Frequently Asked Questions

If you have questions on how to do something in Make Legal Docs try searching our FAQ database.

Frequently Asked Questions

Setup

This data is for future improvements to Make Legal Docs to automatically read data from your jurisdiction, and office information. As of February 2023 this functionality has not been implemented.
Yes! You can create user roles like Admininstrator and Legal Assistant. To do so go to Configuration/ Security/ Roles and create a role with the access to menus you want this role to have. Next, edit or add the user and check the box for the roles the user has.

Documents

Document categories can be thought of as organizing your information by pratice area. As an example: Probate, Estate, Civil, Intellectual Property, Family Law. Within each category you can add sub-categories. Again, as an example, Probate may have sub-categories like: Summary Administration, Formal Administration, Homestead, Creditors, General/Miscellaneous.

Categories should be reviewed and created before adding documents. Categories can be added and edited at any time.

Data fields are the find an replace field on the documents that change dynamically. As a better example, let's say you want to upload a bespoke living will. The living will would have a client name and this name could even be first name and last name. Additionally, the living will should have an agent or surrogate to make decisions. In your document you will identify these fields like {[estate.firstname]}, {[estate.lastname]}.
First, start by watching our video on creating your own documents. Second, take an existing document you know and love. Let's use a Living Will for John Doe where Jane and Joe Doe are his surrogates. The easiest first step is to open the document in Word and find and replace exsiting information with the desired Data Field names. In Word choose Edit/Search and Replace and replace 'John Doe' with '{[Estate.clientname]}' or your desired Data Field name. If you want the client name to always be bold and upper case then highlight the Data Field in the word document and format the text. When you use Make Legal Docs to generate the document it will be in the correct format.
John, attorney and founder of Make Legal Docs, likes to use categorized descriptive names of the format {[matter.fieldname]}. For example, {[probate.petitioner]}, {[petitioner.decedentDoD]}, {[petitioner.decedentlastfourSSN]}
The default value becomes a prefilled field when you create new documents. For example, let's say you have "{[Year]}" as a field on documents you can change the default value from 2023 to 2024 as desired. Your own attorney information should be default fields.
Probate and Estate documents typically rely on a field to describe how the parties are related, for example {[estate.beneficiary1relationship]}, is to setup a default value like 'spouse||wife||husband||son||daughter||brother||sister||friend||--other--'

Clients

Client data is used to provide you an easy way to look up information. Clients are the first step before creating a matter.
Yes. Client data is protected by encryption in our database and our database is further protected.

Matters

These are quick descriptions that all you to see meaningful information on the dashboard.
Make Legal Docs looks at the date the matter was created and what category was used to create the matter. This information is then displayed on the dashboard for the last six months.
Make Legal Docs is meant to use your bespoke documents, your expemplars, and make it easy to generate the same document over and over. Create a client, create a matter, and add documents. Once you have the documents added then enter data in the fields. Make Legal Documents does not prompt you for paragraph choices so a good practice when creating documents is to highlight (use the highlighter function in Word) the paragraphs requiring review. Save the document locally and finish editing.
Just return to the matter and click the link to make access the data fields and matter information. You can make changes and edit the documents.
Matters are the tasks that you do for clients. For example, John Doe comes to see you about an estate plan. John Doe is the client and the matter would be pulled from the category "Estates" or "Estate Planning."

First, create a client (i.e. John Doe). Second, choose New Matter from the main screen or choose matters from the menu.

  1. Choose a client from the drop down list.

  2. Choose a category from the drop down list

  3. Enter a description and notes as desired

  4. Click save and enter your initials

  5. Click Add Documents and choose the documents you want for this client by checking the box next to each document

    If you do not remember what a particular document does then hold the mouse over the information icon. The description of each document comes from the Documents section of Make Legal Docs.

  6. After adding a document you can preview it by clicking the gray binoculars icon. If you made a mistake and do not want the document then click the red trash can icon.

  7. To add data, click the ""Fields Tab"" and enter data as needed.

  8. Click ""Update Record"". You can add more documents as desired and add data to more fields.

  9. When ready to print your document click the purple download document icon and save your document