The Ohio State Bar Association announced this week that it has partnered with HotDocs Market to launch OhioDocs.
In keeping with the trend of digital disruption in the legal marketplace, the platform is a cloud-based library of hundreds of legal documents that have been automated using the HotDocs system.
Attorneys can access a template for the document they need, answer some interview questions and automatically create a customized document based on the answers they gave.
“Document assembly overcomes the problems in ordinary word processing, such as cutting, pasting and reformatting,” according to the bar association’s website. “You get a customized document with all the blanks filled in, all the pronouns and verbs grammatically in place, all the paragraphs properly placed and numbered — everything complete and correct, in a fraction of the time it would take you using a word processor.”
The OhioDocs cloud-based delivery channel means that documents can be accessed at any time.
“We are pleased to offer OhioDocs as a resource that our members can take advantage of in their practices,” said OSBA President Ronald Kopp. “Based on our prior experience with the HotDocs fully automated document assembly system, we are confident this valuable resource offered at a special price will make their (association) membership even more valuable.”
Available by subscription only to bar association members, the document assembly technology combines with publishers’ content to allow attorneys to create documents quickly, efficiently and accurately.
The initial launch contains about 300 documents. A corporate lawyer, for instance, may enter the platform and locate an operating agreement under the corporate and business category.
That category is further divided into sections containing documents covering everything from partnerships to nonprofit corporations.
Family law attorneys can access templates for probate issues like adoption agreements and conservatorships and lawyers from all areas of law can use the service’s documents for practice management, such as confidentiality agreements and fee agreements.
Jonathan Hoy, vice president of HotDocs Market, commented in a statements that he was “thrilled to add the Ohio State Bar Association as the newest publisher to our rapidly growing marketplace for automated legal content.”
“Through the wide variety of content available on HotDocs Market, the service has helped subscribers generate thousands of document assemblies, saving themselves time and money,” Hoy said. “We are confident that those same benefits will extend to subscribers of OhioDocs.”
The move by the state bar association reflects a growing trend among legal service providers to embrace technology, which just years ago was seen as anathema among many lawyers in the industry.
But with the proliferation of websites such as LegalZoom, which diminishes the need for a lawyer via automated document assembly for the layperson, has created a rush among lawyers to find ways to do less paperwork and spend more time building and retaining client relationships.
The Ohio State Bar Association is part of a growing portfolio of publishers for HotDocs, which also works with other state bar associations and LexisNexis, a leading legal research provider.
