· Sam Sperling, Founder
Why IQdoc exists
Five years inside one of the hardest divorces imaginable, a $20,000 transcript that put my words in someone else's mouth, and the tools I wished existed.
I did not plan a path into legal tech. The path found me.
For five years I worked daily with attorneys through what I can only describe as one of the most challenging divorces imaginable. If you have been through a hard case, you know the rhythm: hearings, filings, deadlines, invoices. You learn the system whether you want to or not, because the system does not slow down for you.
The transcript
Somewhere along the way I paid about $20,000 for hearing transcripts from a big-name transcription service. I found out what that money bought while standing in court. A passage was read aloud in front of the judge, and the transcript had attributed my name to another speaker. Someone else's words, presented live as mine, in the one room where the record is supposed to be the truth.
Embarrassing is one word for it. Dangerous is a better one. A transcript is not a convenience document. It is what the court believes happened.
The forms
Another invoice I remember: about $10,000 to fill out child support forms. Forms. With a little guidance, I could have completed them myself in an afternoon. Nobody offered the guidance; they offered the invoice.
Taking charge
After five years of that, I stopped outsourcing my understanding. I learned the law that governed my own case, page by page, and kept a team of consulting attorneys around me for the judgment calls that deserved them. I am not a lawyer, and nothing on this site is legal advice. But I learned something the billing model prefers you not learn: with good guidance and good tools, a determined person can carry far more of their own case than the system expects.
That feeling of taking charge is the founding feeling of IQdoc.
Who this is for
Seasoned attorneys and firms benefit from tools that read, format, and check legal documents; that is the obvious market. But the people who need this most are the ones representing themselves. They are a far larger group than most people realize, and they walk into court with the least support and the most at stake.
IQdoc builds for both. Accurate transcripts that do not put your words in someone else's mouth. Documents checked against the court's rules before you file them, not after. Resources that let a lower budget buy verification and confidence instead of another invoice.
Court is a hard road. The tools you carry down it should be on your side, and they might as well be delightful to use. That is what we are building at IQdoc. That is why it exists.