Law's Logic

On December 17, 1997, law office computer users assembled for a delicious lunch of chicken or salmon in the Delta King, and enjoyed the company of Garrett C. Dailey, an extraordinary law and technology entrepreneur, demonstrating Lawgic, an extraordinary software product.

How is Dailey extraordinary? Because he does business in law or technology on at least four levels: he practices family law; he authors works on family law topics for a legal software publisher (Lawgic Publishing Company); he publishes automated treatises through his own legal software and content company (Attorney's Briefcase, Inc.); and he sells an Internet billing program to other software or content vendors. His story alighted on three of these four levels.

Incremental Billing

Dailey (as legal research vendor) wanted to sell pieces of his product on the Internet, but he needed "incremental," or nickel-and-dime, billing. Someone with a legal research database to offer, instead of maintaining a nationwide phone network and sending thousands of bills monthly, may save startup costs and overhead by going on the Internet and billing through the users' credit cards. An incremental billing system lets the vendor charge small amounts (like 50 cents per document opened) by counting the documents, calculating the total fee, and transmitting the total figure to the credit card company.

In response to his own need, Dailey developed an incremental billing software package. But because Dailey had needed the software, he saw that other similar vendors would need it too. This led to a legal problem.

Incorporation Task

Dailey wanted to form a corporation to market his incremental billing product to other vendors. He confessed to being a "dummy in corporation law" who flushed the subject from his memory after law school. Because one of Lawgic's packages does incorporation, he decided to try it out on his own current need.

The result amazed him. In a fraction of an hour, without form books or other reference aids, Lawgic gave him a complete set of incorporation papers, including articles, bylaws, tax filings, minutes and notices.

Lawgic's Logic

Lawgic's electronic interviewing packages are an example of the "rule-based" type of artificial intelligence. They lead you or your legal assistant through a structured interview (most often with your client), and assemble documents reflecting the interviewee's answers. A Lawgic package marries a sophisticated software engine to legal content.

The legal content includes a structured set of questions, logical contingencies connecting different answers with different followup questions, and "law and strategy" commentary to keep the user informed of the legal and practical implications of each choice. The software engine presents the appropriate questions, displays information that helps answer them, receives the answers, and translates the dialogue into a finished document.

Dailey said the name, Lawgic, puts together law and magic. From my predisposition for algorithmic (step by step) thinking, and perhaps in reaction against the "magic" hype that has plagued discussion of artificial intelligence, I would rather think of Lawgic as combining law and logic.

A Lawgic Session

Using the computer screen projector acquired last year by the Sacramento Lawyer Computer Users' Group (SLUG), Dailey went through a session with Lawgic's incorporation package. This session's hypothetical problem, he said, resembled his own incorporation problem.

After launching Lawgic, Dailey jumped right into a problem area: how many directors should the board have? He tried a minimum of 4 and a maximum of 8. Lawgic would not accept this range, and popped up a window saying that the ratio between the minimum and the maximum must, by a cited code provision, be less than 1:2. Dailey entered the numbers 4 and 7; Lawgic accepted them. The resulting provision had the numbers inserted, both in numerals and spelled out in words.

How Much?

An attendee asked about pricing. Lawgic's packages include Employee Handbooks, Employment Agreements, Employment Termination Agreements, Incorporation, Stock Issuance, Stock Options, Premarital Agreements, and Marital Termination Agreements. Retail prices go up to $995 (including a year's updates), but some SLUG members have gotten discounts.

You may have noted some resemblance between Lawgic and HotDocs, a document assembly package previously reviewed in this space. Each has unique qualities to offer.

HotDocs and Lawgic

Lawgic's software engine is like HotDocs in that each allows content authors to write structured interviews that generate a final, custom document. The visible similarities include dialog boxes to give questions and enter answers; context-sensitive help on both the software mechanics and the substance; storage of sets of answers on your computer; and assembly of final document from the answer set.

Each product bases a great part of its market appeal on its document assembly engine. Because each engine sets up the final document using logical rules for internal consistency, each can save you the time and effort of cross-checking within the document. For example, if you say there are no children, either product will delete references to children. In Dailey's words (referring to Lawgic but applicable to HotDocs too), "it's an idiot-proof drafting system."

Authored Content or Authoring Tools?

The chief difference between Lawgic and HotDocs is that Lawgic, not HotDocs, markets substantive legal expertise and content; while HotDocs, not Lawgic, makes its authoring engine available to the customer. Thus, if you are looking to draft a complex document without being an expert in the area and without expending time on custom legal research and consultation with experts, you want Lawgic.

If Lawgic does not supply the document you need, you need HotDocs to create a template specifying the interview questions and their relationships to one another in a form document. Your legal assistant can then use the template to ask your client the interview questions at the computer, and push a button to assemble the final document.

Lawgic's content, including law and strategy comments covering the consequences of various interview answers, means it employs content authors well known in their fields. An example is the family law packages, by George Norton, whom co-author Dailey dubs the "patriarch" of family law. HotDocs, by contrast, offers several packages of pre-written templates and forms prescribed by law, such as Judicial Council and federal court forms, in which you would not expect commentary by a dean of the subject matter.

Law and Strategy

The Lawgic document assembly engine is fairly elaborate, but easy to understand once you go through an included 30-minute telephone tutorial with a Lawgic staff member. Like most GUI programs, Lawgic employs a number of windows that can coexist on screen. You participate in a question-and-answer dialog in one window.

When you need context-sensitive help, you can get two windows: "question help" and "law and strategy." Question help means help with the mechanics of the question-and-answer dialog. Law and strategy is substantive; it is the author's commentary on legal and strategic problems raised by the particular question area.

You also can display a dynamic "Outline" view that moves through the dialog with you, suppressing inapplicable question areas as it goes; a "Text in Progress" view showing the passages you are generating in the final document; a "Revert" view with alternate forms of the text that you may have stored; the author's commentary in the already-mentioned "Law and Strategy" view; or a "Notepad" window in which you can jot your own comments in question context. You can turn each view on and off independently, with a maximum of four view windows open at once.

An attendee asked whether Dailey advises telling the client about Lawgic. Dailey said that he sits in his library with the client, with a huge screen image, showing off the great speed (and consequent money savings to the client) with which he can draft the document. This is persuasive to the client that $100, the amount Dailey adds for his use of Lawgic, is money well spent.

Another question was whether to disclose Lawgic's capabilities to adversary counsel. Dailey said he was in one adversary's office when he needed to reassemble a particular document. Dailey had his own office send the interview answer file to his laptop over the Internet, and then he reassembled the document while the opponent watched. "That blew him away," Dailey said.

Finally, Dailey was asked whether "idiot-proof" legal drafting tools with artificial intelligence eliminate the need for attorney work. His answer was "yes and no." The software shortens the needed attorney time, but it gives the attorney a new service to charge for.

The tools can have unexpected benefits. One high-income client complained, when Dailey drafted a document in the traditional way and mailed it, that he was not told why there were no exemptions for his children. The reason was an income phase-out. This client was happier seeing the automated drafting process on the big screen in Dailey's library, because he could see the effects of the phase-out in the Outline and Text in Progress windows and the explanation of the phase-out in the Law and Strategy window.

Dailey added that his family court pro tem experience tells him that 70% of litigants are in pro per. He therefore put the "California Divorce Guide" service (similar to what the Sacramento courts once offered for $30 in an automated kiosk) onto the Internet on a pay- per-view basis at www.caldivorceguide.com. Because most of the pro per litigants cannot afford counsel, the Divorce Guide mainly replaces non-attorney ignorance, not attorney work.

By being "idiot-proof," the new generation of legal drafting tools can help a non-attorney produce a professional-looking product. In this ease lurk dangers. For example, although a question like "Do you waive your right to appeal?" may call merely for a "yes" or "no," answering it properly may require years of law practice experience and detailed knowledge of the client's case.

When the California Divorce Guide cannot do a job, it says so: "Stop! See an attorney about this." That probably is a good idea for any legal drafting software designed for non- attorneys to use. When a simple question requires legal expertise to find the right answer, the software should warn the user to seek an attorney's advice.

Reference

Garrett C. Dailey, President, Attorney's Briefcase, Inc., 519 Seventeenth St., 7th Fl., Oakland 94612, (510) 836-2743, fax (510) 465-7348

Lawgic Publishing Company, 7200 Redwood Blvd., Novato 94945, (415) 898-8855, fax (415) 898-8875, www.lawgic.com