Why I Built MakeLegalDocs: A Solo Attorney's Journey from Excel Hell to One-Hour Probate Petitions

The Moment I Knew Something Had to Change

There I was, staring at six open probate cases on my desk. Six families waiting for their loved ones' estates to be handled. Six sets of petitions, inventories, and court filings that needed to be prepared with perfect accuracy.

And I was drowning.

Not because the legal work was beyond me - I'd been practicing law for years. I was drowning in Word documents. In Excel spreadsheets. In the mind-numbing process of copying client information from one document to another, then another, then another.

If you're a solo practitioner handling probate or estate planning, you know exactly what I'm talking about. That moment when you realize you've typed the same decedent's name into fifteen different documents. When you catch a typo in the case number - on a document ready to file with the court - AFTER you had the client sign it! When you spend more time wrestling with mail merge than actually practicing law.

I had become a very expensive typist. And my clients deserved better.

The "Solutions" That Weren't

Before I built MakeLegalDocs, I tried everything the legal tech market had to offer.

Microsoft Word with Excel Mail Merge: This was my first attempt at automation. In theory, it's brilliant - store your client data in Excel, merge it into Word templates. In practice? It was clunky, unreliable, and broke at the worst possible moments. Merge fields would mysteriously disappear. Formatting would explode. And every time Word updated, something new would stop working.

Generic Document Automation Platforms: I evaluated several of the big names. They were powerful, sure. They were also designed for large firms with dedicated IT staff and training budgets. As a solo practitioner, I didn't have three months to learn a new platform. I needed something that worked yesterday.

Practice Management Software: Many of these include document generation features, but they're afterthoughts bolted onto case management systems. These practice management programs forced me into a clunky system designed for large firms, tracking hours, focused on billing, and the ability to use my documents seemed hard.

Here's what none of them understood: I didn't need a platform. I needed MY documents - the ones I'd refined over years of practice, the ones that clerks and judges in my Florida counties had reviewed and approved - to generate themselves. The biggest problem I had run into was what I called "error by omission." I wanted to avoid this. You know, when your paralegal uses an estate plan and changes the client and beneficiary names and everything looks right - almost? But, you realize there is a paragraph missing that you had struck in the last client meeting and is applicable to this client. I wanted a master document - something I would always start with, have options, review, and cut what I did not need.

The "I'll Just Build It Myself" Moment

Here's where my story takes an unusual turn. Before I was an attorney, I spent thirty years in software development. I'd built systems for Fortune 500 companies. I'd architected solutions that processed millions of transactions.

And one night, after spending four hours preparing documents for a single probate case - documents I'd prepared dozens of times before - I had a thought:

This is a solved problem. I know how to solve it. Why am I not solving it?

So I did.

I didn't set out to build a product. I set out to fix my own practice. I wanted to take the documents I'd perfected in Florida probate and estate work and make them generate themselves. I wanted to enter client information once and have it flow into every document that needed it. I wanted to update a case number in one place and have that change ripple through everything. I instantly realized I would be able to use the same document generator for divorce, adoption, and even my patent and trademark office actions!

The first version was ugly. It was just for me. But it worked.

And it changed everything.

What One Hour Looks Like Now

Let me paint you a picture of how probate document automation works in my practice today.

A new client walks in. Their mother has passed away. They need help with probate.

My daughter - who assists part-time in my practice - handles the initial document preparation. Here's her workflow:

1. She scans the death certificate and saves it to our shared file location
2. In Make Legal Docs she creates a new client (i.e. Estate of Jane Doe)
3. Next she creates a new Matter
4. She selects the appropriate document package (formal or summary administration, testate or intestate)
5. She fills in the required fields - decedent information, personal representative details, asset summaries
6. She clicks generate

Within an hour - often less - we have a complete initial probate petition package ready for my review. Not a rough draft. A complete, court-ready set of documents formatted exactly as required by the Court and ready for our client's signatures.

What used to take days now takes an hour. What used to require my constant oversight can be handled by a part-time assistant with minimal legal training. What used to be error-prone is now consistent and accurate.

The Secret Sauce: Tested Documents

Here's something most legal document templates get wrong: they assume all courts are the same.

They're not.

When you file a probate petition in Volusia County, the clerk expects certain information in certain places. File that same petition in Orange County, and you might get a deficiency notice because their clerk wants it formatted differently.

Over years of practice, I've collected this institutional knowledge. Every time a clerk told me "we need this" or "that should go there," I updated my templates. My documents aren't just legally correct - I have a "master" that is good for any county. And - things change! When that happens I pull the current template, tweak it as needed, and replace the template in the system. My documents, like my law practice, are evolving.

When I built MakeLegalDocs, I built it around these battle-tested documents. That's why attorneys who use it aren't just saving time - they're filing documents that work the first time. MakeLegalDocs is about allowing attorneys to take THEIR tested documents and upload them into the software to use repeatedly.

The Update That Changes Everything

Here's a scenario every probate attorney knows:

You've prepared the initial petition. You've filed it. The court assigns a case number and a judge. Now you need to prepare the next set of documents - maybe the inventory, or the notice to creditors.

In the old world, this meant opening each document, finding every instance of "[CASE NUMBER]" and "[ASSIGNED JUDGE]," and replacing them manually. Miss one? That's a deficiency notice waiting to happen.

In MakeLegalDocs, I update the case number field once. I add the assigned judge once. Every document in that matter - past, present, and future - now has the correct information. When I generate the inventory, the case number is already there. When I generate the final accounting six months later, it's still there.

This isn't just about saving time (though it does). It's about eliminating errors. It's about never again having to explain to a clerk why your inventory has a different case number than your petition.

Why Other Attorneys Need This

I built MakeLegalDocs for myself. But once I started using it, I realized I couldn't keep it to myself.

Here's why:

Solo practitioners are drowning. The pressure to do more with less is crushing small practices. Big firms can hire staff. They can buy enterprise software. Solo attorneys are stuck choosing between spending money they don't have or spending time they can't afford.

Estate planning and probate are perfect for automation. But, so are divorce, adoption, and business documents like operating agreements, and letters. I even have a set of generic templates for "Notice of Appearance" or "Notice of Unavailability". Unlike litigation, where every case is unique, estate and probate work follows patterns. The same documents. The same fields. The same workflows. If you're doing this work without automation, you're working harder than you need to.

Your expertise shouldn't be wasted on typing. You went to law school to practice law, not to become a document formatting specialist. Every hour you spend fighting with Word is an hour you could spend advising clients, growing your practice, or - here's a radical thought - having a life outside the office.

The time savings are real. I went from spending days on probate document preparation to spending an hour. That's not marketing hyperbole. That's my actual experience, repeated hundreds of times over.

Try It Yourself

I'm not going to pretend MakeLegalDocs is right for everyone. If you're happy with your current document workflow, keep doing what you're doing.

But if you've ever:

• Spent more time formatting than practicing law
• Caught a typo on the twentieth page of a probate petition
• Wished you could hand off document prep to an assistant
• Wondered why legal tech costs more than your office rent

...then I'd like you to try MakeLegalDocs.

We offer a 14-day free trial. Full access. No credit card required. Build a few templates, generate a few documents, and see if it works for your practice.

I built this because I needed it. I'm sharing it because I think you might need it too.