I strongly recommend waiting until you get to one of these stages:
1. Formal agreement between partners on project - Time is your most valuable asset so if you are investing into the project with additional persons it's best to formalize structure once you've made an agreement and are at a place where you are each committing 10+ hours per week
2. Monetary Investment is being made - At the point that meaningful monetary investment is made which I would pin at $10,000. The cost to formalize an LLC in California is $800 + minor costs so setting aside 10% of your initial spend on formalizing is money well spent
3. Take on any outside investment from anybody - You need an ivnestment vehicle so the second you decide to raise $5,000 from your Uncle Larry it's time to open the LLC
I really like your idea of unifying projects in 1 LLC then spinning them on success. You can also create a unique DBA for each project and this is very effective.
That's interesting! A1 looks archaic. An interesting startup in this space is https://www.upcounsel.com. They provide document management, calendaring and the such but operate as a marketplace platform. Would absolutely agree that the barriers to entry (compliance etc.) seem to be a big opportunity to offer solutions in the law space. As an interesting note: It looks like UpCounsel serves primarily as a marketplace due to upending the current law firm system which other comments have mentioned as a big barrier to technology adoption in the space. Interesting space nonetheless!
