Whether you're rushing to court, returning client calls, or simply trying to work through your rising pile of yet-to-be-drafted legal documents, there never seems to be enough time in the day.
Given your ever-growing list of daily tasks and client priorities, it’s crucial to find ways to make your work easier and more efficient. Lawyers who use legal document forms to jumpstart their work save hours that might otherwise be spent turning a blank page into something ready for prime time.
There’s no denying that lawyers often face tasks and clients that require a personalized approach. But there are also hours upon hours of work that could be reduced or eliminated simply by starting from something other than scratch.
The legal document examples lawyers need most
Think about the legal documents you draft most often for your clients. They may include contracts, estate documents, court forms, corporate documents, leases, and much more. Now imagine having the right form or example document at your fingertips. With such resources, you can make quick work of a project that would have otherwise taken hours or days to complete.
Could you draft all of these documents yourself? Absolutely — plenty of lawyers still do. But there’s no point in reinventing the wheel, especially when you have lots of other client work you could be doing.
When time is money (and there always seems to be a shortage of the former), lawyers need to start with reliable legal document examples. Quality content that delivers a baseline for the work at hand.
For more than a century, that content has come from O’Brien’s Encyclopedia of Forms. Lawyers across Canada — and across practice areas — have long turned to O’Brien’s for its comprehensive collection of forms and precedents. The document examples in particular give lawyers enough information to get started, while leaving room for the personal expertise of the user.
Go farther, faster with O’Brien’s and Westlaw
Now, the head start O’Brien’s has delivered for years gets lawyers even farther down the path. O’Brien’s Encyclopedia of Forms is available on westlaw Canada for the first time — and this change is sure to turn heads of busy lawyers everywhere.
For customers used to dealing with forms in actual print, the move to a digital format always brings some improvements. Amid the need to learn a new system, there are the efficiency gains of no longer thumbing through hundreds of pages to find what you need. And while paper still holds a place in the hearts of many, there’s something to be said for the portability and flexibility of digital documents — especially in an age of social distancing and remote workplaces.
Beyond that, the integration of O’Brien’s into westlaw Canada means the connection between legal documents and the law that defines them is much closer. Consider the convenience of starting your work with both a trustworthy document example and the primary law that it relates to. Equipped with that knowledge and visibility, lawyers are set up for success. It’s quite simply a recipe for faster, more confident work.
Bringing O’Brien’s and Westlaw together doesn’t eliminate the effort and expertise that lawyers bring to their clients. There’s always more to the craft than paperwork. But with the right legal document examples from O’Brien’s, and the legal insights from westlaw, lawyers can confidently skip over the blank page problem and start moving towards finished work.