Legal Documents Online

Accountants and other professional service providers have known for some time that standardised legal documents do not require a significant amount of legal work in order to be tailored for individual client requirements. Why re-invent the wheel and keep making everyone pay through the nose for it?

For a number of years, there have been standard 'shelf company' providers who create legal documents such as Self Managed Superannuation Fund Deeds, Family Trust Deeds, and of course Company Registrations with the accompanying legal Constitution.

However, on the web, there are now also online, automated legal-service alternatives such as www.cleardocs.com and www.lawcentral.com.au, which offer a select range of these services online, with significant benefits all-round.

More than 150,000 new companies are registered each year with the ASIC - which has long been promoting electronic lodgement of documents with their 'EDGE' system. Today there are several companies that provide software for this service such as BGL, or Solution 6. The down-side to these packages is that they can't create the associated legal constitution that is required to establish the company.

Cleardocs is unique in Australia in that it is the only website that synchronises with the ASIC database to allow web-based instant company registration - with the ACN, constitution and all the other legal documents delivered instantly. Instead of waiting until next day, or even a few hours, the client can have the ACN and constitution to execute in less than 20 minutes.

No longer do you have to start from scratch either. By simply answering a series of intelligent questions through a web-based interface, the documents can be automatically created (on the basis of a master document signed-off by a law firm), and be delivered via email or downloaded instantly. Cost-savings can be dramatic, with Trust Deeds less than 30% of the cost from a traditional law firm or 'shelf company' service.

Another obvious benefit is the time-saving aspects. Instant delivery is obviously attractive (an accounting firm can create and download documents and have them ready for signing while a client waits) thus enabling transactions to be completed earlier. And turnaround time is also improved through the document storage facility that allows the customer to return and retrieve the documents as often as desired.

The Q&A approach of the technology customises and tailors the documents more precisely to your client's specific circumstances meaning less irrelevant legalese to wade through, and a more coherent document as a result. Not having to wade through pages of irrelevant text to 'get to the bit' that relates to your client's circumstances (as happens with many traditional legal deeds) means that you save time, and we all know what that saves.

As professional advisers, you get paid for the quality of your advice not your ability to fill in forms and order documents. By making the provision of these documents more efficient for everyone, you can provide your clients with a better value service, and make better quality advice more affordable, and so more accessible.

If you want to see dramatic evidence of this in action, watch what is happening to the Self Managed Superannuation Fund sector right now. Only a few years ago, establishing an SMSF cost upwards of $1,500, and SMSF's were considered the domain of an elite few. As those establishment costs have plummeted, the number of individuals for whom an SMSF is a viable option has boomed. The surrounding industry for providing good, specialised advice has boomed too.

None of these online services should be seen as, in any way, a replacement for proper advice, whether that be accounting or legal. The law allows "Shelf Company" services to operate legally, and be used by professionals on behalf of their clients perfectly safely, and the Act clarifies that these services do not in themselves constitute "advice". The online technology merely refreshes and updates some fairly outmoded processes, such as faxing or phoning with instructions for the preparation of these documents and helps to streamline a "clerical" or "administrative" function.

As a result, the entry costs for these sophisticated legal structures is coming down, and hence the demand for high quality legal and accounting advice is increasing that's a happy win-win for client and advisor.