LegalZoom.com, Inc.

What does LegalZoom own?

It owns the LegalZoom platform and brand, the LZ Legal Services Arizona law firm, and acquired brands including Formation Nation and Earth Class Mail.

Is LegalZoom publicly traded?

Yes. It trades on Nasdaq under ticker LZ after a June 2021 IPO.

Who founded LegalZoom?

Brian S. Lee, Brian Liu, and Edward Hartman, joined by attorney Robert Shapiro, who founded it in Los Angeles in 2001.

Where is LegalZoom headquartered?

Mountain View, California, having moved from its original Los Angeles base.

How many brands does LegalZoom own?

The master LegalZoom brand plus three-to-four acquired and subsidiary brands.

Who owns LegalZoom?

Public shareholders on Nasdaq, with no controlling owner. Permira, which owned it from 2014, exited through the 2021 IPO.

How does LegalZoom make money?

Subscription fees for registered agent, compliance, and legal plan services, plus transaction fees for one-time products like business formations and wills.

Brian S. Lee, Brian Liu, and Edward Hartman started the company in Los Angeles in 2001, bringing on attorney Robert Shapiro as co-founder. Shapiro's name recognition from the O.J. Simpson trial gave the unknown startup instant credibility in a category consumers had never bought before.

The business rode the early internet's promise of disintermediation: if software could generate a will or an incorporation filing, consumers did not need a lawyer for routine work. Heavy advertising built it into the dominant online legal brand through the 2000s.

The unauthorized practice of law fight ran in parallel. State regulators and bar associations challenged whether selling legal documents was practicing law without a license, producing settlements that established the rules it still operates under: document preparation and self-help are legal, legal advice is not.

Permira took control in 2014 for roughly $1 billion, buying out early venture backers Polaris Partners, Kleiner Perkins, and Institutional Venture Partners. The private equity years expanded the service catalog into registered agent, compliance, and business services.

The June 2021 Nasdaq IPO at $28 per share brought it back to public markets. Leadership transitioned in July 2024 when chairman Jeff Stibel replaced Dan Wernikoff as CEO, continuing the subscription-first strategy.

Recent acquisitions have built out the model: Earth Class Mail for virtual mailbox services, Formation Nation to expand the formation business, and LZ Legal Services, the Arizona law firm that pushed into actual attorney-delivered work.

Fiscal 2025 delivered the best results in company history: revenue up 11 percent to $756 million, subscription revenue up 13 percent to $492.5 million, record operating cash flow of $178.2 million, and a $100 million buyback increase.

The company's core social proposition is access to justice: it prices legal help within reach of consumers and small businesses that the traditional legal market priced out.

Its ethics record is dominated by the unauthorized practice of law history, the structural question of where document sales end and legal practice begins, an issue it has litigated and settled across multiple states and now navigates through the Arizona law firm model.

The UPL battles are the company's defining regulatory history: challenges in multiple states over whether its products constituted practicing law, resolved through settlements that established document-preparation boundaries rather than ending the business.

Class actions over document quality, attorney advertising claims, and subscription practices have settled periodically. The company's disclosure acknowledges the category risk that any successful UPL challenge in a major state could restrict operations.

Subscription auto-renewal and cancellation practices draw the standard consumer-protection scrutiny applied to recurring-revenue businesses.