Nolo Press started remodeling the legal industry to better serve working- and middle-class Americans back when books were more accessible than websites. But now that the Internet has matured, Nolo has a lot of competition. And it has unexpected bedfellows. 

“Nolo was born of the frustration of two legal aid lawyers who were working to help low-income families in the San Francisco Bay area in the late 1960s. Charles (Ed) Sherman and Ralph (Jake) Warner were tired of having to turn away working people who didn’t qualify for free legal aid but couldn’t afford lawyers,” explains 43-year-old Nolo on its website. “There was no place to send these people, because there were almost no sources of free or low-cost legal information.”