Free Web-Enabled Florida Divorce Forms
A new web site based in Florida: http://www.idivorce.com offers a set of automated Florida divorce forms for free. The user scrolls through a set of friendly but numerous screens, and inserts their financial information and other information. Once completed, the forms are instantly available and can be printed out from the web browser. The generated forms are not in Adobe .PDF format, as distributed by the Florida Supreme Court, but they seem to meet all of the court requirements any way, so they should be accepted by Florida court clerks.
The interesting feature of the site is that the forms are not only automated, which requires a capital investment, but also free. Apparently the research, development, and administrative costs will be offset by advertising revenues generated by Google Ad Words and other advertising networks. I see this as a trend in the sense that as legal forms continue to become more transparent in the sense that the legal profession can no longer control legal information distribution, they become commodities and the cost of legal forms themselves goes down to zero.
It will be interesting to see if this site generates enough advertising revenues to justify expansion to other states outside of Florida. Meanwhile it will be a useful site for Florida consumers. It would be useful if the site mentioned on the home page that only Florida divorce forms are available at this time, but there additional states are planned. As presently presented the site is not in compliance with the American Bar Association's Best Practices for Legal Information Web Site Providers.
Great new blog, Richard!
In the spirit of re-examining things, I dug up this passage from an article I wrote circa 1998 ("Lawyering for Tomorrow.") Perhaps tomorrow has almost arrived:
Today various commercial, academic, governmental, and other organizations are rushing to make primary legal material (statutes, regulations, cases) available at low or no cost on the Web. Most significant legal texts will soon be instantly available freely or inexpensively to everyone who needs them. In a sense, every home and office will have a complete law library.
Publishers and other actors are starting to post interactive or 'smart' models of that material. Simple legal expert systems use formalizations of well structured legal rules to drive question-and-answer tools, available online, that consumers and businesses can consult for basic guidance on their rights and duties. Publishers will market sophisticated systems like this, and there will be an escalation of even more sophisticated development inside some law firms. Some of these systems will find their way to a broader market because it often makes economic sense for holders of this valuable intellectual capital to distribute it widely.
Basic improvements in the performance and reliability of the Internet will continue to accompany these developments, resulting in perhaps as little as ten years in the availability of interactive legal content that is nearly ubiquitous and effectively instantaneous. Lawyers and non-lawyers alike will have ready access to this vast library of legal knowledge, embellished by increasingly useful indices, maps, commentaries, and other kinds of 'metacontent' that provide orientation and interpretation. (Of course, there will inevitably be many differing, and even contradictory, accounts of 'the' law.)
The Web now offers all kinds of astonishing information services for free, such as sites that will draw a detailed map of any neighborhood, and that provide step-by-step directions for driving from one location to another. How long will it be before someone starts to provide analogous maps and directions for getting from one legal situation to another? "Where do you want to go today?" Routine legal guidance is being given away for free, paid for by advertising.
Lawyers' privileged access to legal content is necessarily eroded by these developments. Basic forms of legal information and redress are becoming available to citizens without an intervening priesthood. As this disintermediation proceeds, some lawyers who have simply been middlemen will join cars salesmen and bank tellers in the unemployment line. (Some of them may find low-paying work as 'checkers' who review the transcripts of online sessions in which consumers receive computer-generated advice and documents.)