Online legal services are websites that sell standard legal documents and filings for a set fee, such as registering a company, filing a trademark or drafting a rent agreement. When a customer needs legal advice, the service connects the customer to a licensed lawyer. Small businesses, start-up founders and ordinary people use them.
Much legal work follows standard forms. An online legal service turns each such job into a product with a fixed price and a checklist. Its staff and software do the routine parts, and its lawyers handle the parts that need judgement.
Here is a typical case. Two founders in Indore want to start a private limited company that makes namkeen and sells it online. They choose a company registration package on a service's website, and pay ₹7,000 plus government fees. The website asks for the company's proposed name, its office address, and both founders' PAN and Aadhaar details. The service's software fills these into the government's company registration form on the Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA) portal. Filling standard forms from data in this way is called document generation. Each director also needs a digital signature certificate (DSC), a certificate that proves who signed an electronic form, and the service arranges these too. Usually within a week or two, the company receives its certificate of incorporation, with its own PAN and TAN.
Next, the founders want to protect their brand name. The service files a trademark application with the Trade Marks Registry. The government fee for a small business that files online is ₹4,500 for each class of goods. Say the trademark examiner then objects that the name is too close to an existing trademark. Replying to an objection needs legal judgement. So the service passes the case to a lawyer on its panel, for an extra fee.
Why does this model need lawyers at all? In India, the Advocates Act allows only advocates enrolled with a State Bar Council to practise law. So these services sell the forms and filings themselves, and pass questions that need advice to licensed lawyers.
The fixed fee is the main difference from a law firm. Law firms usually charge by the hour or by the hearing, so the client does not know the final cost in advance. This is described in billable hours.
Many services also sell yearly packages, such as a company's annual filings with the MCA and its tax returns. They collect signatures on agreements by electronic signature. Many customers arrive from an online lawyer directory, after reading a plain-language article about their problem.