After eagely awaiting both these inks, I was a tad disappointed. The Legal Lapis did not look that dissimilar in color than the Lamy Blue ink I was previously using (granted Noodlers is suppose to be bulletproof.)

I love purple and expected a highly saturated-looking purple as displayed on the Pendemonium website. Mine is a very pale, meek light violet color...

I didn't shake the ink bottles in my excitement to get them - would that have made any difference (though I am sure they were shaken plenty en route.)

Or is my experience pretty much en par with others regarding these two colors?

Legal Lapis and Violet Vote (aka Iraqui Indigo) both tend to settle. If you look at the bottom of the bottle and notice what looks like sediment there, shake the bottle vigorously and then fill your pen. Sometimes you can tell just by looking at the ink near the top of the bottle that it needs shaking. Zhivago is like that -- when the bottle is well-mixed, it just looks opaque and black. When the ink has settled, the ink at the top is a very dark, clear green (a color I think of as "spruce" but that won't mean the same color to anyone else).

Other commonly-mentioned Noodler inks that benefit from a shake are Eternal Brown, El Lawrence, Bulletproof Black, and Golden Pig (the last one is a highlighter ink, not meant for fountain pens).

When in doubt, don't scream and shout -- give it a shake and agitate!

I hope the bottle shaking does the trick, because the Legal Lapis should look very different from Lamy Blue. It should be a medium to deep teal, depending on how wet your pen is. I hope they didn't change the formulation!

I always give the bottle a light agitation, regardless of what type of ink it is. Call it a bad habit, but I have yet to see a pen clog, skip, or implode when using this methodology.

Does it do that inside the sac of a pen?

My LL is more of an antique blue with no teal tones to it at all. Either way, it's certainly not "washed out."

I use Legal Lapis in a desk pen. It gets used a couple of times a day (signatures, short notes), and that seems to be enough movement to keep things stirred up -- in three (four? can't remember) years, I've never had LL in that pen go "pale" on me. If you had LL in a pen in your pocket or in a pen case in your bag, it would get more agitation than that, so I don't think you have much to worry about.

I also always give my Noodler's bullet proof inks a shake before I refill a pen with them.

Garageboy asked a valid question:

"Does it do that inside the sac of a pen?"

I am not going to say "never," but I can say I have not seen it. As BillTheEditor said, the normal use of the pen seems to take care of the problem.

I always shake my Noodler's vigorously before using, too. Though Legal Lapis looks somewhat different depending upon the paper and pens I use, I've never had it look pure blue (but I don't have Lamy Blue, so I don't know what that looks like). LL always looks greenish-blue-black to me, though the green varies in prominence.

The Pendemonium swatch of ink is a bit misleading--Sam even said herself she did it quickly and would post a better swatch later (though that was a while ago). I've never had Iraqi Indigo/The Violet Vote look like her swatch (even wet). In my experience, it's a bit darker when wet, but always dries to a pale, chalky, light violet color, like you described. I'm planning on mixing it with Vanda Miss Joaquim to make it more purple (yet still bulletproof)--I'll let you know how that goes!