. As founders we are humbled and honored that you came on this journey with us.
Pursuant to a decision approved by our board of directors and shareholders, the UpCounsel website will be shut down permanently on March 4, 2020. At that time you will no longer be able to login to your account. In connection with the site shutdown we will be deleting all account information and any data associated with your usage of UpCounsel in accordance with best data practices. If you wish to retrieve a copy of your data, please contact support@upcounsel.com.
We recommend and encourage you to continue working with your lawyers. This does not disrupt your attorney relationships or interfere with the progress of any legal project. Please reach out to your lawyer to discuss steps on managing this transition and feel free to contact us with questions as well.
It is with a heavy heart that we deliver this news and understand that this abrupt announcement will come as a shock to some of you that have come to rely on UpCounsel. Our team will be available as usual to answer any questions you may have leading up to the site’s shutdown on March 4th. We will share further details with you as they become available.
Best,
Mason Blake & Matthew Faustman
UpCounsel Co-founders
....
Editorial Note: Fundera exists to help you make better business decisions. That’s why we make sure our editorial integrity isn’t influenced by our own business. The opinions, analyses, reviews, or recommendations in this article are those of our editorial team alone.
What Is UpCounsel?
UpCounsel is a legal marketplace and lawyer matching service for small businesses, startups, and entrepreneurs. You can post a legal job on their website and within a few hours, get detailed proposals from multiple business attorneys located near your business.
After comparing the proposals based on price, the lawyer’s experience, and previous client reviews, you can schedule free consultations and hire the attorney you’d like to work with. Lawyers negotiate and charge their own rates, and UpCounsel adds a small fee of their own.
Businesses that use UpCounsel typically save 60% compared to a law firm. There’s no obligation to hire someone, so you’re free to walk away if you don’t like any of the proposals. You can also access free legal forms on UpCounsel.
UpCounsel Pricing
Each attorney on the UpCounsel network is free to negotiate their own rate and fee structure with the client. Some charge an hourly rate, and others charge a fixed fee for a specific project. On top of the lawyer’s rate there’s a 5% UpCounsel fee that helps maintain the platform.
However, here’s an estimate of what different attorneys in UpCounsel’s network charge for different business legal services:
| Service | UpCounsel estimated cost* |
|---|---|
Form an LLC
|
$500 (including filing fees)
|
Form a corporation
|
$1,000 (including filing fees)
|
Contract/document review
|
$125 to $250 per hour
|
File for a patent
|
$1,200 to $3,200
|
File for a trademark
|
$645 (1 class, including filing fees)
|
Immigration/employer-sponsored visas
|
Starts at $2,750
|
HR and employment law
|
Starts at $200 per hour
|
Securities and finance
|
Starts at $200 per hour
|
General counsel for day to day legal matters
|
$225 to $350 per hour
|
*UpCounsel adds a 5% maintenance fee on top of the lawyer’s rate.
As you can see from the prices shown above, UpCounsel attorneys charge a fairly wide range of fees. Lawyers may bill at an hourly rate or charge a fixed fee for common projects and transactions.
The cost will depend on a number of factors, including:
- How experienced the lawyer is
- The complexity of your legal issue or case
- How quickly you need the work to be done
- Your business’s location (e.g. lawyers in New York charge more than lawyers in Idaho)
When a lawyer is finished with a job, they will submit an invoice on UpCounsel. In some situations, the lawyer may ask for a deposit or portion of the fee to be paid upfront. The good thing is that there won’t be surprises about the cost. You’ll get a detailed breakdown of each lawyer’s fee structure and billing preferences in their initial proposal. So if a lawyer sounds too expensive, you can choose to hire someone else.
You may be wondering what that last item on the list, general counsel for day-to-day legal matters, means. That’s for small businesses that don’t have an in-house lawyer or legal department but want ready access to a lawyer. UpCounsel attorneys can serve as your general counsel, assisting with day-to-day legal matters and providing regular legal advice.
UpCounsel Pros
Highly Experienced, Top-tier Attorneys
The biggest advantage of using UpCounsel is that they have experienced, skilled lawyers on their platform. On average, attorneys on the platform have 14 years of experience. Many come from a career in big law firms or as in-house lawyers at leading companies like Google, Apple, and Hewlett Packard. With this kind of experience under their belts, most of these lawyers are ready to tackle even the most challenging cases. UpCounsel has profiles on each attorney, as well, so you can see ratings from past clients and reviews of their recent work.
Free Legal Forms and Resources
If you’re not ready to hire a lawyer just yet but are digging around for some information, then UpCounsel can still be a good legal resource for you. They have attorney-reviewed legal forms, sample documents, and articles to help you get started—all available for free. These resources span almost every legal topic that a startup or business could be interested in, from intellectual property to employment law to startup law.
UpCounsel Con
Expensive
One downside to using UpCounsel is that it is more expensive than other sites for a similar set of services. For example, forming an LLC through UpCounsel is estimated at around $500 including filing fees. By comparison, an LLC can be formed on LegalZoom or Rocket Lawyer for around $300 including filing fees. Similarly, a provisional patent application costs under $1,000 on LegalZoom, but it’s estimated at $1,200 on UpCounsel. Although UpCounsel is more expensive, that’s also the price you pay to have a more experienced lawyer represent you.
UpCounsel Customer Service
UpCounsel has email support only, which can be accessed on their contact page. They do not offer phone support.
Summary of UpCounsel Online Reviews
There aren’t many online reviews of UpCounsel, but those reviews that are available are generally positive.
Positive UpCounsel Reviews
The main thing people like about UpCounsel is how talented the attorneys are, even though their prices are much lower than a traditional law firm. Slightly larger businesses also loved the outside general counsel option because it gives them an “on-call” attorney at a fraction of standard law firm rates.
Negative UpCounsel Reviews
The main complaint that some people had is that the lawyers weren’t very responsive. It sometimes took several hours to hear back from UpCounsel attorneys.
UpCounsel Competitors and Alternatives
UpCounsel is one of the few legal marketplaces that caters just to small businesses, and they have a big network of highly experienced, vetted attorneys. However, for basic legal help, there are several other sites that are a better value.
Here are some of the leading alternatives to UpCounsel:
Best UpCounsel Alternative for Regular Legal Help: LegalZoom
If you’d like access to a lawyer regularly, then you can opt for UpCounsel’s outside general counsel, but that can get expensive if the lawyer charges a high hourly rate. If you need an “on-call” lawyer, then a less expensive option may be to enroll in a business legal plan.
LegalZoom offers a business legal plan for $31.25 per month that gives you access to unlimited legal forms, short phone sessions with a lawyer, and document review. This may be a better value if you’re a fairly small business and need help with basic legal matters from time to time.
Best UpCounsel Alternative for Legal Forms: Rocket Lawyer
Standard legal forms are available for free download on UpCounsel, but you cannot customize them for your small business’s needs. Rocket Lawyer, on the other hand, is great for building custom legal forms, such as nondisclosure agreements, supplier agreements, partnership agreements, and dozens more. They have an intuitive form builder that asks you a series of questions as you build each legal form.
The questions are customized based on the type of form and where your business is located. These customizations are important for making sure that your forms hold up in court since laws differ in each state and even small bits of contractual language can make a big difference. So, if your primary goal is to create legal documents, head over to Rocket Lawyer.
Best UpCounsel Alternative for Business Formation: IncFile
All UpCounsel lawyers negotiate and charge their own rates, but the estimate for forming an LLC is $500 including filing fees, and the estimate for forming a corporation is $1,000. That is quite steep compared to some other online legal services. IncFile is the most affordable option. They charge just $49 plus filing fees to draft formation paperwork and file it on your behalf.
The difference is that with IncFile, a lawyer may not be doing all the work for you. Non-lawyers can draft formation paperwork, which is riskier than having a lawyer help you from start to finish. It could result in delays or even errors. However, if you have a straightforward business formation, it might not be worth paying a lot for it.
Bottom Line
UpCounsel is an active on-demand marketplace for business lawyers and business legal services. It’s a great choice if you have a complex case or if you’d like to find an experienced lawyer to be your go-to attorney. Rates tend to be higher on UpCounsel than other legal platforms, but you’re also getting to work with a group of highly experienced, top-tier attorneys. These lawyers can be great partners as your business grows to the next level.
Priyanka Prakash, JD
Priyanka Prakash is a senior staff writer at Fundera, specializing in small business finance, credit, law, and insurance. She has a law degree from the University of Washington and a bachelor's degree from U.C. Berkeley in communications and political science. Priyanka's work has been featured in Inc., Fast Company, CNBC, and other top publications. Prior to joining Fundera, Priyanka was managing editor at a small business resource site and in-house counsel at a Y Combinator tech startup. Email: priyanka@fundera.com.