Category Archives: 40th Anniversary

Nolo’s founding happens to have coincided with a quantum leap in the numbers of immigrants coming to live permanently in the United States (with a green card). Back in the white-picket-fence 1950s, typical annual immigration to the U.S. was about 250,000 people. That number doubled in the 1970s, largely reflecting new laws that scrapped quotas  Continue Reading »

When 19th century pioneers rode west, many carried a bible in one saddlebag and the bestselling Everyman His Own Lawyer, by John Wells in the other. But by 1998, when a Committee of the Supreme Court of Texas sought to ban Nolo’s books and software from the state, this frontier tradition of legal self-help had  Continue Reading »

Consumer fraud has come a long way in the last 40 years. Although scams thrived in the 1970s, the Internet brought the scamming trade to new heights in the 21st century. Let’s take a look at what the scam scene looked like in 1971 and what it looks like today – and how you can  Continue Reading »

Here’s what the “third sector” has been up to: As of the year 1971, the number of U.S. nonprofits had only recently surpassed 200,000 in number. Today, there are approximately 1.5 million nonprofits (tax-exempt organizations). [1] Only a few years before Nolo’s founding, in 1969, the steady increase in the number of nonprofits had led  Continue Reading »

My first real experience with a small business start-up was in 1991. I had recently graduated from college and my boyfriend at the time was starting a weekly newspaper. I helped him out with about two other folks—a key person being our tech guy, who put the whole paper together on a Mac Quadra (if  Continue Reading »