I recently came across an article decrying the problems with pre-packaged wills and trusts.

Only the day before had I recommended a friend an online will solution that I thought would be suited to his needs.

So I was keen to know what the potential pitfalls were and whether I had overlooked something in making my recommendation.

As it turns out, the article appears to be primarily addressing the physical versions of pre-packaged products, rather than online versions. It may be a sign of the times that my first thought when reading the article was that it meant to refer to online products, not physical ones.

But I thought it would be an interesting exercise anyway to see whether any of the criticisms levelled against physical pre-packaged legal products could stick against solutions delivered online using document assembly.

The objections

Inaccurate language

The first objection is that a pre-packaged solution will have inaccurate language by failing to account for varying laws between jurisdictions. The article assumes there is a risk you will receive a solution that has been developed in a different jurisdiction than that which pertains to you.

While the assumption may be true in some cases, it need not necessarily be whether the product is physical or online. If local lawyers develop solutions and are careful to advertise to clients in their jurisdiction, it is hard to see that this objection can have weight. And geo-location can be programmed into the online service — so it if recognises your jurisdiction, or at least prompts you to tell it what your jurisdiction is, your options will be limited accordingly. Problem solved.

Poor communication

The concern underlying the second objection is that pre-packaged legal solutions are not going to truly reflect the clients needs. That is why a boutique firm, that delivers personalised advice, is arguably necessary.

There is some truth to this concern. Some clients will always want a legal document built from the ground up to their discerning specifications. But that market segment is going to be small.

The majority of clients expect their lawyer to start with some form of template, if anything, so as to reduce costs. They don’t want their lawyer reinventing the wheel at their expense.

Online document assembly does however have the benefit of allowing clients to feed in their preferences and make choices between clauses that suit them best. The client can be prompted with questions and their answers can dictate the form the agreement takes automatically. The level of sophistication that the automated agreement takes can be as great as the lawyer, and the software they are using, will allow. But in the best cases, this will mean that the automated document will be as near to reflecting their clients’ needs as if they were consulting the client personally.

Inadequate oversight

This concern addresses the problems caused when prepackaged wills in particular are not witnessed correctly. There is a level of oversight that is lacking to ensure the document creation through to execution achieves the best result.

Nothing can substitute for a lawyer’s keen eye over your shoulder, but there is no reason to think that online checklists, FAQs or helplines cannot provide the same level of guidance.

Taking the wills example, an online document assembly product could generate the will according to the client’s preferences and then issue a checklist for execution. It is conceivable the checklist could contain an interface that requires the client to respond to confirm they have complied with each step before permitting them to move to the next one, which hopefully could be near-foolproof. If the clients are saving money by purchasing the online product, I am sure they will be happy to be guided in a more laboured fashion if they can do it at their own pace.

Outdated planning

By this objection, the authors are concerned about physical pre-packaged solutions not keeping up to date with current laws. You may purchase such a product, only to find out it was written several years ago and no longer legally effective. That would be a problem.

But there is no reason this problem should pertain to online legal products. The nature of an online legal product is that it can be updated dynamically to reflect the law as it changes.

Invalidating mistakes

Here the authors of the article suggest that physical pre-packaged solutions may contain mistakes that have been written in by the client themselves, leading to confusion, costly litigation about interpretation and potentially legal outcomes that the clients did not anticipate.

This is equally a potential problem for online legal products that assemble documents by merging the lawyer’s blank template with the client’s individualised responses. What the client types into the browser and submits to the online software product will dictate the document’s final form.

But there could be safety checks for online legal products that could not be there for physical paper products. Online spellchecking for one. And grammar checking for sense. Further, the way the lawyer prompts the client for answers using questions that require a narrow answer, and gives examples of the sorts of answers that may be expected, could eliminate many of these concerns.

Insufficient wiggle room

This concern is addressed at the inadequate scope of pre-packaged products that may fail to account for the full range of circumstances that a client may need to have addressed in their legal document. It is in essence a charge of inflexibility — that such products are not flexible enough for the outlying cases.

The same charge need not stick for online legal products, but it will depend on how detailed the lawyer crafting the product wishes to go. If they want to provide the possibility that clients can elect to have rare clauses included in their legal document, then they can do so. Software that allows for an internal logic, whereby certain answers will dictate the range of questions that arise later in the interview, will make this sort of interrogation a breeze for clients and hopefully provide a level flexibility that comes close to what is experienced in a face to face client interview.

Lack of maintenance

The final objection is that if someone purchases a paper legal product they may not be prompted to review their legal position at a later date. I guess the assumption here is that if they had engaged a lawyer to do that work, then the lawyer would diarise to check in with the client at a later date to ensure that their circumstances had not changed in some way that required the document, say a will or a trust deed, to be amended.

This can be easily answered by online legal document providers if they collect each client’s email address and automate regular email updates at future intervals. The client will be prompted by the email to consider whether sufficient changes have occurred in their lives to warrant an updated legal document and revisiting the lawyer’s website.

Conclusion

Most, if not all, objections that may be levelled at physical, pre-packaged legal products are addressed by the flexibility inherent in online software. As time goes on, it would not be surprising to see online legal products generated by document assembly software, approximating or even surpassing the quality of the documents that are produced manually by lawyers. This level of flexibility, and guarantee of quality, is what will make online document assembly so attractive for both lawyers and their clients in future.