The Money Mustache Community
Learning, Sharing, and Teaching => Entrepreneurship => Topic started by: bigfoot11 on March 06, 2017, 09:31:51 PM
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Hey all!
Was wondering if other entrepreneurs used Legal Zoom to set up their business or do you go a more traditional route like hiring a lawyer to do it?
Currently looking at starting an online business blogging/store and was wondering what others have done?
Thanks for the time
bigfoot11
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What kind of business do you want to set up (structure, I mean) and what would Legal Zoom do for you?
I incorporated last year (S-corp) and needed no special legal expertise to register my business with the state.
Beware of paying somebody to do work you're perfectly capable of doing yourself...
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You can probably form an LLC or corporation yourself... Filling out the articles of formation "form" or stepping through the usually available online wizard that completes the form for you is pretty easy.
BTW, where Legal Zoom often bungles set-up for an entrepreneur (in my experience) is with the elections... I.e., the Subchapter S election choice.
P.S. To show you how easy LLC formation is, here's a blog post that gives steps and then provides example completed forms for Washington state and other states' forms look almost the exact same:
http://evergreensmallbusiness.com/forming-a-washington-state-llc/
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Thank you both for replying!
Freedom2016- I was looking at setting up an LLC or an S-Corp. I too hate paying people for stuff I am capable doing by myself.
SeatlleCPA- Thank you for sharing the blog. Between the SBA and that blog post I should be able to handle this.
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Good god no. Pay a pro. Legal zoom is absolute garbage. All I've ever seen is junk created from there seriously. Pay a pro. Please. This is your business. Do it right.
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Every lawyer I've ever been around when the term Legal Zoom is brought up cringes.
It's not a "there goes my job" cringe, it's more like the cringe a plumber makes when he sees a T joint installed flowing the wrong way, or the way a mechanic cringes when an owner admits not knowing you had to change the oil, or the way a doctor cringes when someone gets a puncture wound on a piece of metal and doesn't get a tetanus shot. It's the way an architect cringes at most residential add-ons, or a trucker cringes at people texting while driving. It's the same cringe you see from a paramedic when a motorcyclist rides by without a helmet, which is the same cringe engineers make when they discover the foundation was poured just six inches deep, on sand. If you've seen an electrician stare at knob-and-tube wiring, or a firefighter watching kids shooting off fireworks in the street, you know what I mean.