|
|
The legal information and commentary on this site is general only. Documents ordered
through Cleardocs affect the user‘s legal rights and liabilities. To assess their
suitability for the user, legal, accounting and financial advice must be obtained.
|
Are the documents in plain language?All Cleardocs documents are in plain language. Cleardocs is absolutely committed to the hallmarks of its brand: clarity | simplicity | ease of use. The founder of Cleardocs, Christopher Balmford, is an internationally recognised plain language expert. His clients include 8 major national law firms, 10 public listed companies, 5 government bodies, the ASX, the United Nations and the European Central Bank. He is a lawyer by training and practised as a solicitor from 1988-1999. Christopher is a regular speaker at international plain language events and in 2001 helped deliver a one week intensive legal drafting course in the Law Faculty at the Univeristy of Cape Town (with Professor Halton Cheadle from Cape Town and Phil Knight, a plain language consultant in Canada). David Kelly is involved in writing the Cleardocs documents. David is the former Chairman of the Law Reform Commission of Victoria. He was the main author of the Commission's ground-breaking reports on Plain English and the Law. From 1993-2000, David was in charge of Phillips Fox's clear communication strategy and its precedent creation and management. Phillips Fox is an international law firm with offices throughout Australia, New Zealand and Viet Nam. Previously, David was a Professor of Law at the University of Adelaide and Secretary to the Victorian Attorney General's Department. David has published several books on insurance law. Are the documents legal?Each master document used on the site has been approved and signed-off by 200-lawyer Melbourne and Sydney law firm Maddocks. This firm is responsible for maintaining the documents and keeping them fully up-to-date with the law. You can be assured that the Cleardocs interface, and the documents we produce, are comprehensively and consistently maintained. Also, the Cleardocs CEO, and acknowledged plain language legal expert, Christopher Balmford reviews all the documents (hence the name: Cleardocs!). You will notice the clarity of the documents. In support, Maddocks provides a free legal helpline in relation to Cleardocs documents. If you have a legal query, then first ring the Cleardocs helpline and we will arrange for you to speak with the relevant person at Maddocks. The firm provides a free legal helpline in relation to the documents Cleardocs provides. If you require other legal advice in relation to your particular circumstances, then this will be charged for. Our phone number is 1300 307 343. Can you correct your earlier documents?You can correct your answers for documents you created on an earlier visit for free. You can do this as often as you need but only until the documents are correct for the particular circumstance you require. Then, you should leave them alone, as they are stored on the Cleardocs website as a permanent legal record of the matter. We have various protocols to prevent theft and fraud. In some cases, the system may ‘freeze’ a document and prevent any further edits. You can 'unfreeze' the document by ringing Cleardocs on 1300 307 343. How do you pay for the documents?You pay for the documents either by regular invoice (if you are a professional firm creating documents regularly) or by credit card. Let us know which your prefer. You can change at any time. If you pay by credit card, the ANZ eGate Secure Internet Payment Service handles the payment. Your records are not seen, or stored on our site. All the payment pages are on the Bank's site. Cards accepted:
We send you a Tax Invoice, which means that if you are a professional customer creating documents on behalf of a client, then you can simply bill the cost as a disbursement. How will we alert you to possible updates to your documents?When we update a document on our site, we will enable you to easily update the documents you've created in the past. For example, if a change to the law makes it desirable to update the Superannuation Trusts you've created, then we'll send you information from Maddocks about the possible update. Better still, the email will:
Cleardocs helps you enhance your relationship with your clients with the greatest of ease and at minimal cost. What documents are available?With all the Cleardocs products, you simply answer some straightforward questions and the intuitive technology shapes and creates the tailor-made documents for your clients. The whole process generally takes only a few minutes, and you can download the completed, legally signed-off documents immediately. Currently, you can create and buy: Company Services
Trust
Superannuation
Cleardocs plans to add other documents to the site. You can suggest documents you'd like by emailing Cleardocs at support@cleardocs.com. What file formats does Cleardocs send you the documents in?We send you the documents in a print-ready Rich Text Format file, otherwise known as an 'rtf' file. To open and print the document, you'll need Microsoft Word, or an equivalent word processing package. What are the benefits of plain language?Plain language is widely accepted throughout the English speaking world — even in the law. Since the work of the Law Reform Commission of Victoria in the late 1980's and early 1990's, the legal profession throughout Australia has endorsed plain language. This endorsement is made by firms, by government and by the legal profession's associations. Clients, whether retail or corporate, value legal and related documents they can understand:
Many of our professional customers tell us that their clients comment that our documents are refreshingly clear. International developmentsIn Australia major law firms are increasingly committed to plain language. Some of them even market plain language services and use their commitment to plain language to distinguish themselves from their competitors. In the USA the Securities Exchange Commission requires certain parts of prospectuses to be in plain language. In the United Kingdom the government has recently enacted legislation replacing many old 'legalese' words with plain language replacements. Who do you contact about legal questions?If you have any legal questions in relation to the Cleardocs documents, then you can use the free legal helpline that the law firm Maddocks provides to Cleardocs users. Maddocks are our lawyers. They sign-off the Cleardocs master documents and the question interface before we put the documents on our site. The first thing to do is ring the Cleardocs helpline. We will arrange for you to speak with the relevant lawyer at Maddocks. If you require other legal advice in relation to your particular circumstances, then this will be charged for. Our number is 1300 307 343. Having problems registering your company with ASIC?Below, we have set out some common reasons (and the related solutions) about why ASIC might reject your company when lodging through Cleardocs. If this has happened to your application to register a company, then it's easy enough to fix things. You need to make changes to correct the items ASIC has rejected. To make the changes to your matter before lodging again:
Remember to click 'Next' at the bottom of the page to save your changes. You can then relodge your application from the document summary page. Address issuesASIC accepts only addresses that Australia Post accepts as postal addresses. ASIC will reject addresses:
So you need to use real postal addresses. You can log on to Cleardocs, recall the matter and go through your answers to change the address details - remember to click 'Next' at the bottom of the page to save your change. Then go back to the page before question one and click 'Lodge with ASIC' to relodge your application with ASIC. By the way, in the Northern Territory, you can use 'NT Por' addresses. But you'll probably need to email evidence of the address to us so we can email it to ASIC. Name is rejectedASIC will reject a name if it is:
You therefore need to check the availability of a new name on the ASIC database. You can do that by loging in, recalling your matter, then clicking on the link to ASIC next to question 1. Information is missingThere are a whole variety of messages you might receive from ASIC that look something like this:
"Item 8q//ZSH//0 Generally these messages indicate that a field has been left blank somewhere, or has inaccurate information in it. If you log in and recall the matter, you can then carefully review your answers in the Cleardocs question interface. If you do, you will probably find a blank, or a field left unticked. You can then correct it and click 'Next' at the bottom of the page. Then you're ready to relodge with ASIC. You can relodge by recalling the matter and clicking 'Lodge with ASIC' again. There is no charge for any of this. What is so different about Cleardocs?Cleardocs is dramatically different from both standard shelf company providers, and even so-called 'online' document providers. We are:
You can read more about the Cleardocs advantages here.
To set up on Cleardocs, all you need to do is key in your name, industry, email and password. Then you're ready to create Cleardocs documents. It only takes a few minutes. (There's no joining fee. Just a pay per use document fee.) Existing users wanting to start a new document, log in (top right) |
