Heckerling Institute Report
Report #6 - More News on Software Vendors
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The following is Report #6 from
our on-site reporters regarding some of the highlights from the
events and presentations that are taking place at the 34th Annual
Philip E. Heckerling Institute on Estate Planning that is being
held January 10-14, 1999 at the Fontainebleau Hilton in Miami Beach,
Florida.
This Report covers more news about the software vendors that
are exhibiting at this year's Institute.
This report was filed by on-site reporter, Alan F.Rothschild, Jr.
Alan is the current Chairman of the K-2 Technology and Economics
Committee of the Probate Division of the ABA Real Property, Probate
and Trust Law Section.
Alan reports that the Miami Institute always boasts a large number
of vendors displaying their latest wares, but that perhaps the biggest
news this week is not a vendor's new product, but the lack of one.
RIA, which for the last couple of years spend much of its
energy at Miami on the Wealth Transfer Planning system, turned
the system back over to its originator, The Technology Group,
in December. RIA will instead focus its efforts on its Internet
research product, Checkpoint.
CCH's primary focus is also on its Internet research services.
As CCH and RIA have each built comprehensive web-based research
services, many practitioners might find the pricing for these services
so great that they must choose a single vendor, rather than continuing
to enjoy the luxury of multiple tax
research services, and many solos and small firms (who make up over
50% of the membership of the ABA and the Real Property, Probate
and Trust Law Section) are simply no longer able to afford to pay
for and use many of these tax services.
[Editor's Note: Apparently these tax research service publishers
have not yet embraced the rather novel but welcome reverse pricing
structure that companies like VersusLaw ( <http://www.versuslaw.com/>) have been so successful with recently, whereby they charge a
mere $6.95 per month per lawyer to gain access to their entire Internet
Web site database of federal and state case law. Now that's
what we call "affordable" legal research via the Internet.]
Another interesting trend is that many users are electing to go
straight from hard copies of research services to their web products,
or are "upgrading" from CD to the web --- not because
the web is necessarily better, but because it allows the practitioner
to go around their own IT departments, which apparently do not timely
load or install the latest versions of research services.
The Technology Group's display focuses on its Wealth Transfer
Planning system and its upcoming LawOnTheWeb on-line
research and document preparation system. TTG acknowledges
the problems WTP has experienced in its recent history, but claims
now that the program is back in the hands of its founders, the problems
have/will be fixed and the program will soon (2/00?) be accessible
over the web. WTP still offers great promise, but I suspect
there are many disappointed former subscribers who will not be back
soon. [Editor's Note: We STILL do not know what the URL is
for their new Web site that was suppose to be unveiled on 1/10/00
during the Institute - anyone out there know what it is?]
Unlike prior years, there were a few other exhibitors of "expert
systems" which include both the document assembly engine,
but also prepackaged forms.
These include Lawgic Publishing, which released its automated
Florida Wills and Trusts Forms system in November of 1999.
These are the Holland & Knight forms that Ed Koren and Bruce
Stone and two other partners of theirs assisted in co-authoring.
Diane Balmer-Martin, the Marketing Communications Director for Lawgic
Publishing, reports to us that Lawgic announced by Press Release
issued on 1/12/00 that it had a record year in 1999. In fact,
she says Lawgic doubled its total number of products, grew sales
by 78%, and increased customer renewals for its subscription software
over 150%. Lawgic claims that it's success in 1999 was due
in large part to it's patented software technology - which is only
available from Lawgic - which powers all of its products, called
Intelligent LegalTechnology. This technology
provides the platform for what they claim is the only suite of software
products that combines a simple Q&A process with legal research,
in-depth analysis and dynamic text generation. They claim
that these features "expertly guide legal professionals through
the creation of comprehensive, customized legal documents."
In the Family Law and Estate Planning fields, Lawgic introduced
two new Florida-specific products in the 3rd and 4th quarters of
1999, building on their earlier 1998 successes with their California
Wills and Trusts system and their Delaware Incorporations
system.. These new Florida programs assist Family Law
attorneys in the preparation of Marital Settlement Agreements and
Estate Planning practitioners with the creation of state-specific
Wills & Trusts documents. More information is available on their
Web site at <http://www.lawgic.com/>.
Automated Legal Systems Inc. out of Universal City, Texas,
is here demoing its ProDoc expert automation program and
announced that its automated document authoring program will be
available soon. This would allow practitioners to utilize
ProDoc to automate any type of repetitive document. ProDoc
has developed various law practice area systems for states
like Texas and Florida, including Wills and Trusts,
and a complete probate practice system for the State
of Colorado that is based on and completely automates the
use of former Probate Judge Jim Wade's Colorado Probate Practice
Manual. More information is available on their Web site
at <http://www.prodoc.com/>.
One new vendor of estate and probate practice systems, primarily
for 9 mid-western states, including Iowa and Illinois,
that is missing from this year's Institute is Advanced Logic
Systems, the makers of the Document Production System.
Unfortunately, they do not have a Web site either (at least
that we are aware of), but you can contact them by telephone toll-free
at (800) 454-7703.
One additional vendor that has been around almost since the beginning,
but is also missing from this year's Institute, is Interactive
Professional Software from Atlanta, Georgia, the makers of the
popular and affordable FastDraft document assembly engine.
We mention this vendor here not only because they have Wills and
Trusts drafting systems available for Georgia and [through
SunBank] Florida, but also because Bank One has just
recently chosen the FastDraft engine to power their new Wills and
Trusts drafting system called The One(r) Source for Wills and
Trusts (sm). They have state-specific forms libraries
available on CD-ROM for 13 states (AZ, IN, OH, UT, CO, KY, OK, WV,
FL, MI, TX, WI and IL), and you buy the product one state at a time.
The System and one state costs $399 single user, and each additional
state costs $99 each single user. Separate hard copy Manuals
are available for AZ, TX, WI (all CP states) and all the Common
Law states. For further information, call (414) 765-2689,
as they do not have a Web site at this time, at least for this software,
as far as we have been able to determine.
An interesting new T&E practice aid that first appeared on the
e-mail scene in 1999 is LawThreads, which is an on-line one-way
broadcast list of concise reviews of various estate planning
list serv discussions, edited and presented in a user-friendly format
by New Jersey T&E attorney, Andrew DeMaio. A free trial
subscription is available via their website at www.LawThreads.com .
Two exhibits which are attracting a lot of attention this year are
WealthTec and estateplanning.com.
WealthTec is a new player in the forecasting and graphing
area, and they are demoing AdvancedPro Series, a very
sophisticated program with 20 different planning modules divided
into 4 general categories for estate planning, charitable planning,
qualified plans and executive compensation. The program's
creator was formerly with the national tax department of Ernst &
Young and seems to have a strong understanding of the practitioner's
wish list of features. More info is available at their website
at www.wealthtec.com
.
The other busy booth is Schumacher Publishing's estateplanning.com
website "building and hosting" service. Most well
known for its living trust marketing services, Schumacher's estateplanning.com
service seems to offer practitioners a rather easy means for establishing
a web site presence in the Internet, including selective access
to SP's resources on-line, all for a cost of around $90 per month.
More information about this service can be obtained from, and a
demo can be viewed at, their Web site at <http://www.estateplanning.com/>.
[Editor's Note: Similar website building services are available
from Martindale-Hubbell, a division of Lexis Publishing,
called Lawyer HomePages ($195 per year for firms with
1-2 lawyers, $295 per year for firms with 3-5 lawyers). You
can visit them at <http://www.aol.com/webcenters/legal> or go to AOL Keyword: lawyers.com.]
That's it for Report #6.
_________________________________
NOTICE: Although audio tapes of all of the substantive session
at the Miami
Institute currently are only made available to Institute registrants
for
purchase, the entire proceeding of the Institute are published annually
by
Matthew Bender. The text of these proceedings is also available
on CD ROM
from Authority by Matthew Bender. For further information,
contact your
Matthew Bender sales representative, or call (800) 533-1637, or
fax (800)
828-8341, or go to URL <http://www.bender.com/>, or write to Matthew Bender &
Co., Inc., Attn: Fulfillment Dept., 1275 Broadway, Albany, NY 12204.
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