Setting up FormLizard - Attorneys
Attorneys are often overloaded with forms and paper. Whether it’s a court's required format or your firm’s standards, the legal world demands a plethora of document templates. You spend too much time filling out forms and managing paperwork, when that time is better spend on high-value added functions like strategy, writing one-off documents, and direct client interaction. FormLizard is all about freeing you from the shackles of paperwork.
FormLizard differs from the high-price alternatives available from the large legal research companies in many ways - not just price. Our whole approach is to create a simple document completion tool that allows attorneys to use thier own documents, their own language, logos, formats and the like, while still handling every form that clerks of courts have created.
Your client engagement letters, contracts, proposals, and more can all be completed using FormLizard. No more MS Word templates and search and replace–which, we all know is an error prone approach.
Quite simply, no other form management software offers such great flexibility and ease of setup, all at such a low cost.
Continue reading to see how other attorneys are using FormLizard to more efficiently prepare documents. This section will show you how to setup FormLizard as a valuable part of your law practice.
We start by describing the two most common ways our attorney customers build the online Interviews within FormLizard. We then show you how to setup three different documents, using an NDA, a standard lease, and a Grant Deed as examples.
Please note, we know documents, forms, business processes and software, but WE ARE NOT ATTORNEYS. The forms, text, and other elements of this tutorial are NOT SUITABLE for any use other than this training.
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Setting up FormLizard - Attorneys
Example documents
Approaches to Building the Online Interviews
Online Interviews are what you build within FormLizard to complete one or more documents. For example, you could have one interview called “Create document packet for land purchases in northern district.” Completing this online interview provides the information for FormLizard to prepare all of the forms for this transaction. Deciding how best to use FormLizard in your practice starts with deciding how you want to organize the online Interivews within FormLizard.
Typically, we see law firms using two approaches to structuring the Interviews:
- By case type (e.g. divorce, criminal, estate).
- By document type (e.g. New client Engagement Letter, Notice of Deposition).
We’ll cover each of these, below.
By Case Type
This approach is commonly used by firms where for each type of case there is a pre-defined set of forms, letters, and filings. An example, as shown in the figure below, is a set of documents common to a divorce filing including the client engagement letter, notice of appearance, petition for divorce, motion for temporary support and so on.
By adding the possible documents that might be used in any one case of this type to a single interview, the entire packet of documents is prepared simply by completing one interview for each client. All of the forms are prepared at the same time (or as the information becomes known and is entered in the Interview) making them available for downloading when and if needed.
By Document Type
For documents where one template may need to be prepared for many persons in any one case, such as a Notice of Deposition and accompanying Certificate of Service, you can setup the documents as a single Interview. This will allow you to complete just the Interview Questions needed to prepare the document set for each party.
Using the deposition notice example, you would start an interview and fill-in necessary information for the first planned deposition: party name, address, time and date, optional listing of required documents, certificate of service date, court reporter name and address, attorney role and the like. At the end of the Interview, the Notice and Certificate are prepared and ready for downloading.
Then, to prepare the Notice and Certificate for the next party, you start a new Interview and select to use the answers from the prior Interview. Simply change the name, date and time, and any other information that is different for this party. There is no need to re-enter the same information more than once.
Also, if you find a typo, say in someone’s name, simply select that Interview, click to edit it, make the change, and download a fully corrected version.
Choosing the Best Approach for You
There is no one right way to setup FormLizard. Each practice will want to set FormLizard up in a way that works best for them. Don’t worry though—making changes to the setup is easy, allowing FormLizard to adapt to how you want to run your firm.
Most of our attorney customers use a combination of Interviews (case type and document type). Most start with a form-intensive part of their practice and build the complete setup over time. This allows them to start getting the benefits of FormLizard right away.
Although most of our clients manage quite well on their own, for firms that don’t want to take the time to setup FormLizard themselves, we offer FormLizard on a managed services basis. This includes setup of your forms and all ongoing document and form management. If you are interested in learning more, just email us at support@formlizard.com.
Benefits of FormLizard for Your Practice: Quality, Consistency, & Efficiency
Using FormLizard means you have a pre-made electronic library of all of your document templates, so you and others in your firm will always know where to go to get the latest version. It also allows you to spend your time on case strategy and drafting of one-off documents rather than filling out forms. Further, as FormLizard provides a structured means of completing documents, the quality of the content and appearance is often higher than using a word processor or PDF tools.
Integrating with Electronic Case Files
FormLizard is helping our customers make the move to electronic case files. Completed documents are available from FormLizard in MS Word (RTF) format and PDF format, eliminating an extra step of scanning. Further, they may be sent from within FormLizard to Google Docs accounts or box.net accounts. Additional third-party integrations are on the way. If you want us to integrate to a specific application, email us and let us know which one—we’ll make sure we have it on our list.
You can also export any of the information entered into FormLizard in Excel (CSV) format, allowing you to upload, for example, client information, into a separate case management system.
Setting Up Your Documents
We have included three examples of how to setup some legal documents.
The first example is a Grant Deed. For this example we use a county specified format, that we tagged for use in FormLizard.
The second example is a property lease. Using a traditional word processor or PDF tool, these are often time consuming to prepare and due to the many blanks and optional terms, are error prone. FormLizard finally gives you a way to handle these documents.
The third example is a non-disclosure agreement (NDA). With this example, you can see how to use Conditional Fields to insert clauses into formatted legal documents based on Interview answers (maintaining format and section numbers). We have many in-house counsel customers that use this functionality to handle procurement and sales contract templates allowing the non-attorneys in their organizations to quickly and reliably produce compliant documents.
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