Meet Esq.Me, The Legal Services Marketplace That’s Revolutionizing The Way Small Firms Do Business

Running a solo practice or small law office can be highly rewarding, but ask any small firm what its biggest pain points are, and you’ll certainly hear about the difficulty in gaining access to the kinds of resources that can put them on the same footing as their larger competitors. The ability of small firms to access big firm resources without breaking the bank has long been an uphill battle.

Until now. The folks at Esq.Me have created an invaluable lawyer-to-lawyer marketplace for legal services, designed to allow solo and small law firms to access Biglaw resources one service at a time. Inspired by the successful Teachers Pay Teachers open marketplace, where educators can buy and sell curricula and lesson plans, often making significant amounts of money in the process, the minds behind Esq.Me saw a prime opportunity to create a similar marketplace for law, another document-heavy industry.

Think of it as an Amazon or eBay for legal services designed to give solo and small law firms access to Biglaw resources. Whether you’re looking for legal documents or assistance with research and writing, Esq.Me helps you find it at a price that fits your budget, all while allowing you to make extra cash on the side if you so choose. Sound too good to be true? It’s not.

Document Marketplace

Lawyers are infamous for reinventing the wheel. While each individual practice certainly has its nuances, the truth is that we all do similar things and spend way too much time and money recreating documents from scratch, when we could just be collaborating with our peers who have already done the work.

That’s exactly what Esq.Me allows you to do. We’re not talking about bare-bones templates here. Esq.Me has created a repository where practicing attorneys have uploaded comprehensive documents that you can download for a small fee. Whether you need something as short as a waiver or as comprehensive as a motion or appellate brief, someone on Esq.Me likely has it for you.

So, rather than starting by staring at a blank Word document and then spending hundreds of dollars searching for a template in your research platform of choice, you can turn to Esq.Me for free. In their searchable document repository, experienced lawyers have uploaded their documents (redacted for confidentiality and privacy) for you to download in full. The uploading attorneys price each document anywhere between $5 and $500, and you can see a both a three-page excerpt and the author’s profile before you choose to download it. Currently, the average document price on Esq.Me is just $37, which is far less than the billable hour value you likely otherwise invest in finding a passable document template.

Esq.Me functions as a pure marketplace like eBay or Amazon, complete with reviews, a flagging system, and user ratings. As of now, only lawyers and law firms are permitted to post documents, and each is vetted by Esq.Me via attorney registration number to ensure that the poster is in good standing and not facing disciplinary action. So, while there’s a self-regulation component in that every word of every document isn’t vetted, you have ample opportunity to see exactly what you’re getting up front, and exactly who posted it.

Not only is this a great resource for lawyers looking for sample documents, it’s an excellent opportunity for lawyers to make money on the side. If you have quality writing samples to share, you can upload them to Esq.Me and start making money off them. It’s as simple as dragging and dropping.

Let’s be honest — salaries for solo practitioners and small law firm attorneys rarely come close to those of Biglaw. If you can make a not-insignificant side income through selling the documents you’ve already created, why wouldn’t you? You set your own prices, and every document can be downloaded an inexhaustible number of times. The potential for making thousands of extra dollars a year is literally at your fingertips, at no extra cost to you.

Legal Research and Writing

The magic of Esq.Me doesn’t stop with documents — they offer other valuable services that will help you from drowning under the weight of your own practice. Anyone who’s ever paid for the top legal research tools on the market knows that they can easily run you north of $450 each month. Esq.Me offers a legal research option that’s exponentially more affordable.

They’ve affiliated with a third party legal services company and offer legal research services to members for free for 14 days, and then for the low price of $70 per month after that. As we speak, they’re working on building out their legal research team internally to bring you even more options. As with the document repository, you can review the resumes of the people who will be helping you before you agree to work with them. Esq.Me’s research tools give researchers access to over 7 million cases and plenty of secondary materials, complete with predictive concept search functionality that’s more advanced than your typical terms and connectors or Boolean searching. And it’s all included in the $70 monthly fee.

The same people are also available to help you with legal writing when you need an extra hand. The ability to engage these services as needed is a game-changer for small law firms that might not have the financial resources to hire associates or paralegals to perform these kinds of tasks in-house.

Esq.Me’s goal was to be one-stop shop for small law firms, supplying everything they would typically need in the back office. So far, they’ve more than succeeded in doing just that, and they’re just getting started.

Ongoing Collaboration

The ways for lawyers to collaborate through Esq.Me are only going to keep improving. They’re working on rolling out a discussion board where lawyers can collaborate on legal issues and carve out a place as experts in their field among the legal community. It will also serve as a place where lawyers can get questions answered and can work collectively on similar issues.

They also publish a regular newsletter, updated with current practice issues, that allows members to draft articles and get that blogging exposure that has become crucial for small practices in the social media age. They’re even going to be expanding their services to cost effective case management and will be adding online CLEs down the road.

The best part of all? Membership is entirely free. You read that correctly. You can have access to the document repository, affordable legal services, and collaboration tools at absolutely no cost. The only question here is why you wouldn’t do it.

The small and solo legal market has long been underserved when it comes to cost-effective and efficient practice resources, and Esq.Me has stepped up in a huge way to fill that gap. With a free Esq.Me membership, you not only have the possibility of making money to supplement your regular income, but you’re empowered to work faster, make your clients happier, and cut costs, all without sacrificing quality.

Esq.Me is leveling the playing field for small and solo shops by finally giving them access to resources that were once only Biglaw luxuries. Give them a shot today, and you’ll never question that decision to hang out your own shingle again. Sign up by December 31 and receive $10 off by using the promo code: ATL.