When dealing with family law and divorce matters, they can take up a lot of time, energy and labour but there are tools and services available to help cut down on some of the most common time constraints – particularly as it pertains to standard procedures involving court documents, forms, letters and agreements. Divorce can be a time-ridden process with clients coming to you from a place of frustration and distress, there can be a lot of stress and tension involved, which can be challenging for lawyers and paralegals to mitigate in divorce and family law matters. Calculating the division of property, assets, pension plans, and determining spousal or child support can prove very time consuming. Sometimes clients don’t understand the complexities of divorce law, this is why finding tools that can help make the process of divorce matters run more smoothly can be very beneficial to you as a lawyer or paralegal, as well as your client given the alleviation that will come from expediting the process. Here are some software options that you may want to consider implementing in order to increase productivity and avoid costly errors that cause rework or setbacks.
DivorceMate
Category: Family Law, Court Form Automation & Legal Finance
Location: Canada (Forms and Precedents available in Ontario & BC only)
Price: First licence $2,000, additional licences $400 (plus tax)
Description: Some of the key features offered by DivorceMate include…
- Child and Spousal support calculator
- Automation of Court Forms and Financial Documents.
- Automation of Domestic Contracts (separation agreements, marriage contracts, etc.). They store precedents for different family law contracts and keep them updated.
Divorcemate also has a sister company (https://www.mysupportcalculator.ca/calculate) which attracts family law clients and allows some family lawyers to be listed on the site to potentially receive leads. This is what we would call a ‘lawyer marketplace’, however there are more modern lawyer marketplaces than this one. See this comparison of the most credible lawyer marketplaces, who all focus on attracting consumers from different practice areas, and have different payment models (some handle the payment for you, some let the law firm bill the client themselves).
Korbitec: ACL Family Law
Category: Family Law, Document and Court Form Automation
Location: Alberta, British Columbia,
Price: Pay per use, one-time fee of $105 when a file is open or $45 for small claims.
Description: Korbitec is a court form and letter automation software. It focuses on automating all civil litigation documents, which includes a family law feature available in British Columbia and Alberta (non-family documents are offered in Ontario as well). Your paralegal would enter the parties’ data, and the software formats/generates the complete court form/letter. Korbitec also offers 15 free hours of customization - what this includes is implementation of your firm’s documents as well as any precedents or forms that you would like added.
Example of letters it includes:
- Letter to lawyer;
- Advise claim was issued (pleadings);
- Additional request for documents (affidavit of docs), etc.
Example of court forms it includes:
- Statement of Claim for Divorce;
- Exclusive Possession Order;
- Statement of Child Support, etc.
Infoware
Category: Family Law, Document and Court Form Automation
Location: Ontario, Alberta, British Columbia (some federal matters)
Price: $45/month/user with discount for 10+ users
Description: Infoware is a legal document and court form automation software specialised in automating templates, assembling documents, formatting and editing, and court form creation. Specifically, Infoware seamlessly extends the features of Microsoft Office and Exchange for the legal industry and simplifies the creation of standard clause documents such as contracts, wills and agreements in one place. Their InFORM feature offers a number of templates for court forms. This tool asks you to select from the court form suites your firm subscribes to, complete a case profile for the court, complete a representative case profile (for the lawyer/s) and complete the Party table - upon doing so, InFORM will generate the form for you.
Family Law Software
Category: Family Law, Legal Finance
Location: United States
Price: $69.95/month + $99 initial charge (USD)
Description: Family Law Software analyzes financial aspects pertaining to divorce matters. So far this software is only offered in the United States. The purpose is for lawyers and paralegals to use this tool as a way to help clients:
- Calculate child support;
- Prepare financial forms for court;
- Value defined benefit pensions;
- Divide assets; and
- Make financial projections to help clients consider alternatives.
Family Law Software offers two packages: Cloud Individual and Cloud Firm. Cloud Individual offers tools for: property division, marital and separate property report, property equalization, child support, ‘what if’ report, etc. Cloud Firm edition offers the same as the individual plan but instead is meant for small law firms. This package allows paralegals and attorneys to log in and work on their respective cases on the portal.
Our Family Wizard
Category: Family Law, Dispute Resolution & Communication
Location: USA, Canada, Australia, UK, New Zealand
Price: Practitioner Accounts Are Free
Description: When parents are unable to communicate appropriately, it often adversely affects their children. This is why Our Family Wizard offers a quick solution to that problem by allowing parents to perform communication and scheduling tasks from within the app or website. Our Family Wizard allows practitioners to open an account for free in order to help their clients communicate with the other party in a cordial and organised manner and maintain a clear and accessible record of said communications.
Finding legal software that works for you is important. With this general overview of some of the family law and divorce software that is already out there, we hope that the hunt is made a little bit easier for you. For additional assistance in comparing other legal software please check out our marketplace.
