I'm a lawyer, how can Cleardocs help me?

The legal world is fast-paced and lawyers are increasingly expected to provide better service for less cost. If you are a sole-practitioner or a lawyer in a small law firm, Cleardocs can benefit your practice.

Cleardocs provides a range of cost-effective legal and commercial documents that lawyers can purchase on behalf of their clients to give effect to their client's commercial objectives. Lawyers can be assured that the products purchased through Cleardocs reflect changing laws, include updated master documents, and that the client is getting value for their money (as lawyers are saving time and costs in the process of their work).

Below, we expand on some of the benefits Cleardocs offers to lawyers.

Laura Cantillon, Maddocks Lawyers

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What is Cleardocs?

Cleardocs is an online platform with a suite of legally compliant, commercial documents prepared by specialist lawyers at Maddocks. Legal practitioners can tailor the documents to their client's needs by answering the questions on the Cleardocs website, which typically takes 10 to 20 minutes. Cleardocs documents are cost effective and can be purchased for a small fee and charged as a disbursement to clients.

The types of documents available for purchase are vast and cover the following areas:

• company incorporation and changes;
• trusts;
• self-managed super funds (SMSF);
• estate Planning; and
• employment.

Changing law

The law is constantly changing (particularly in light of the recent COVID-19 pandemic). As a result, lawyers face increased difficulty when ensuring legislative compliance, particularly if they are required to prepare documents covering areas that they do not specialise in, for example, superannuation law.

For more than 20 years Cleardocs has partnered with Maddocks, a nationally recognised law firm with dedicated teams in a number of commercial sub-practice areas, including trusts, tax, superannuation and employment law. The lawyers from Maddocks are constantly reviewing and updating Cleardocs documents to ensure that they reflect the continually changing laws. Cleardocs does this so that you don't have to!

For example, the primary legislation governing the supervision and regulation of the superannuation industry has been updated to account for changes introduced across more than five separate amending acts over the past two calendar years. Keeping up with such a significant raft of changes can be an onerous task – even for the specialist!

Up-to-date legal documents

Sole practitioners and small practices also encounter challenges in keeping their precedents up to date.

For example, if the firm only prepares a small amount of discretionary trusts per month, it is not financially viable for them to expend time and money to keep on top of stamp duty and land tax changes, such as those made in recent years targeting foreign purchasers. This area is particularly problematic if not monitored closely as the changes can catch almost every normal discretionary trust in their net.

Firms can be assured in using Cleardocs products, that Maddocks' specialised taxation team is always reviewing and amending precedents, such as discretionary trust deeds, to ensure they are up to date with the most recent tax laws.

Save cost and time in your legal practise

Cleardocs will help you save costs and time because most of the work has been done for you.

The products available for purchase are offered at significantly lower cost compared to costs a client would typically incur in having a lawyer prepare a document from scratch. After purchasing the products, the lawyer will receive an invoice from Cleardocs which can be then added as a disbursement when billing clients.

Cleardocs also offers clients a range of convenient delivery options for documents (whether they be hard copy bound documents or email copies).

Further, Cleardocs provides answers to a number of "frequently asked legal questions" (FALQ) on each respective commercial law topic that clients and their advisors can navigate to get a further understanding of the law related to, and products available which are relevant to, their particular circumstances. These answers are provided by Maddocks lawyers who specialise in the relevant areas of law.

As a Cleardocs customer, you are also entitled to a free call with a Maddocks lawyer about how the Cleardocs documents work.

This article was first published in as part of ClearLaw in September 2020. Content has been updated for currrency.

More information from Maddocks

For more information, contact Maddocks on (03) 9258 3555 and ask to speak to a member of the Commercial team.

More Cleardocs information on related topics

You can read earlier ClearLaw articles on a range of topics, such as:

• Using Online Legal Documents: Aren't They All The Same?

Order related document packages

• Company Incorporation
• Discretionary Trust
• Superannuation Trust (SMSF)