Gavel’s client portals allow clients to maintain control over their data and remove it at any time. Furthermore, all client data is encrypted at rest with AES-256 encryption in AWS data centers managed in accordance with SOC 1-3, PCI DSS Level 1, and ISO 9001/ISO 270001.
Imagine cutting down the time you spend drafting legal documents by up to 90%. With less time spent on routine paperwork, you can spend more time ensuring client satisfaction and serving new clients.
Plus, Gavel helps you reach new clients by providing DIY estate planning services online.
I want to incorporate a legal form into my practice, but I don’t want to build one. Where can I find premade forms?
Check out our no-setup automated forms here. These can get you up and running on Gavel right away so you can see what our software can do for you.
I manually create and complete legal forms and don’t see a need to change what I’m doing. Why should I start now?
Copying and pasting between forms is time-consuming and repetitive, and allows human error to creep into the process. Gavel automatically completes forms accurately so that you can focus on more important legal work. The system ensures no questions or sections are skipped, and the dynamic legal forms can be tailored to adapt to answers the clients have already given.
How to Save Time and Build Your Estate Planning Practice through Automation
Law firms that practice estate planning know this can be a tricky area of law to master. Providing a reassuring client experience is hugely important for estate planning attorneys, but you also need a solid grounding in the law. Estate planning can be complicated, with updates to the Probate Code and federal and state tax laws changing the legal framework you need to work in. Plus, the volume of estate planning documents means there's a lot to stay on top of.
The goal of estate planning is to make things more streamlined and mess-free after a client’s death, but if you don't get estate planning right, it can do the exact opposite. Estate planning law requires a thoughtful approach to distributing a decedent’s assets at their death. Still, there are other considerations to consider, including advanced healthcare directives, financial durable power of attorney, and healthcare power of attorney, to name just a few.
With so many potential scenarios to consider, it's easy for inefficiencies to creep into your intake process and for details to fall through the gaps. That's why this area of law is prime for automation.
Gavel is a software platform that can revolutionize the estate planning process, making document generation and document assembly easier than ever to improve client service and cut down on administrative tasks.
Gavel lets you build questionnaires that clients fill in themselves, reducing your data entry tasks and making client intake easier. Info bubbles, drop-down explanations, and even embedded videos help to guide your clients through the process, capturing that essential client information and improving client communications. Then, once the client data is captured, you or your client can press a button in Gavel to transform these questionnaires, also known as workflows, into fully completed legal documents, saving the time-consuming process of drafting documents every time you take on a new client.
For example, you can have Gavel take in a client's name, Social Security number, names of spouses, children, and other heirs, and a list of assets, and import all that into a will template with just a few clicks.
Our automation tools offer more than just client intake forms and document generation. Gavel also allows you to productize legal services, letting you offer estate planning services online and boosting profitability by creating an avenue for passive income.
Why Automate Estate Planning Law?
The estate planning process involves a lot of repetitive information input. Your estate planning law firm may spend lots of time inputting information like a client's name, date of birth, spouse's name, home address, and list of heirs into many different documents and software systems.
This is more than just time-consuming. These repetitive tasks come with a greater risk of errors, as each time you enter the relevant information into a form, you may get something wrong.
Although every estate planning client is different, a lot of the base language and organization of a trust, for example, is very similar, making it ideal for automation.
Document automation software like Gavel can help.
Smart document creation allows you to capture client information just once, and then populate it to all the forms you need in whatever formats you require. You'll spend less time on routine tasks like document drafting, freeing you up to focus on those all-important client interactions, enhancing client relationships, and allowing you to reach out to new potential clients. You’ll also have more time to spend on the actual substantive complexities of estate planning law instead of being bogged down by low-level drafting or gathering information. Plus, you'll have the peace of mind of knowing none of the estate planning details are slipping away.
Joint Revocable Living Trust for a couple (Optional Disclaimer)
A Pour-Over Will for each person
Durable Power of Attorney (Financial) for each person
Advance Health Care Directive for each person
Grant Deed (for real estate property)
General Assignment (for tangible personal property)
These pre-built workflows save you from having to start from scratch, but the output documents are fully customizable, so you can replace provisions as needed and respond to individual client needs.
Already have templates that work for you? Gavel's AI tool, Blueprint, can scan your templates, find fillable fields, and suggest questions for your questionnaire so that you can create a new workflow based on your existing template. Then, you can send the question to your client to complete, and convert the completed document into a legal work product ready to be signed. This streamlines the automation process even further, freeing up time for legal professionals to focus on legal work instead of data entry.
Gavel can:
Create smart questionnaires to make sure you capture all the necessary information
Integrate with case management software like Clio to pull existing client data from your databases
Import your existing templates and automate document generation
Create productized legal services like wills and Powers of Attorney that you can sell online
Gavel Features for Estate Planning Law
Gavel has a range of features that make it ideal for your estate planning practice:
Document Automation: Gavel lets you build customizable workflow questionnaires that can be completed by the client themselves or by an attorney. The answers in these workflows are then transferred to a Word or PDF document if one is attached to the workflow, streamlining information gathering and helping your client to understand exactly what you need from them. This makes onboarding quicker and more accurate, saves time for lawyers and paralegals, and ensures client satisfaction.
Question Logic: This feature allows you to control the questions your client will see, making sure they don't get lost in irrelevant details. For example, you can ask a client if they have any children, and only if they answer ‘yes,’ ask for children's names, dates of birth, and other information.
Conditional Phrases and Conditional Paragraphs: This lets you control what phrases and paragraphs get added to a will, Power of Attorney, or other documents. You can make phrases, paragraphs, or even entire pages of agreements conditional on the answers your clients give. For example, if your client is married, you can insert language about spousal rights that you wouldn't include for a single client.
Info Bubbles & Default Answers: Ensure your intake workflows are filled out correctly with info bubbles and default answers. You can have help text appear in chosen fields to clarify the information you need or explain any documentation they may need to upload. This reduces the time you need to spend on client follow-up and improves the functionality of your questionnaires.
Customer Support. Gavel is designed to be user-friendly. But if you do get stuck while building an automated workflow, we are available 7 days a week, and we offer email, phone, and screen share support. You can read more about our capabilities on our pricing page here.
Security. Security is our primary concern, given that we serve primarily legal customers. All customers are set up on segregated encrypted databases. All data centers are managed by leading data security standards, including SOC 1 - 3, PCI DSS Level 1, and ISO 9001 / ISO 27001. Gavel regularly undergoes third-party security and penetration testing and complies with local privacy laws and regulations. See gavel.io/security for more details.
Driving Results with Estate Planning Law Automation
Several law firms have taken advantage of Gavel to better serve their clients.
For example, Indiana law firm Troyer & Good uses Gavel to automate client intake and document drafting. They have been able to automate the creation of wills, trusts, healthcare directives, powers of attorney, and court pleadings, using our legal tech to save drafting time and spend more billable hours on client management and client service.
We surveyed 30 estate law planning firms and found that, on average, our software saves them more than seven hours of drafting and hours of personal consultations.
Gavel can save up to 90% of your time drafting documents, revolutionizing how you practice estate planning law.
Gavel offers you:
Greater accuracy in documentation, with less time spent drafting documents.
More time to build your business, serve your clients, and reach out to new ones.
Here are some of the ways automation can transform estate planning:
Drafting Trusts. Use a client-facing workflow to gather information on the grantor, trustees, and beneficiaries and lists of assets and distribution instructions. Then, have Gavel auto-populate your underlying trust template with the response fields from the questionnaire, providing you with a complete first draft that you can review in minutes.
Drafting Advance Health Care Directives. Automatically populate information from workflows like names, contact information, and medical preferences, eliminating human error. If you don’t want to write out the questions yourself, you can use Gavel’s AI tool, Blueprint to scan your Advance Health Care Directive template and suggest questions for the accompanying questionnaire. Then click through to watch your AHCD get generated in seconds.
Intake Questionnaires. Speed up client intake and make sure your client provides all the necessary information so you can begin working on their needs. Use info bubbles and question logic to ensure you get all the information you need in one place..
Drafting Wills. Automate data entry of assets, liabilities, tax information, and beneficiaries to create legal wills. Will creation is a great service to offer online, with Gavel allowing clients to create a DIY will based on your software.
Top Features to Consider for Estate Planning Law Automation
Strong Logic Capabilities. Keep your clients focused on the questionnaire by only showing them relevant questions. Logic capabilities allow you to tailor the questions that appear according to early responses, so you're not asking childless clients for their children's names, for example.
Strong Conditional Phrases and Paragraphs Features. This feature will automatically import phrases, paragraphs, and even entire pages depending on the answers to your questionnaire. For example, if you’re creating a trust in California and the questionnaire says the trustor is married, you can auto-populate a paragraph in the underlying doc to include a section in trust to discuss spousal information.
No-Setup Automated Forms to Save Time. No-setup automated forms let you quickly build a useful client onboarding and document generation tool to reduce repetitive tasks immediately.
Safe, AI Features. If you already have templates you like using, you can create questionnaires based on them. Gavel’s Blueprint AI tool can scan your existing templates and documents and suggest questions for your workflows to give you the necessary information. Plus, unlike other commercially available AI tools, none of the data inputted into a Gavel workflow is shared anywhere else, either outside of Gavel or within Gavel.
User-Friendly Interface. Look for a straightforward and intuitive design, ideally one that can be customized with your firm's logo and color scheme. This will make the software easy to use for paralegals, legal assistants, and clients.
Customer Support. You're probably not a coder, so look for robust customer support. We offer unlimited support available to customers at any tier. We are available 7 days a week, and we offer email, phone, and screen share support.
Transform Your Estate Planning Law Practice with Gavel
Gavel can streamline your law practice and remove a significant portion of the routine tasks involved in estate planning law, freeing you up to focus on client relationships and attracting more business. Plus, Gavel helps you productize legal services to reach a whole new client base.
Easy-to-use client portals guide clients through managing their estate, improving client satisfaction and making estate planning easier than ever.
“I've yet to have an automation task Gavel wasn't prepared to handle.”
Lisa A.
Attorney at Adler Estate Law
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