Talk:LegalShield

Page contents not supported in other languages.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Dansiman (talk | contribs) at 23:56, 20 June 2017 (→‎Logo picture). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL

.


Archives (Index)

This page is archived by ClueBot III.

Info with no sources to back it up removed

Removed info with no sources to back it up.

This included info with no references whatsoever referring to the actions of a living person.

And also an entire section that had grand total number of sources of ... = zero.

69.50.70.9 (talk) 01:26, 8 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Proposing new draft

Hi there! On behalf LegalShield and The Pollack PR Marketing Group, and as part of my work at Beutler Ink, I have written an updated draft seeking to improve this page. The content of the current article is largely supported by the company's own materials, despite third-party sources being available discussing the company's operations and history. As well, there is little information about what the company does, and newer service offerings are omitted entirely. Finally, some details in the article are simply completely inaccurate, such as the reference to "ongoing troubles in Missouri" (the following details in that paragraph are all about Mississippi). The draft I've prepared aims to address all of these issues and generally bring the article up-to-date.

The draft is saved in my user space here: User:16912 Rhiannon/LegalShield

Key changes in my draft (shown in this diff):

  • New third-party sources added to support the information in the draft, replacing PrePaid Legal / LegalShield / Kroll website links
    • As well, I've incorporated the current external links as references to support information in the article
  • Renamed Company description to Business model and rewritten based on description of the company's business in reliable sources, adding details about two services not previously mentioned:
    • IDShield
    • Launch
  • Expanded the History to include more detail about the company's development over time, adding subheadings to break up the text and make it easier for readers to follow
  • In History, I did add some more detail to clarify the Mississippi legal issues, but removed the Wyoming Attorney General details, as I could find no third-party sources for this and it seemed minor in comparison to the other legal issues
  • There is a proposed Rankings and recognition section covering major rankings (Forbes etc.) and recognition that LegalShield has received

While I've placed the full draft into my user space, to give an idea of the updates as a whole that I'm proposing, I am open to working through section-by-section if editors prefer. I'm eager to get feedback from volunteer editors and, as always, I'm happy to address any questions here or on my user talk page. Thanks in advance! 16912 Rhiannon (Talk · COI) 15:37, 11 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Based on a quick look through your draft, there are a number of PROMO/NPOV issues. You bury the company's significant legal issues in a wall of unencyclopedic text (for example: mentioning the company had personnel changes -- why is this significant? companies hire and fire people all the time); use a euphemism for multi-level marketing, and the "business model" section is unduly long and should be shortened. James (talk/contribs) 06:26, 16 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
@James Allison: First and foremost, thank you for taking a look at the proposed draft. I'm sorry to see you have concerns with the expansion, as my goal is to implement a complete, accurate and neutral article. I'll tackle your concerns below, one at a time:
  • Regarding the company's legal issues: Providing a more comprehensive overview of the company was my goal here and I've retained all of the legal issues discussed in the current page, barring the Wyoming ones for which I couldn't find third-party sourcing. Similar to the current live article, I kept the details within the History section to keep information in a neat chronological presentation. The majority of the proposed Initial public offering section is more critical of Pre-Paid, so I am definitely not trying to bury or avoid covering critical information! With that said, is there another way that you would suggest organizing this information?
  • Re: personnel changes, you mentioned these transitions were included as padding. Unless I am overlooking others, the article only mentions CEO and founder Harland Stonecipher, Tom Smith (mentioned in passing in the context of an investigation), and current CEO Jeff Bell by name, which didn't seem excessive or inappropriate to me. Again, these details are mainly included in the current live article. Were you perhaps referring to the mention of the company's restructuring in November 2014? I'd added that to provide context around the company's changes post-acquisition, but if you feel that isn't major enough to include, then I would be fine with trimming. Likewise, if there are other specific details you think should not be included, I'd be happy to look at them.
  • Re: "network marketing" as a euphemism for "multi-level marketing", I used this term based on sourcing. For example, this article says, "LegalShield sells pre-paid legal services through network marketing across the United States and Canada", and this one says "Pre-Paid Legal Services Inc. has provided families and small businesses with access to quality legal services for the past 40 years through a network marketing distribution channel". I assumed the phrase "network marketing", while still linking to the Wikipedia article for "Multi-level marketing", was appropriate.
  • Finally, re: "Business model", I am open to trimming this content if you have any specific suggestions. Eliminating "Both IDShield and LegalShield have mobile apps available to their users" seems like the most obvious sentence to remove, since most companies and products now have apps, but otherwise I think the section provides a good overview of LegalShield's products and services. Do you have more specific thoughts?
Overall, my aim was to provide a more well-rounded overview of the company and its products, services, and history. The content is intended to be accurate and neutral, surrounded by historical context, displayed in chronological order, and reliably sourced. I am happy to discuss the proposed changes further, and if you're willing to make any changes from my draft that you do think are appropriate, that'd help me identify remaining concerns. Thanks again for your initial feedback. 16912 Rhiannon (Talk · COI) 14:22, 17 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
The proposed overhaul is problematic on several counts. First, the company’s own 10-K filings and annual reports clearly refer to the business model as multi-level marketing.[1][2] Network marketing is a lesser used synonym of multi-level marketing, which seems to have arisen from the multi-level marketing industry to distance itself from the negative connotations associated with MLM.
Regarding the statement “I removed the Wyoming Attorney General details, as I could find no third-party sources for this and it seemed minor in comparison to the other legal issues.” To that, I can only assume you did not look very hard. Here is the source – the Wyoming AG office.[3] The detail is not minor either. It refers to violation of the “Wyoming Multilevel and Pyramid Distributorship Act” and misleading earnings claims – quite significant. Rhode Island Red (talk) 16:19, 17 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
@Rhode Island Red: Thanks so much for your input! Seems like there's consensus then that it would be better to replace "network marketing" with "multi-level marketing", understood on that point, I'll work on updating in the draft. For Wyoming AG details, apologies if unclear but I meant I couldn't find media coverage, not that there's no source at all (I'd counted the AG's website as a primary source). Usually, media coverage of such legal issues is a good indicator of whether something is major enough to include. If that's something that you (and others) would prefer to keep in the article, it seems reasonable to add. Is there anything else I should look at again in the draft? 16912 Rhiannon (Talk · COI) 16:55, 17 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
The Wyoming case did receive media coverage; e.g., the article in Deseret News by Bernick, which is cited in the current version. The incident took place in 2001, so it is possible that links to other relevant media sources have gone dead but could be turned up through a newspaper archives search. Also, with regard to MLM, I seem to recall that the company reports indicated that MLM accounts for roughly 3/4 of their revenue. So it should be made clear that MLM is the predominant feature of their business model. Rhode Island Red (talk) 20:21, 17 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
@Rhode Island Red: Ok. How would you suggest incorporating both these details? Especially the MLM one as I'm curious about the sourcing you're thinking of for that point. Also, do you think it would be appropriate to summarize the existing wording regarding Wyoming rather than having the press release quote? 16912 Rhiannon (Talk · COI) 18:11, 18 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

For MLM, the documents I mentioned previously could be cited. No mention of network marketing should be included. Regarding Wyoming, the text and references that are in the article now should stay as they are. Rhode Island Red (talk) 21:55, 18 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Rhode Island Red: The one point here I would dispute is in adding in something to the effect that multi-level marketing is LegalShield's predominant business model: the sources you're suggesting for this are the old 10k and annual reports, both of which are quite outdated at this point and don't represent accurate sources for the company's revenues etc. (Since then, the company was acquired and renamed and has launched new products and services...) For network marketing, I've removed the mentions of that from the draft and replaced with MLM. I can also add in the Wyoming details. 16912 Rhiannon (Talk · COI) 20:16, 23 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
@James Allison and Rhode Island Red: Giving you both a quick ping to see if you have any further thoughts on the draft or replies to my notes—I've been offline while traveling, but am back now and happy to look into any further suggestions for the draft. Thanks! 16912 Rhiannon (Talk · COI) 20:54, 5 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
I think the best approach might be to go section by section. It's a bit unwieldy dealing with a wholesale rewrite of the entire article. Rhode Island Red (talk) 23:56, 5 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
:@Rhode Island Red: 16912 Rhiannon Dear Everyone, I made changes to the sandbox and then added the text to the main space. Geraldshields11 (talk) 13:06, 15 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The proposed changes to the article were under discussion here. There was no green light for the revision and it has been reverted pending further discussion. Rhode Island Red (talk) 15:09, 15 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Rhode Island Red: Did you have any specific concerns with the changes that were made? Geraldshields had reviewed and edited the sandbox draft before adding it in. (Also pinging @Geraldshields11: in case you don't have this Talk page watchlisted.) Thanks, 16912 Rhiannon (Talk · COI) 20:13, 15 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I and another editor had expressed both specific and general concerns (and there are others that I haven't yet detailed) which were to be addressed by going through the material section by section as discussed. We got through one section, and then bang, a brand new article suddenly appeared without further discussion. The point is to reach consensus. Also, given the COI issue, the content proposals require an extra degree of scrutiny. It's not appropriate to circumvent the process. Rhode Island Red (talk) 23:40, 15 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
One more thing--contacting an outside editor directly and petitioning them to intervene on your behalf to circumvent an ongoing process with other editors is knows as canvassing, which is inappropriate. Rhode Island Red (talk) 23:49, 15 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Infobox updates

{{request edit}} has been deprecated. Please change this template call to one of the following:

  • For edit requests relating to a conflict of interest, please use {{edit COI}}.
  • If you are partially-blocked from editing the page, please use {{edit partially-blocked}}.
  • If the page is protected, use one of the following:
    • {{SPER}} for semi-protected pages
    • {{EPER}} for extended-confirmed protected pages
    • {{TPER}} for template-protected pages
    • {{FPER}} for fully-protected pages
    • {{IAER}} for interface admin protected pages

If you simply need to ask for help in making an edit, please change the template to {{help me}}. Per User:Rhode Island Red's suggestion above, I'm splitting my request up by sections, to make for easier review and implementation by editors. To start with, I'd like to propose a refresh of the infobox, to correct outdated information and add in up-to-date key company details, with sourcing. Hopefully this is a simple request to begin with.

The new infobox is below:

Proposed infobox
LegalShield
Formerly
  • Sportsman's Motor Club (1972–1976)
  • Pre-Paid Legal Services, Inc. (1976–2011)
Company typePrivate
IndustryLegal services
Founded1972; 52 years ago (1972)
FounderHarland Stonecipher
Headquarters
Ada, Oklahoma
,
U.S.
Areas served
  • United States
  • Canada
Key people
Products
Services
  • Legal services
  • identity theft monitoring and restoration
Revenueest. $400 million[1] (2014)
OwnerMidOcean Partners
Number of employees
700[3] (2014)
Websitelegalshield.com
idshield.com
References

References

  1. ^ a b c d Silcox, Beth Douglass (March 2, 2015). "Company Spotlight Equal Access, Equal Adaptability: LegalShield's Moral Imperative to Grow". Direct Selling News. Plano, Texas: VideoPlus. ISSN 1554-6470. Retrieved March 8, 2017.
  2. ^ a b c d e "Company Information: Leadership". LegalShield. Retrieved March 8, 2017.
  3. ^ Burkes, Paula (September 7, 2014). "Executive Q&A: LegalShield chief comes home to Oklahoma roots". The Oklahoman. Oklahoma City: The Oklahoman Media Company. Retrieved February 24, 2017.

Changes proposed:

  • Moving the HQ photo into the infobox
  • Dates added for former company names
  • Updating revenue and employees with sourced figures (most recent publicly available)
  • Updating key people, with sourcing
  • Updating products and services to include identity theft monitoring and remove duplication (currently says pre-paid attorney and legal services)
  • Adding idshield.com website link

Let me know if you have any feedback or concerns about this request. If the above suggestion looks ok, please can it be added to the article?

Also, pinging User:Dansiman and User:Int21h who recently made some edits regarding the logo. I'd like to request that the logo in the infobox be replaced by the most current logo; the version showing in the article right now includes the old tag line and colors. The .png file showing previously (added by Int21h) is the correct version and I'm happy to provide a higher quality file if needed. As noted previously, I have a COI as I am working on behalf of LegalShield via PPMG as part of my work at Beutler Ink and will not edit this article directly. 16912 Rhiannon (Talk · COI) 18:12, 7 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Rhode Island Red: While I'm working on the draft seeing if I can address your comments below, would you be able to take a look at these infobox updates? Thanks in advance! 16912 Rhiannon (Talk · COI) 14:04, 12 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Infobox looks OK but I would add multi-level marketing to the industry line and would prefer to see more up to date data for number of employees and revenue (proposed data is from 2014) if available. Rhode Island Red (talk) 15:28, 12 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Great! Unfortunately, I've been unable to find public data on employees and revenue after 2014, likely due to the company not publicizing this information since it went private. Re: MLM as the industry: their industry per sources is legal services and if you include more recent service offerings might be considered to be technology. Multi-level-marketing / network marketing is one method that they use to sell these services, it's not an industry (as a general point: isn't MLM/direct selling/network marketing a business model, not an industry?). It doesn't make sense to me include it in that parameter, but if you feel it must be included elsewhere in the infobox, perhaps there might be another parameter that would be more appropriate? 16912 Rhiannon (Talk · COI) 15:56, 12 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
If there are no other questions / adjustments needed to the infobox, would either Geraldshields11 or Rhode Island Red be willing to add this into the article? Thanks! 16912 Rhiannon (Talk · COI) 19:19, 12 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
@Geraldshields11: Also wondering if you might want to look at this and consider adding it into the article while you're continuing to carefully review the rest of the draft? Thanks again!
Meantime, I've tried again with updating the jpg logo image to the most recent version, this time uploading a smaller file in the hopes that this is more acceptable. cc/User:Dansiman and User:Int21h 16912 Rhiannon (Talk · COI) 14:47, 12 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks so much to Rhode Island Red for updating the infobox. Would you be able to unhide the logo? I commented it out while the draft version was in my user space / here on the Talk page, so it just needs to have that formatting fixed. Also, I see that you adding "multi-level marketing" in the industry parameter, while I'll leave this for now, I'm still not sure I agree with its addition per my note above. 16912 Rhiannon (Talk · COI) 02:00, 13 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Hi everyone, I am going to add the infobox to the main article today. Geraldshields11 (talk) 12:43, 15 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

History updates

As a second individual request, I'm proposing an updated draft for the History section of the article. The draft is in my userspace here: User:16912 Rhiannon/LegalShield History and here is a diff comparing the draft with the current History text

Changes in the new draft:

  • Addition of third-party sourcing to support all details included
  • Breaking the section up with subsection headings, relating to major milestones
  • Clarification and correction of information about the Mississippi legal issues
  • Addition of more detail about the company's major developments over time

Details from the current History text have been retained and rewritten to reflect sourcing where needed or to improve clarity and flow. In the case of the Wyoming Attorney General letter, the information is included exactly per the current section, following feedback from User:Rhode Island Red (see diff of my addition into the draft). As with the request above, I'm hoping editors can review and use this draft to replace the current text in the article. I won't edit directly since I do have a financial COI: I'm here on behalf of LegalShield via PPMG as part of my work with Beutler Ink. Thanks in advance! 16912 Rhiannon (Talk · COI) 21:15, 7 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

After going through the diff edit of the proposed changes I cannot offer my global support. The reorganization using the headings "IPO" and "Acquisition by Mid-Ocean" makes no sense, given that most of the material in those sections pertains to neither. Some material also dropped off for reasons that are unclear. Looks like it would be best to go paragraph by paragraph and discuss the underlying reasons for proposed changes. I'm also not comfortable with the weight given to Direct Selling News as a source, which given its provenance, is shaky. There are a few cases where DSN is cited along with other sources; in those cases I would drop DSN and keep the better sources. Due caution should be exercised when DSN is cited as a stand alone source. Rhode Island Red (talk) 20:36, 9 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Looking back at it, the diff may not line things up exactly, and if you look closely you'll see I've retained all of the current details but rewritten to improve clarity and reflect sourcing. My concern is that going paragraph by paragraph through the requests would be tedious for editors, but maybe I can provide a breakdown in my userspace and link back here? For the headings, I've based these on the major milestones for the company--what would you suggest instead? Finally, re: Direct Selling News, I have to respectfully disagree: where it is being used is not for any contentious material and the publication is a third-party with journalists writing its content. If there's any particular detail where you think that DSN isn't an appropriate source, let me know and I'm happy to look again. 16912 Rhiannon (Talk · COI) 21:00, 9 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, thanks, would be clearer to go piece by piece. As for subheads, better to not make changes than to try to fit square pegs into round holes. The proposed subheads just just didn't fit. If subheads are used, they should relate to the content and weight. The IPO and the acquisition basically warrant one or two sentences tops so the subheads wouldn't seem appropriate.
DSN is not a good source. It is basically a trade rag/PR mill for the MLM industry and does not have a reputation for fact checking and accuracy nor journalism per se. When there are better quality sources that report the same details AS DSN, which was the case with some of the text you proposed, the former should be cited instead. DSN wouldn't be an appropriate standalone citation except perhaps under very limited circumstances, which could be considered on a case by case basis.
One last observation. From an encyclopedic-style perspective, the construction of the history section using a date to begin every paragraph makes it read like a timeline/chronology. Better to write in style that emphasizes the events rather than the dates. Rhode Island Red (talk) 06:30, 10 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
I like the dates as a roadmap to follow. But that is me. Geraldshields11 (talk) 13:04, 15 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

External links modified

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified one external link on LegalShield. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

This message was posted before February 2018. After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{source check}} (last update: 18 January 2022).

  • If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with this tool.
  • If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with this tool.

Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 12:08, 13 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

External links modified

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified one external link on LegalShield. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

This message was posted before February 2018. After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{source check}} (last update: 18 January 2022).

  • If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with this tool.
  • If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with this tool.

Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 02:44, 26 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Logo picture

The picture I uploaded, File:LegalShield logo.png is superior to the other logo picture, File:LegalShield logo.jpg and should replace it in the infobox. The JPG version is horribly mangled, with the compression artifacts making it hard to even read, and is a few pixels smaller. 20 pixels does not make a better fair use case, especially when it degenerates the company logo by looking so horrible. The lack of a transparent background, which is preferred for infobox logos (again, so as not to degenerate.) As such, I think the PNG version should be used. int21h (talk · contribs · email) 17:59, 4 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

It looks like your version has been deleted. However, the current JPG version has an issue too, in that the page identified as the "source" for that image does not appear to actually provide that image for download and use. But I do see on https://opportunity.legalshield.com/company-information they have included a link to this article, saying "Visit our wikipedia page" - so I think that if you wanted to contact them, they might actually be able to point you to a PNG version that meets Wikipedia's guidelines, perhaps a version of the logo that is specifically labeled (on their end) as preapproved for e.g. journalistic use, thus making it better than a standard non-free fair-use image as the JPG is. Dansiman (talk|Contribs) 23:56, 20 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:LegalShield&oldid=786685091"