LegalZoom is an online legal platform for small businesses and individuals. It sells business formation and compliance filings, registered agent service, trademark and copyright filings, legal forms, estate planning documents and attorney plans. LegalZoom.com, Inc., listed on Nasdaq and based in Mountain View, California, states that it is not a law firm; attorney services come through independent attorneys and, where authorized, its subsidiary law firm LZ Legal Services, LLC. Its AI features include Doc Assist, a free document summarizer, a business name generator, a grant finder, an expense categorizer and AI research for business licenses.
It also publishes a catalog of 24 MCP tools that let assistants such as ChatGPT, Claude and Microsoft 365 Copilot form LLCs, analyze documents against a clause framework curated by attorneys and book attorney reviews. Formation packages are priced publicly from $0 plus state fees. The assessment covers the platform and its AI features, not the attorney services.
Side by side on the same 15 capability axes and 12 legal signals: where the two part company, and what neither one publishes.
Vendors in the same categories as LegalZoom whose graded profiles look most alike, with a line on what each product does.
Similar is not the same, so check that each one does the job you need. No vendor pays for placement.
Ordered by how closely the graded profiles match across the 15 capability axes, inside the same categories. See how each axis is graded in the methodology.
All 15 axes, graded from public sources on the date shown. Hover a grade to see what the letter means on that axis.
How much of the product is actually AI. Whether the machine learning is the mechanism the buyer is paying for or a feature layered onto conventional software, and whether the vendor is specific about which is which.
The AI is a feature layer on a business whose value stands without it. LegalZoom's AI features are Doc Assist, a free document summarizer; a business name generator, NAICS code search, expense categorizer, grant finder and search summaries; and AI research that produces most business license lists. The core products, such as entity formation and compliance filings, registered agent service, trademark and copyright filings, legal forms and attorney plans, run without the models.
Whether the vendor publishes measured accuracy on citations and assertions, grounds output to primary sources, and says plainly what its system does when it does not know. Legal has a documented public record of fabricated citations reaching filed briefs, so an untested claim of accuracy is not evidence.
Grounding is claimed without sources a user can open or any measurement. The MCP catalog says documents are analyzed against a clause framework curated by attorneys, and Doc Assist gives clause highlights and common questions for the document type. The Doc Assist page and FAQ say summaries may be incomplete or inaccurate because they rely on rapidly evolving generative AI, and the AI Additional Terms make no promise that output is accurate. No accuracy figure, test or source linking is published.
What the system decides on its own, what a lawyer must approve, and whether the vendor documents where the review point sits. A tool that drafts under review and a tool that files without one are different products and different risks.
Oversight is asserted through disclaimers and an optional attorney, without a described control on the AI. Doc Assist says its output is informational only and links to attorney review, and the AI Additional Terms say the AI Services do not provide legal advice. A March 2026 release says AI now completes about 70 percent of business license research requests and the rest still go to human review. It does not say what sends a request to a person or who that reviewer is. No lawyer reviews AI output by default.
Named, dated evidence that the product works in production at real firms or legal departments. Case studies with figures and identified customers count. Unattributed testimonials and launch announcements do not.
Results are quoted without customer attribution or a method on the customer side. The business license release estimates about $3 million in LegalZoom's own savings in 2026 from automating license research, and a 2023 release says 85 percent of LegalZoom customers had not spoken to an attorney. These are the vendor's operating figures, not named customer outcomes, and the Terms say published reviews carry only a first name and last initial.
How client confidences are handled: attorney client privilege and work product treatment, segregation of one client matter from another, whether client data trains any model, and what the vendor commits to in writing rather than in marketing.
Confidentiality is asserted in general terms, and training use is permitted by policy. The Terms of Service say no attorney client relationship or privilege is created with LegalZoom, and the AI Additional Terms say the AI Services are not meant for privileged or highly sensitive information. The privacy policy says LegalZoom does not intend to collect attorney information in a way that waives privilege. The Doc Assist FAQ says uploads are stored in the user's documents center and may be used to train LegalZoom's own models but not third party AI tools. Nothing addresses separation between users or what an AI provider retains.
Whether the vendor is clear that it supplies a tool rather than legal advice, who its audience is, and how it addresses unauthorized practice of law, competence and supervision duties, and jurisdiction limits. ABA Formal Opinion 512 is the reference point. Where the advice line is not the duty a product raises, the axis is read through the nearest professional duty it does raise: judicial conduct rules and the reviewing duty for products sold only to courts, and the duty to bill for time actually spent for products that draft time entries.
The vendor states plainly what the product is and is not, who may use it and what it requires of its attorneys, with jurisdiction statements and a disclosure on every page. The Terms of Service open by saying LegalZoom is not a law firm, its forms are no substitute for an attorney, the customer represents themselves, and no attorney client relationship or privilege is created. They add that a customer who believes they received legal advice should not buy.
The Terms of Use say LegalZoom reviews answers only for completeness and consistency and never applies law to facts. They define network attorneys' experience as five years' practice, errors and omissions insurance, good standing and no recent discipline. The Terms say LegalZoom is not a registered legal document assistant under California law, and the AI Additional Terms limit AI use to adults and say it is not legal advice. The footer names the subsidiary law firm, LZ Legal Services, LLC, as the only route to advice.
Published governance over model behavior: who owns it inside the vendor, what is tested before release, and what is disclosed about disparate output across matter types, parties, or populations.
No AI governance position is published. The privacy policy says LegalZoom applies privacy by design, has privacy and security teams, and uses AI and human review in processing; the AI Additional Terms set rules for users. Nothing describes how the AI features are tested before release, who is accountable for them, or how they perform across users or document types.
Retention, deletion, access control, and what happens to prompts and documents after they are processed. Whether the vendor states its subprocessors and its incident practice, or leaves the buyer to assume.
Published policy covers much of the ground, short of a retention period, a subprocessor list and an incident practice. The privacy policy covers products as well as the website and lists the data collected. It names payment, shipping and identity verification vendors (WorldPay, Adyen, Stripe, Onfido, Veriff, FedEx, USPS), bars service providers from other uses, sets out access and deletion requests with an appeal route, and says multi factor authentication is in place for all customer accounts.
The security page describes a dedicated security team, encryption of sensitive information and a responsible disclosure policy, and the Doc Assist FAQ says uploads are stored in the user's documents center. Retention is only at least as long as necessary, no AI provider is named, and no breach notification commitment is published.
What the vendor stands behind contractually when its output is wrong. Indemnities, caps, carve outs, insurance, and whether any of it is published or only reachable through a negotiated agreement.
Liability is addressed only by disclaimers and a standard cap. The AI Additional Terms provide the AI Services as is, with no promise that output is accurate, complete or fit for use. The Terms of Service and Terms of Use exclude indirect damages and cap liability at the amount paid. The LZ Guarantee is a refund policy on purchases and does not reach the free AI features.
How deeply the product reaches into the systems legal work already lives in: document management such as iManage and NetDocuments, Word and Outlook, contract lifecycle management, matter management, e-billing, and court filing systems.
Documented, verifiable integrations, with what each one does described. The AI capabilities page publishes 24 MCP tools in seven families, from LLC formation and business licenses to document analysis and attorney booking, each with its own page. It also publishes a catalog.json with schemas, annotations, versions and authentication, a text catalog for agents, connector setup documentation and six read only WebMCP browser tools.
Named integrations cover ChatGPT, Claude and a Microsoft 365 Copilot agent. For a small business buyer, these assistants and Microsoft 365 are where the work happens.
Where the software runs and where the data sits. Multi tenant cloud, single tenant, private deployment, on premises, and whether region of residence is a published option or an enterprise conversation.
Cloud delivery is implied, and neither hosting location nor tenancy is stated. The privacy policy covers US, EU and UK users but says nothing about where data is hosted or processed. The Doc Assist FAQ says the service is available only to US customers, which concerns eligibility rather than residency.
Independent attestation a buyer can pull without a sales call: SOC 2, ISO 27001, penetration test summaries, a trust center with current reports and named scope rather than a badge image.
No independent security attestation is published. The security page, titled a trust page, describes a dedicated information security team, encryption, multi factor authentication and a responsible disclosure policy, and names no SOC 2 report, ISO certification or audit.
Which models sit underneath, whose they are, where they run, and whether the vendor commits to telling customers when that changes. A legal buyer inherits every dependency it cannot see.
Proprietary models are mentioned without saying what sits underneath. The Doc Assist FAQ says inputs may train LegalZoom's own proprietary AI models and will not train third party AI tools, and the AI Additional Terms say the features use generative AI. No model, version or provider is named, and nothing commits to notice of changes. The ChatGPT, Claude and Microsoft 365 Copilot integrations run LegalZoom tools inside other vendors' assistants and do not disclose what powers LegalZoom's own features.
Whether a buyer can learn what this costs without entering a sales process: published rates, the unit being charged, what sits behind an enterprise tier, and what implementation adds.
A buyer can learn the price without a sales process. LegalZoom's own pages publish LLC formation at $0 (Basic), $249 (Pro) and $299 (Premium), each plus state filing fees. Premium's attorney consultations renew at $49 a month after 30 days, bookkeeping tools cost $9.99 a month after six months, and Doc Assist is free. The Terms of Service set out filing fees, a 60 day refund window and an installment plan for purchases of $200 or more.
Who the product is actually built for. AmLaw, midlaw, small firm and solo, in house departments, government and courts, and which practice areas are supported rather than merely claimed.
Who the product serves and what it covers are documented, with limits stated. LegalZoom serves small businesses and individuals across business formation and compliance, business licenses, trademarks, copyrights and provisional patents, wills, trusts, powers of attorney, prenuptial agreements, divorce and real estate documents. The stated limits are specific. Doc Assist is for US users only and takes text files up to 5 MB, license lists exclude tax registrations and professional licenses, and the AI features are not for privileged, highly sensitive or minors' information.
The Terms say LegalZoom is not a registered legal document assistant in California. Firm segments and government use do not apply to a consumer product.
The public pages on file for LegalZoom, with the recorded signals each one supports and the date it was last read. Open any of them and check the reading against the record.
Prompt and Output Retention, Third Party Request and Subpoena Notice
Read Sep 18, 2026
Primary Law Corpus Provenance
Read Sep 18, 2026
Client Data in Training
Read Sep 18, 2026
Billing and Fee Posture
Read Sep 18, 2026
Bar Guidance Alignment
Read Sep 18, 2026
One-time packages per business formation, plus optional subscriptions. LLC Basic $0, Pro $249 and Premium $299, each plus state filing fees; Premium includes 30 days of attorney consultations renewing at $49 a month and six months of bookkeeping tools renewing at $9.99 a month. Doc Assist and Grant Finder are free. Sources: LegalZoom LLC pages (search excerpts) and Terms of Service (4 September 2026), read 18 September 2026.
Implementation: None. State filing fees are extra and charged at cost; attorney consultations on the Premium package renew at $49 a month after 30 days.
LegalZoom opened its AI Assistant to all business owners for free, including those who formed their business elsewhere and open a free account. It answers status and compliance questions from the customer's own entity record, flags filing deadlines and links the filing product needed. When judgment is required, it routes the customer to a licensed attorney or specialist.
LegalZoom launched a ChatGPT plugin aimed at attorneys. Users can ask questions of LegalZoom and find its resources from inside ChatGPT.
A signal records what public sources say on the date shown. It is not a grade and it is not a recommendation. Where a signal reads Not addressed, it means the index did not locate the material in public sources on that date, which is a statement about disclosure rather than about the product.
Can material a lawyer puts into this product be used to train a model?
Public material states that customer content trains, refines or personalizes models, with no matching term located in the published agreement. Any de identification, anonymization or aggregation qualifier is recorded in the summary.
Public material states that customer inputs may train the vendor's own models, with no matching term in the agreement. The Doc Assist FAQ says information provided through Doc Assist may be used to improve the product, which may involve training LegalZoom's own proprietary AI models, and will not be used to train any third-party AI tools. The Terms of Use license personal information only to enable the service and incorporate the Privacy Policy, whose product-development purpose covers developing machine learning or AI technologies without naming training. No opt-out was located.
How long does the product keep what a lawyer typed, and can that be set to zero?
Retention is acknowledged in public materials with no stated period.
Retention is acknowledged without a period. The privacy policy says personal information is kept at least as long as needed for its purposes and legal obligations; the Doc Assist FAQ says uploaded documents are stored in the user's documents center and summaries in a LegalZoom database. Deletion is by verified request and may be declined.
Does retrieval respect the firm’s ethical walls, or can the model read across them?
No located public material addresses walls or matter level segregation.
Controls on account access are the only separation described, and keeping one user's matters apart from another's goes entirely unmentioned. Nothing addresses separation between users' matters beyond controls on authorized contacts for account access.
If someone subpoenas the vendor for a firm’s data, does the firm hear about it first?
Published terms or policy address disclosure to authorities or in response to legal process, and no commitment or reservation regarding customer notice is located anywhere. The vendor has told the customer that data can leave and has said nothing about whether the customer hears of it.
Disclosure is addressed and notice is not. The privacy policy says personal information may be disclosed as required by law, including subpoenas and law enforcement or national security requests, and the Terms of Service say that for a disabled account no information is released outside LegalZoom absent a subpoena or court order. No commitment to tell the customer first was located.
Where does the law in this product come from, and does the vendor have the right to use it?
Sources are identified without stating the license or rights basis.
The sources are identified as the vendor's own content, with no primary law named. The MCP catalog says document analysis uses an attorney-curated clause framework and knowledge search draws on LegalZoom articles and approved legal education; the Terms of Use say LegalZoom strives to keep its documents current but cannot guarantee it. The statutes and cases behind that content and any update cadence are not stated.
Does the product tell you when the authority it just cited has been overruled?
No located public material addresses whether authority is checked for subsequent history.
A citator would have nothing to check in the summaries and analyses the AI features produce. The AI features summarize and analyze documents and cite no legal authority; no good-law check is described.
What does the product do when the answer is not in the corpus?
No located public material addresses what the product does when it cannot ground an answer.
Inaccuracy is acknowledged and human review absorbs part of the workload, but the AI itself has no described way of signaling what it cannot answer. Doc Assist says its summaries may be incomplete or inaccurate and points users to attorneys, and the release says about 30 percent of license research requests still go to human review, but no behavior for questions the AI cannot answer, and no confidence signal, is described.
Does a public court record exist addressing fabricated or hallucinated legal citations in output from this product?
No court order, opinion or disciplinary record addressing fabricated or hallucinated legal citations produced by this product has been located as of the date shown. This is a statement about the public record on that one subject, not a finding about the product, and this signal is not a litigation history.
Searched web and trade press reporting on court sanctions for fabricated AI citations on 18 September 2026, looking for any court record addressing fabricated or hallucinated content in output from LegalZoom's AI features. None was located. This covers fabricated citations only, not litigation history of any other kind.
Has the vendor engaged in public with the ethics opinions its buyers are bound by?
Public materials refer to professional responsibility in general terms without naming guidance.
Professional responsibility is addressed in general terms without named guidance. The Terms set out that LegalZoom is not a law firm, is not a registered legal document assistant under California law, and define the experience standard for network attorneys; the footer names its subsidiary law firm. No ethics opinion, court AI order or bar guidance on AI is named on the surfaces read.
Does the vendor address what happens to the bill when the work takes an hour instead of six?
The product does not touch a fee between a lawyer and a client. It operates before an engagement exists, or it is bought by a team that bills no client for the work. Savings claims aimed at the buyer’s own cost are recorded in the summary and do not make the row a savings claim, because no client bill is in the loop.
The product sits outside a lawyer and client fee relationship. Small businesses and individuals buy forms, filings and the free AI tools for their own matters and represent themselves, under the Terms of Service. Attorney fees under the legal plans are governed separately and fall outside this assessment.
Can a firm get this vendor through a client’s AI clause without a bespoke negotiation?
No located public material supports a client side disclosure obligation.
A customer asking which AI providers handle its documents would find the question unanswered by any list. The privacy policy names payment, shipping and identity-verification vendors as examples, but no subprocessor or AI model provider list is published and none is offered on request.
If a judge’s standing order requires an AI disclosure, can the product produce one?
No located public material addresses court disclosure or verification certification.
Customers who file what they prepare get no guidance on disclosing AI use. Customers prepare documents they may file, such as divorce papers, but nothing addresses disclosing AI use to a court or recording which content AI produced.
Every grade and every signal on this index is drawn from public sources and dated. If a record is wrong, out of date, or missing an artifact the index did not locate, send the source and it will be reviewed and the record redated. Vendors are welcome to submit documentation. Nothing on this index is for sale, including a listing, a placement, or a grade.