Meet Lyndsey

In addition to serving as a board member, advisor, and volunteer for several community-based organizations, Lyndsey Richard currently runs her own legal practice based in Denver, CO. 

In 2011, she founded the Law Office of Lyndsey Richard LLC, where she helps clients determine their estate planning goals and develop wills, trusts, and other essential legal documents.

Keeping it simple

With legal documents comes plenty of jargon. Lawyers, like most people, are creatures of habit, and they often will rely on boilerplate language to draft new agreements. Consequently, contracts used in these cases tend to be long, poorly structured, and full of unnecessary and incomprehensible language.

But, the truth is that agreements don’t have to be written in undecipherable legalese. While legal documents are, essentially, the backbone of any law firm, it's important for attorneys to make sure they’re written in a way that requires little-to-know context or explanation—where clients can sit down, read, and feel comfortable signing a contract.

Lyndsey realizes that it’s important to describe her often complex estate plans in terms that anyone can understand.

“Over the years, I have had numerous clients come to me after having worked with attorneys who utilize document drafting software and they felt like the documents generated were really long. A trust practically ended up being 100 pages. It was also wordy–templates full of legalese that clients couldn’t make sense of.

This would often compel clients to ask, ‘What is this even to say?’”

Instead of using a generic template each time, Lyndsey decided to start fresh with a legal document that reflected her true intentions, which ultimately earned her more business.

Making the case for automation

However, Lyndsey was still spending much of her day on time-consuming tasks like researching and drafting contracts and other detailed legal documents, which is why she began looking into document automation solutions.

In her words:

“I still needed to automate things a little bit because clients get annoyed if you send them a series of documents and you misspell their name or if there is any kind of data entry error.  And it's nice if you can just type it once, check it, and know that it's going to be integrated into all of the documents consistently and correctly.” 

When evaluating these document automation solutions, Lydnsey came across a legacy product that was only mildly more sophisticated than her mail merge method. With another tool, she found that software updates would somehow invalidate certain features that you were using in your forms. Their customer service team also wasn’t particularly friendly or helpful.

Problem-solving with Woodpecker

From limited customization options to cumbersome installation procedures, and everything in between, none of the other options seemed appealing. Ultimately, Lyndsey tried out several well-known document automation vendors before finally selecting Woodpecker.

“I was obsessively excited over Woodpecker when I saw how it worked. I thought I have to implement this, and I have to do it as fast as I can, because I honestly felt like at that point, it was as if my sanity was at stake.”

When you scale your volume of work efficiently and don’t have to worry about drafting documents manually, you have the time to focus on more important tasks. 

Because of Woodpecker, Lyndsey says that the drafting process is something that she feels confident delegating to her paralegal. As an added bonus, when reviewing her work, the   margin of error is significantly less than it was with any other product they had used in the past. 

“I feel like our documents really say what I want them to say because it's my language. It's my template. It's customized to how we like to do things, and how our clients want it done.”

Lydnsey also praises Woodpecker’s customer support team for their willingness to work with her and find creative solutions and workarounds wherever necessary. 

“I felt like you guys were just so patient and creative. You would really dig in and help me figure out different ways I could customize my documents and make it all work with your technology. You were kind of an expansion of my team for this project and it was really meaningful.

Lyndsey is overjoyed that she is able to run her law firm more effectively and with more thoughtfulness toward what her clients’ goals are.

“Our whole team just feels excited about our work again”

Before switching to Woodpecker, an estate planning matter took an average of thirty days to close. This comes as no surprise considering how laborious the drafting process was.

Instead of one month, Lyndsey and her team can now turn first drafts around to clients and close matters in one week. This is a win-win for both parties as people often put off estate planning since it forces them to confront their own mortality. With Woodpecker, clients can rest easy knowing that they can create a comprehensive estate plan for their families in less time.

“I am literally opening and closing a matter within a week because our drafting process is so smooth now. And certainly I can do it within two weeks, even when there are delays on the client side.”

Working smarter, not harder

The hard truth is that firms that continue to operate under outdated business models risk being surpassed by their competitors and seeing their client and profit bases dwindle.

If your firm is looking for a simple way to streamline and automate your document drafting workflows, Woodpecker is an automation system you definitely want to try.

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