Quality Legal Advice For Small Businesses

Part of our mission is to increase access to legal advice for underserved segments of the community, including small businesses.  The pricing models typically used by law firms puts legal services out of reach for many small businesses.  We want to offer small businesses alternatives to obtain legal advice.

Our special Subscription Plans and discounts on Flat Fee Services and hourly rates are available to sole proprietorships and entities (for-profit or non-profit) with 50 or fewer full-time employees (FTE).  Independent contractors do not count toward the 50 FTE limit.  We reserve the right to verify qualification under the criteria for small business pricing.

Discounted pricing doesn’t mean lower quality services.  Our small business clients get the same quality service and attention that we give to larger corporate clients.

Subscription Plans are ideal for clients who regularly need legal advice or who want the peace of mind of being able to contact a lawyer on demand without worrying about paying by the hour.

Yes.  The minimum subscription term is three (3) months.  If a plan is canceled before the end of the minimum 3-month term expires, all the work done under the plan will be billed at our standard hourly rates, less Subscription Plan fees already paid.

Each Subscription Plan includes a monthly allotment of hours.  If the same number of hours in a plan were billed at our standard hourly rates (or even our discounted hourly rates for small businesses), the cost would be much higher than the monthly price of the Plan.  

In comparison to flat fee service arrangements, if the service can be completed within the monthly allotment of hours in the Subscription Plan, the monthly fee for the plan will be less than the flat fee in most cases.  If the time required to complete the service exceeds the monthly allotment of hours in the plan, cost savings might still be realized under the plan because the excess hours will be billed on an hourly basis at the discount applicable to the plan.  See the Subscription Plan Terms and Conditions for more information. 

Using a legal form with terms you might not fully understand is not helpful or could even be harmful to your interests.  Terms that seem harmless to the layperson can have significant legal consequences, especially if a dispute arises.  A trained lawyer can help you understand the terms of agreements and advise you on how to protect your interests given your specific situation.

Most prepaid legal plans limit the number of hours that can be spent or pages of documents  that can be reviewed each month.  These limits often are unrealistic to make the plans truly useful.  To finish a task, prepaid legal plan users typically need to pay a lawyer additional fees for the excess time.  

Luminate Law’s Subscription Plans are a more robust option.  For the small business with very basic needs, the Essential Plan makes legal advice available for less than $10 a day.  Businesses with greater legal needs can purchase the Professional Plan or Premier Plan.  In most cases, the total cost of services under both plans will be less than prepaid legal plan fees supplemented with hourly legal fees necessary to get the job done.

Yes.  If the number of hours needed to complete a project that is subject to flat fee billing exceeds the monthly allotment of hours in a Subscription Plan, the excess hours will be billed at the discounted hourly rate applicable to the plan.   See the Subscription Plan Terms and Conditions for more details.

Yes.  Certain specialized services and litigation, arbitration, and mediation work are excluded from Subscription Plans.  See the Subscription Plans Terms and Conditions for additional exclusions.

In most cases, different pricing arrangements can be used simultaneously to maximize cost-effectiveness of servicing your legal needs.  For example, you may pay for a project under a Flat Fee Service model and use hourly billing for another project.

For clients who do not qualify for small business pricing, we offer flat fee billing for certain services and competitive hourly rates for others.  We also build customized Subscription Plans. 

We charge on an hourly basis for projects of an uncertain duration or for which the level of service required is difficult to estimate precisely.  Examples of such projects include litigation or quasi-litigation proceedings (including arbitration and mediation) and negotiations.  Even when we charge on an hourly basis, we look for opportunities to contain costs.