LLC's are a new beast. They don't have the formalities of a corporation, but they get the tax benefits of a partnership. Because they are new, the case law on how to pierce the veil is rather mixed. In some states, LLC's actually offer more protection than corporations. In other states, they offer less. Also remember that the liability protection a corporation provides is not presumed. i.e., if you have not kept up formalities, if you have co-mingled funds, etc, the veil can be pierced.

As for getting at what the law is, your best bet is to check out resources like ALR (American Law Reports). Lawyers go through the work of distilling down all the cases to give you a picture by jurisdiction. I use ALR a lot for leagal research. And, when a lawyer gets into an area that he is not familar with, ALR is a great way to get up to speed on a particular area of law.

If you have a law school near you, in the spirit of what the law is supposed to be about, open their doors to the public. My law school (Rutgers) does.


>How do the free sites measure up regarding case law? For example, I can create a company as an LLC. The intent of the legislature was to provide some protection to the owners, in a manner similar to a full corporation. However, according to my attorney, the courts have not interpreted the law that way and treat the LLC more as a partnership or sole proprietorship.
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>>This is the best advice I have seen!! However, I do believe that people in this business need to be educated on this topic. The fact is, one does not need to be a lawyer to know the law. Believe it or not, law school has taught me that. I think every person in this arena needs to be familar with findlaw.com. While it is true that lawyers and law students are the only ones who have easy access to resources like westlaw and lexis (lay people can get access but it is VERY expensive) - there are a lot of web resources that are free.
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>>If you can read, have decent research skills, you can can find out what the law is. The most valuable tool, a librarian. They are perhaps the most underutilized resource we have and at the same time, the most eager to help people...