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Am I liable for issues with document templates drawn by me?
We see the buyer’s position as: first, you have drawn documents for Net Lawman, not for our buyer; secondly, we have strong but reasonable exclusion clauses in our terms of sale; thirdly, buyers are buying a template, not a document which we or you have told them is suitable for any particular purpose.
Nonetheless, you will see that our terms and conditions provide for you to indemnify us in two cases. First, and limited to £10,000, in respect of the document itself. It would be difficult to bring a claim for a defective document in any circumstances. We can see that this could happen only if a joker or malicious person draws a document which simply does not relate to the subject identified in the introductory words. We simply wish to protect ourselves from such activity. We do not see how an action could be brought in respect of a document drawn by a bona fide lawyer to the best of his professional ability.
Secondly, we seek a full indemnity for work done by you after a buyer has bought your document. Once a document has been purchased, we are no longer involved. The client is your client, not ours. We have no contractual or professional relationship. Yet, if he is aggrieved, he could still include us as a defendant.
For your information, we have been selling legal documents for seven years. During that time, we have had no serious complaint about any of our services, let alone an intimation of a formal claim. Long may that reputation continue!
When does a document buyer become my client?
Not until you have made contact and you accept him as a client in accordance with your professional rules.
Is my relationship clear to the document buyer? In other words, does he think I am liable for problems arising from the document I have drawn?
We make it as clear as possible on every document “buy” page and also on the email message to which the doc is attached after purchase.
How will my insurance be affected if I submit documents?
You will have to check with your insurer, of course. But it should be clear that in supplying document templates to Net Lawman, you are not giving advice nor providing a service. Your liability is limited to the correctness in law at the date you submit it to us. You are not selling to anyone else. Our customers are not your clients. Even that is itself subject to our terms and conditions in which we absolve ourselves and you from liability. If you still have any problem, do please contact us with a question.
What is Net Lawman’s record on claims to date?
Since our start in 2002, we have had no claim nor any intimation of a claim. Our complaints rate is around one in one thousand. Most complaints relate to unsuitability on account of the buyer buying a document which does not suit his circumstances. We refund money in all such cases. Sometimes, we have been instructed to draw a bespoke document instead.
How do you calculate the royalty?
The rate offered is calculated as our sales receipt, after deduction of:
costs and fees of payment service provider;
payments due to sales affiliates or partners;
VAT or other sales taxes
Thus, we may offer a document at £50. It sells for £40 plus VAT.
PSP may charge say 4% (we will deduct this amount to avoid the necessity of verifying this sum to you)
There may be no other deduction, so you receive 30% x £38.40.
If the sale is introduced by an affiliate, he and maybe the affiliate level above him together, will receive up to 30%, so your share will reduce to 30% x 70% x £38.40.
If the sale is part of a subscription system, to a professional buyer, you will receive 30% of the reduced subscription price.
When will you pay me?
For royalty payments, at latest, 20 days after the end of the month in which the relevant sales were made. For drafting work, no later than the 20th day of the month in which we accept your document for sale.
How will you pay me?
You choose from the selection available on sign up: cheque, bank transfer, Internet transfer, etc
How do I know you have paid me what is due?
When you enter your first document for sale, your control panel will be created automatically. There you can view your sales in real time and check payments received each month and payment history.
How do you deal with VAT?
VAT is charged to our clients and customers auto on all sales within the UK only.
VAT is due by us to you on all royalty payments. If we have your VAT number, as requested at registration, we will add VAT to your cheque when we pay you.
How do I send you a VAT invoice?
We produce your invoice auto and send to you by email. If you want to replace it by one from your own system, that is fine.
How many new clients can I expect?
So far as we are concerned, that depends on:
how many documents you put up;
how well you present yourself as an expert;
Of course, once we connect you, it also depends on how well you sell to your new contact when he telephones for advice or to instruct you;
What do I pay to Net Lawman for the introduction?
Absolutely nothing. We have the benefit of the sale of the document. That is all.
What information about a client will you give me?
We do not want to frighten any visitor who might feel he is being oversold, so we give you only his name and email address. Of course, he will have much fuller info about you.
Can I contact the client immediately?
How you “sell” is up to you, but we suggest you allow three or four days after a document sale, then send a message offering additional support and advice. The buyer will know this is not free. We suggest this should be a standard message, maybe adjusted in some small way to suit the document bought.
Are my charges restricted?
No. We are not concerned with your professional or contractual relationship. We are simply providing leads.
I work for a top 100 firm. Can you still do anything for me?
Of course we can. We can do more. Using our system, you can use your professional “brand” to sel to others in the profession. Your name on a document will give confidence to a larger number of professional buyers - other lawyers.
Will I get a response from freebie seekers?
Possibly! There are plenty of them out there. How you deal is up to you. But remember that every contact we give you has spent money buying a document drawn by you. If he rings you, it should be very easy to convert him to being a client.
What documents shall I draw?
We leave it to you to search our site and check whether documents in your specialism are already on site. We think you can judge better than we, as to whether your documents will sell. We have had some surprises over the years - and some disappointments too. In each jurisdiction, there are many, many specialisms which we have not even considered. In addition, you can draw sets of pleadings and even completed examples of commonly used forms. If you would like to discuss your proposals with us, please give us a list of proposals by email and we will discuss. Takes to data entry for draftlng suggestions page.
How serious do I have to be about drafting?
That is entirely up to you, but since time is money, it would be most efficient if you considered a special niche within a niche, which we have not covered, and give us 20 documents in that niche. You will thus present am image of a specialist which will accepted not only by business managers but by other solicitors, who will also buy your documents.
Who are your customers for legal documents?
Until now, we have serviced primarily small and medium enterprises. 10% of our sales were to solicitors. Now we will sell to all legal professionals too, skips down page to “Sales to the profession” because our document base will be broader and draftsmen will be able to demonstrate current, specialist knowledge.
Which jurisdictions?
Until recently, only England and Wales. Last year we opened new sites for Scotland, Ireland, Australia, India, South Africa and New Zealand. Now we plan to open a site for every English speaking jurisdiction, serviced by you - the specialist professionals qualified in that jurisdiction.
How are documents presented for sale?
Each document has its own description page, which we call a “doc intro” page. It tells when the document should be used and lists the contents, gives the price, and so on. We ask you to provide this information, in reply to specific questions. You can see such pages easily by following the route to buy any document on our website.
So whose documents will you sell now?
We obtain documents for sale both by paying draftsmen to draw for us with no further involvement, and also by this system of giving leads and a royalty. This will continue for any jurisdiction in which we can provide adequate legal support. Where we cannot, we shall rely more on locally qualified lawyers using this system.
So will my documents be in competition with others?
If you are in practice, maybe the most important aspect is not document sales but very low cost practice marketing! However, you can browse the Net Lawman documents for sale menus to see what documents we offer which might compete with your own specialism. It is up to you to decide whether you can do better. You can provide a wider variety, or you could rely on your stunning one page bio to sell your documents.
What if more and more people want to offer documents similar to mine?
We will leave it to our customer to decide which document suits him best. Of course, we will not accept a document which duplicates another. You must differentiate your documents from others which we offer. But the differences need not be great. Since most will be laymen, they will select by reference not only by perceived suitability of the document, but also to the bio you have submitted, which is linked to the page which “sells” your document.
However, where we find we have a truly great collection of documents for a narrow specialism, we may close that category to future draftsmen. We do rely on the quality of our product to drive our growth.
How will I know whether one of your documents will compete with mine?
Look at the title. Each document is titled to reflect its contents. If in doubt, contact us to discuss.
What if my doc contains additional useful paragraphs as well as all or most of the material in one of yours?
Customers sometimes like a short version. If we think there is a sale for both, we shall offer both.
What if I go to a lot of trouble to put up 50 documents and within a year, you have replaced them by what you say are better ones?
This is very unlikely. Six lawyers will provide six different drafts. Only if the content overlaps substantially will we consider action. We might ask one or more draftsmen to make small changes. We might refuse the later offerings. We might leave them in competition. We shall remove the first documents only if it is absolutely clear to us that the new ones are better. We prefer to deal with this on a case by case basis.
If you are an acknowledged “authority” on a subject, we will consider an exclusive arrangement.
How will copyright affect what I draw for you?
There are several points here: first, we ask you how can anyone claim copyright in any legal term or phrase or sentence which is in common professional use? Our opinion is that you would have to blatantly copy a document drawn by another for that other to be able to complain. We know that the problem actually arises because we all have our own favourite precedents which must have started life as someone else’s precedents! Our view is that while “you are on your own on this”, it is most unlikely that any person or organisation can complain if you use your version.
I am a barrister. My document set is my life blood. How will you protect my copyright?
Our documents are kept on our servers and cannot be released until a payment has been made. They cannot be accessed by any automated system. We also have a security system whereby any buyer of more than a small number of documents is stopped after that number, while we investigate. However, a criminal operator could simply buy your documents over a period of time and none of us would ever know.
We also run periodic Google checks of selected phrases. This throws up Internet usage of our documents, but cannot prevent a competitor from re-engineering them. We suggest that the risk of this is no different from the many other risks of breach of copyright you take every day.
Your website says professional buyers can use a document many times. Do I receive any ongoing or repeat payment?
No. Your position is no different from that of a contributor to a CD of precedents. Of course, you will receive many more instructions than you would if you document was used only once.
Will my document be attributed to me?
Yes, it will. It will be downloaded in the form in which you upload it. We assume it will show your reference and firm name on the front sheet, just as if it was a finished version for your client. Your drafting notes also provide an opportunity to show your professional competence and “soft sell” your further services.
Can I link my documents to my firm’s website?
Yes, in a document you can give a link to your website, or to the bio you have placed on our site, or both. You may even place your contact info as a footer on every page. This is “your” document. How you present yourself is up to you.
How do I maintain my document?
The prime responsibility is yours. However, we will send you a periodic reminder if no change has been made for some time. We also have a researcher whose exclusive work is to find new law and tell us about it. We will inform you of anything which might be relevant.
How will you check the quality of documents submitted?
We shall not try. We shall use a review system, open to both laymen and professional lawyers. If a document is criticised reasonably, we shall withdraw it from sale.
What should I include in my drafting notes?
Remember that you are selling to both laymen and the profession - and the occasional foreign lawyer too. Drafting notes should draw attention to legal and tactical pitfalls, and make suggestions as to which paragraphs should remain in place at all costs, and which are a matter of choice. However, they should not try to explain the wider law, such as the effect of an act. Information of that nature is contained in our “info” pages.
What do I have to do to “service” the documents I put up for sale?
First, it is in your interest to keep your documents up to date with current law. We shall remind you of this from time to time.
How do I remove a document from sale?
Go to your control panel and click button “Remove this document from sale”. It is removed immediately.
Can I draw documents for other jurisdictions than my first choice?
You certainly may. You can have two or more “bites at the cherry”, for only a little more drafting time. You can do this both for countries where you have expertise, such as England and Ireland, or Australia and New Zealand, or of course within countries which have several jurisdictions.
What will you pay for virtually duplicate documents?
See our page on payment terms.
Can I draw letters for sale?
Yes, we do sell 200 or so example letters. The scope here is vast. But letters must be sold in packs. Simply submit a set of letters as you would a single document.
Tell me briefly what is involved in getting documents into your system?
Our system is automated, so that you simply enter info as asked on a web page, then upload the document. The web page is created automatically too. You can edit any item you insert at any time.
Who decides on the price at which to sell a document?
You do. Of course, we are delighted to help if you ask us. If we notice that a document is over or under priced, we shall tell you.
Do my documents have to be in your style?
We do promote “plain English” firmly. This means:
avoidance of legalese and old fashioned phraseology;
modern use of punctuation;
use of sub paragraphs in preference to lists along the line;
general presentation in a form which enables a user to delete one point without affecting others.
The extent to which you want to follow these principles is up to you, but clearly, so far as sales to legal laymen is concerned, clarity of meaning is an important feature of your offering and will encourage both direct client contact and sale of more documents.
What is this about people seeing my bio?
We have a sister site to this, at www.WorldLawyerList.com . We have long thought that most people who want a lawyer want a human being, not a firm. Your firm’s marketing manager will not be happy to hear us say that, but you know it is true. We all know that if you do a good job for a client, he comes back to you and not to your colleague, even if you tell him you know nothing about his new problem.
So we have prepared a directory of individual lawyers. We are taking the basic data from many sources, but much of it can come only from individual lawyers who decide what they want the World to know about them.
We are linking Net Lawman to this directory, so that when you enter a document for sale, you give us the sort of information a prospective new client wants to know. We also give you the opportunity to add personal sparkle - in whatever way you think will best attract clients to your specialism.
Can I benefit from sales to the profession?
We intend to promote sales in many ways. This is a major new market which we shall promote strongly. Clearly, a recognised expert will sell many documents. Some firms may even specify that their fee earners can buy Net Lawman documents drawn only by certain specified experts. We suggest you put together a “collection” of documents in a particular specialism, so that it is clear to a professional buyer that you really are an expert. It goes without saying that a firm name “FGH Chambers” will carry more weight than “John Doe”.
Why should I be a buyer too?
The age of the legal specialist arrived 50 years ago. Few lawyers know enough to be able to produce high quality documents even in their own specialism. Precedents from the “big 2" publishers are expensive and despite their comprehensive application, do not always cover a specific situation. What is more, you know it takes you an hour simply to knock out the notes, plurals and other alternatives. We hope the documents provided by Net Lawman will be “problem specific”, so that you can save time and still produce a perfect document.
What will you charge lawyers?
The system will be simple: a firm or individual will register staff passwords and pay any sum on account; the larger the payment, the greater the discount on all documents until that payment is exhausted. Fee earners may then download documents at will. An invoice will be raised at the time of each purchase, in case you wish to treat the cost as a disbursement in the case. This system is fully automated, and intuitive to use. Full info is here.
Can I instruct my own staff to download documents drawn by me or my partners?
Yes, no charge. By all means use our website as a data base for your internal precedents. However, everything you upload will of course also be for sale to third parties.
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