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. They found there was no way to help all the working people who didn’t qualify for free legal aid yet couldn’t afford lawyers.

In 1971, to help fill the need they had identified, Charles Sherman wrote a book about doing your own divorce and Ralph Warner authored one on tenants’ rights. They took the books to established publishers, who promptly rejected them. Warner and Sherman decided they had no alternative but to publish the books themselves—and so Nolo Press was created.

By the early 1980s Nolo was publishing books covering just about all areas of law, empowering everyday people to take control of their legal situations. As the decade progressed, Nolo started publishing do-it-yourself legal software, including Quicken WillMaker.

In 1994, Nolo created one of the first consumer-oriented legal websites, offering tons of free legal information. The company later added online document preparation and downloadable versions of Nolo books and software.

In 2005, Nolo launched a lawyer directory, to help people when they encountered situations that required professional help. Readers who otherwise would have had to thumb through the yellow pages were now able to easily search for, learn about, and connect with attorneys who handled their type of legal issue.