If you've ever found yourself in need of legal advice or financial planning, you know just how daunting accessing these services can be. Choosing the right lawyer or accountant to protect your family and assets can be filled with roadblocks and prohibitive costs.

LegalZoom, an online legal services provider, wants to change this. By making legal services — such as forming an LLC, filing a patent, creating wills and trusts, or filing for divorce — easy to understand and accessible, LegalZoom puts protecting yourself, your family and your business in your hands.

"Our North Star is to democratize law," said John Suh, CEO of LegalZoom. "If the average American citizen or small business owner doesn't have full protection of the law, our economy, our system of capitalism, our democracy doesn't function as intended."

Making the law simple and accessible

Suh and the LegalZoom team knew the first step to solving this challenge was to make the often scary, nebulous and jargon-filled arena of the law understandable to every person. By not speaking in "legalese", it removes the initial friction and fear of a legal experience. 

Second, they wanted to emotionally connect with the individual or small business owner to create positive experiences that left a lasting impression on their customers.

LegalZoom created a self-service app that puts legal services in a user-friendly package and rethinks how one accesses professionals like lawyers and accountants. Through a familiar technology — a mobile app —  the average citizen can approach the law that is designed to protect them and take action on their own.

Building a new customer experience

In order to create this new experience and allow customers to access personal legal services and documents, LegalZoom needed to modernize their technology stack and how they managed the content that powers it all.

Updating their content management platform and process was the first step. 

By using Box Platform as the underlying cloud content management layer and Box Governance for security and data retention management, LegalZoom built an entirely different customer experience. They were able to provide convenient access to legal services, personal legal documents and consultations while maintaining the necessary data security, content retention and compliance policies. 

What's next for LegalZoom?

After their success building an app with Box Platform, LegalZoom wants to expand their usage. They've launched Box internally to the entire company — already significantly improving collaboration with their wide outside network of professional lawyers and accountants. LegalZoom also aims to automate internal processes and manual tasks with the help of Box Relay. 

Learn more from LegalZoom's CEO John Suh, who unveiled their mobile app onstage at BoxWorks16.