Fantastic idea, but as a lawyer, it makes me a bit nervous for those who would rely solely on the documents available.
Even if those documents are flawless and cover exactly what someone needs (incredibly unlikely), in many areas the documents themselves aren't necessarily the problem: it's knowing what documents, in combination, you need.
For example, if I want to make a real estate secured loan to someone, what do I need? If you're fairly sophisticated, you might say a Note and a Deed of Trust. Great, but what if that someone is a business or a single asset entity? Should you make the loan? Should you get a guaranty from the principals? Would that guaranty even be enforceable? In many cases, just having access to the documents really isn't enough. There's a reason attorneys are the only profession that get paid to research the very subject they're supposed to be experts in. This stuff is complicated.
I like the idea though, and if you could fill some of those knowledge gaps, this could be really valuable.
I would like to see when the documents have been litigated and under what circumstances. But of course that information is really hard to come by some times.
That being said, if they invested their time and energy into taking the output of the Superior Court docket and documents used there and the arguments made for and against the documents. Well that would be a really cool service.
That would not help. Supreme Court filings are so specialized that they generally only apply to cases being heard before the Supreme Court. The documents underlying the cases litigated before the Supreme Court (i.e., contracts, etc.) are generally not analyzed by appellate courts in any detail unless they are specifically relevant to a discussion of the legal issues being contested before the court.
Wasn't really thinking about Supreme Court filings, I was thinking the more mundane civil filings that happen day in and day out in say Santa Clara County Superior Court [1] where you can get a copy of all the documents filed in all the cases where the judge hasn't ordered the documents sealed.
I realize its kind of an odd thing to do, but you can go down to any US court house and just sit in the gallery and listen/watch. There are people who do this for Groklaw when they were following every bit of the SCO/Novell litigation.
The Novell/SCO case (and Groklaw for that matter) provide what I think would be a great service (when combined with copies of the original documents) so in the Novell/SCO case there were agreements about the assignment of copyright (or not) and how they were pleaded both by the defense and the prosecution. Reading how they were attacked and how they were defended gives tremendous insights into how such documents get litigated. Of course it costs time and money to have someone do that, but that (rather than just copying various public web sources for documents) would provide a real value proposition for someone who was trying to either come up with a document for this or wanted to know what questions/guidance they should give their attorney who is preparing such a document.
Litigated documents are generally a good example of what not to do, but are a poor example of best practices. That is generally how budding lawyers are trained in law school, and consequently the reason most legal documents are unnecessarily complex.
We think about this stuff a lot, of course. There's no doubt that the "perfect document" is really hard to find, and some documents are way too complicated to be executed without a lawyer. Nevertheless, as some reader said, sometimes you just want to see how a contract looks like, what other people do. For example, few people will sign a termsheet without a lawyer, but they could benefit from seeing the different standards and use Docracy's comparison feature to spot the differences, and distinguish the boilerplates from the juicy clauses. In other words, learn, and understand better what they end up signing, and what their lawyer says. We use the blog and other initiatives (we're organizing a series of free legal workshops here in NY, taught by startup lawyers to entrepreneurs) to inform and educate users, so they can tell when it's time to DIY, and when it's time to go to an attorney.
Interesting. For those reasons, it could be valuable as well.
However, I think your statement indicates I didn't quite communicate my point clearly enough.
>>There's no doubt that the "perfect document" is really hard to find...<<
In most areas, there is no such thing as a perfect document. Trying to find one is a fool's errand. A document is only perfect in that it protects as many rights as possible for a particular client. Because different clients have different needs, wants, and rights, no document is going to be universally "perfect".
Again, this is not to say that your idea isn't great, and doesn't have the potential to provide a lot of value. I think it is/does.
Yes, most definitely. There are companies that do nothing but produce form documents (for a hefty fee) that could be eliminated.
But again, the caveat is that, depending on the circumstances, a good lawyer might need to significantly modify even his own well crafted standard document to protect his client. The benefit of a good lawyer is knowing when things need to be modified.
From clicking around, docracy allows you to make branches of the document, and also see what changes have been done. So I think it's meant to be a tool to bring version control available to software developers to finally be available to lawyers, organized in a way that's easy to organize and browse for the lawyer's clients.
In a way, yes, though I would argue that implicit in "scientist" or "research professor" is the idea that they are searching for unknowns. The professional world is thought of very differently.
If you went into an architect's office and he told you he'd need $4000 to research whether gravity applies to the building you want him to build, you'd scoff. If you went to an accountant to ask whether you can take a certain deduction and he said he needed $4000 to look it up, you'd think he was either incompetent or a fraudster. But this is accepted (and necessary) in the legal world.
ahh, i see your point, now. thanks. what do you think about adding engineers (for certain values of engineer) to the list of professions that get paid to do research?
Let me put this a slightly different way: Many professions are paid to do research, some engineers included, but I think lawyers are the only ones who are paid to do so by the consumer.
I would analogize it to individual cancer patient going to a research scientist at Bristol-Myers Squibb and saying "Hey, what would happen if you tweaked XYZ molecule? Would that cure me?"
The engineers that are paid directly by the consumer, I would think, are much closer to data crunchers than true researchers. Maybe some architects or other types with engineering experience could jump in and disagree?
Think of it as a boilerplate repository. I wouldn't be surprised if half of all initial legal maneuvers could be handled by a wizard in software. Yes, I know: "which half?"
Even if those documents are flawless and cover exactly what someone needs (incredibly unlikely), in many areas the documents themselves aren't necessarily the problem: it's knowing what documents, in combination, you need.
For example, if I want to make a real estate secured loan to someone, what do I need? If you're fairly sophisticated, you might say a Note and a Deed of Trust. Great, but what if that someone is a business or a single asset entity? Should you make the loan? Should you get a guaranty from the principals? Would that guaranty even be enforceable? In many cases, just having access to the documents really isn't enough. There's a reason attorneys are the only profession that get paid to research the very subject they're supposed to be experts in. This stuff is complicated.
I like the idea though, and if you could fill some of those knowledge gaps, this could be really valuable.