Certain areas of law are associated with standard forms and routine procedures. Lawyers who do real estate closings regularly complete HUD’s Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act (RESPA) forms as part of the transaction. Immigration lawyers choose from a large menu of forms issued by the Immigration and Naturalization Ser-vice to assist clients in obtaining visas, green cards, labor certificates or citizenship papers. For such practitioners, there are a number of software pro-grams that can be purchased to assist them prepare these forms.

We haven’t worked with all these programs so you may want to check references or discuss options with colleagues who have similar practice areas before making a purchase.

If you have to prepare a RESPA form and calculate closing costs, take a look at Easy HUD from Easy Soft (easysoft-usa.com), HUD-1 from Software for Professionals (lawfirm-software.com) or ProForm from SoftPro Corp. (softprocorp.com). These companies also offer other programs for real estate practitioners.

New Jersey-based Easy Soft also offers programs for bankruptcy and matrimonial attorneys as well as trust accounting and some New Jersey-specific programs to complete case in-formation statements. Elder law attor-neys may want to consider programs from ProBATE Software (probate-software.com) or the Estate Tax Return series from West Group.

Even though Nolo Press promotes its materials to people who want to be their own lawyer, you may want to look at some of its programs at nolo.com. Its Will Maker program might be a good start for a new lawyer looking to assist clients with simple wills. The site also has software for setting up new businesses and handling bankruptcies and employment issues. A good resource for practice area-specific programs is findlaw.com.

If, however, you need forms less frequently, you will be amazed at the large number of sources where you can obtain or purchase them on the Inter-net. Some of the traditional sources for paper-based forms now offer pay-as-you-go services where you can purchase a single form for a specific purpose. All-State Legal (aslegal.com) has been the leading source for printed forms for New Jersey practitioners for many years. It now offers ALL-STATE Legal Forms Software for New Jersey that includes forms for real estate, family law, business law, litigation, general practice, workers compensation and estate law.

New York lawyers rely on printed Blumberg forms for documents rang-ing from a summons and complaint to rental leases, prenuptial agreements and powers of attorney. Like All-State and other printed-form companies, Blumberg now offers online forms and other options to obtain specific forms on an as-needed basis. From its web-site, blumberg.com, you can get pay-as-you-go forms or specific programs like DL Drafting Libraries that contain state- and practice area-specific collections of forms.

These companies, which historically sold products by the page, recognized the impact technology would have on their business. In the early 1990s, they began to sell software pro-grams that allowed a firm to print a specific number of copies of the forms it purchased. In recent years, these companies have moved these services online and made them even more readily available. They invested large amounts of money to create these products and have developed these pay-as-you-go options to protect their copyrights. You should be mindful of their intellectual property when using the forms.

Form books

Another traditional source for forms has been legal publishers that sold form books for nearly every practice area. While many of these companies have been gobbled up by Lexis or West, their forms have moved from paper to diskettes that can be purchased or individual forms that can be bought online. For example, Lexis Corp., which owns Hot Docs, the leading document assembly program, and Matthew Bender, publisher of many form books, through its lexisone.com site and at lexisnexis.com/autoforms offer more than 6,000 free forms and subscriptions to additional ones. Similarly, West Group, (westgroup.com), also a supplier of form books, offers many different forms programs as well as individual forms on findlaw.com.

There are a variety of other re-sources as well. The cliché “You get what you pay for” certainly holds true for the range and quality of forms available online. Many offer free forms. Numerous bar associations have begun to offer forms that can be downloaded for their jurisdictions. For example, the New York State Bar Association has a strong relationship with the Capsoft subsidiary of Lexis. Cap-soft is the company that sells Hot Docs, the leading document assembly program. In addition to purchasing Hot Docs to create your form documents, you can obtain individual documents that use Hot Docs technology.

The types of forms available can be found at lawcommerce.com. Here, in addition to fill-in-the-blank forms, for $25 each you can purchase specific forms from well-known situations. For example, you can get a copy of the employment and postretirement consulting contract Jack Welch signed with General Electric. You also can get a copy of the agreement James Dimon signed when he became CEO of Bank One Corp. There’s also the severance agreement used by Campbell Soup. Want to see the terms of the employment contract the current CEO of e-Bay signed? It’s there too.
The site wouldn’t be complete without former Enron CEO Kenneth Lay’s employment agreement. Among other celebrity and company employment contracts available are: Martha Stewart, Louis Gerstner (IBM), Frank Zarb (National Association of Securities Dealers), Robert Iger (Disney), Stuart Snyder (World Wrestling Federation) and Terry Semel (Yahoo).

The site also includes many office administration forms such as sample retainer letters, letters to threaten legal action if an overdue payment is not received or to announce a new service, forms to track efforts to collect delinquent payments, log client complaints, expense reports and press releases. There are forms for bankruptcy filings, commercial transactions, corporate agreements, government forms, computer hardware and software contracts, and license agreements.

Another interesting site is lawmoose.com, a web-resource search tool by Pritchard Law Webs in Minneapolis. This site also serves as a portal that organizes other legal resources. While it’s primarily geared toward Minnesota lawyers, there are many excellent sources available there.

The time surfing the net to see what’s out there will be well-spent when you need a form you don’t have.

Carol L. Schlein is president of Law Office Systems in Montclair, a training and consulting firm specializing in law firm automation. Copies of previous columns can be found on her company website, losinc.com. Information about her Time Matters User Groups meetings or classes is on the website. Schlein formerly chaired the Computer and Technology Division of the ABA Law Practice Management Section.

Questions for Carol L. Schlein on law office technology may be faxed to New Jersey Lawyer at (732) 650-7010, e-mailed to news@njlnews.com or mailed to “Law Technology Questions,” New Jersey Lawyer, Edison Square, 2035 Lincoln Highway, Suite 3005, Edison, N.J. 08817.