A more efficient and client-friendly approach to family law

Family law lawyers know better than anybody that marital issues can get contentious quickly. Whether it’s drafting premarital agreements before an upcoming nuptial or helping a client navigate divorce proceedings, family law–as the name indicates–is personal. It goes without saying that it is important that family law attorneys get it right to not exacerbate tension and make sure that their family law case management is as above reproach as possible. 

One way to make the client experience as enjoyable as possible (given the circumstances) is to automate your practice.

Gavel is a client intake and document automation software that lets you create custom questionnaires, which we call workflows, that can be filled in by a lawyer or by the clients themselves. This workflow can then automatically generate completed legal documents. With these workflows, family law firms can streamline their client intake and onboarding process, draft settlement agreements, child custody agreements, court pleadings, and so much more.  In this way, lawyers can use Gavel to “build a Turbotax” for their family law practice and monetize their work at scale. Let's take a closer look at how Gavel can transform your family law practice.

While each case is unique, there are certain questions and tasks that are routinely asked and done.  Before even getting to automating documents, there is a good amount of data to collect in the intake form from every client who retains your services.  

‍Streamline your intake process by building a customized, dynamic intake questionnaire on Gavel.  When performing a client intake–whether in person or sending a Word doc or PDF to a client–there are many issues that can arise.  A few examples: a client may misunderstand a question and provide incorrect information, a client might need extra guidance on a few questions, sending an approachable questionnaire could result in insufficient information, and additional follow-up while sending a wholly comprehensive questionnaire could off-put the client and overwhelm them. Gavel can help. 

In Gavel, you can also add info bubbles and suggestions to make sure your clients complete the questionnaires correctly.  You can also add “logic” to your questionnaires to create a decision tree that determines when particular fields are shown or hidden. So, your questionnaire can ask if the client has children and then ask for the names and dates of birth of those children.  If the answer to the initial question is ‘no,’ then the client never sees the questions about children’s names and dates of birth.  Even better, Gavel lets you repeat questions on the questionnaire so you can collect all the right information. You can use this feature to collect information on multiple children, for example. Instead of manually asking the names of your client’s many children, you can use the repeating items function to ask the same question multiple times easily.  These features save you time, giving you all the facts you need without having to ask every question yourself. 

‍Automate your templates with Gavel. Lots of family lawyers use templates for drafting specific documents; for example, you may have paragraphs you routinely use in custody document pleadings including relevant precedents and citations. Gavel’s conditional paragraph feature lets you automatically incorporate that paragraph depending on certain responses to the intake questionnaire or any other specific questionnaire you create. This feature makes sure that the right paragraphs are added to the underlying template where they’re needed and not where they would be irrelevant.

‍Leverage the power of AI by using Gavel’s AI tool, Blueprint, to automate existing templates and forms. With Blueprint, you can upload the document you want to automate just once, and the AI will scan the document and suggest custom questions for your questionnaire. You can then send the questionnaire to existing and future clients. Once they complete it, you will have an accurate document ready to be signed (via Docusign or native e-signature integration) and submitted.

‍Piggyback off No-Setup Automated Forms to make things even easier. These ready-made workflows are already built out with accompanying templates, but they are also fully customizable. Select your desired form, add it to your account, and you’ll soon have a questionnaire and template that you can customize. You don’t have to start from scratch.

Gavel gives you:

Gavel has several features that make it the perfect software solution for your family law practice:

Gavel has helped several law firms in multiple practice areas reduce the time spent on routine work and focus instead on growing their book of business, growing brand recognition via publications or speaking engagements, focusing on higher-level legal issues, or just enjoying some free time. 

For example, Rogue Family Law used Gavel to transition away from a traditional litigation-focused family law practice and start offering unbundled legal services to self-representing clients, reducing the cost of access to justice and helping clients save thousands of dollars in legal fees. Gavel’s internal workflows help the firm ensure that they capture every detail needed for a successful resolution to their family law cases. In this way, Gavel empowers lawyers to address holes in the legal market. 

Similarly, online family law firm Hello Divorce used Gavel to build their online platform and accelerate profits and productivity. By productizing legal divorce services, Hello Divorce was able to make divorce easier and more affordable for clients. They used Gavel to build an almost DIY divorce service to reduce conflict and improve access to justice.  

Plus, Gavel integrates seamlessly with platforms like Zapier, Clio, and Docusign, which enables family law firms to work across time zones to resolve cases in less time.

Imagine being a small family law firm swamped by a high caseload and all the documentation needed to go along with that. How useful would it be to reduce the time spent drafting important documents by 90%? That's what Gavel can do.

Gavel offers you:

The secure client portal, automated questionnaires, client guidance, and document completion features of Gavel make it a perfect fit for your family law practice. Here are some of the ways you can use it.

Automation can transform your family law practice, but when you're looking for something more powerful than the usual legal practice management software, consider a platform that offers these features:

In family law, accuracy and client relationships are important. Gavel removes human error and routine work from the process of creating agreements and onboarding clients, so you have more time to deal with them on a human level. Plus, with our tools to offer legal services online, we can help you expand your practice remotely.

See how Gavel has revolutionized the legal field by signing up for a free trial today.