Save Time by Automating Your Elder Law Practice

If you practice elder law, you’re about to be busier than ever. The US population of people over 65 is projected to rise from 40 million to 80 million over the next three decades. Inevitably, your elder law practice and others like it will become a bigger and bigger part of the legal industry, and you need to be ready for the challenges and opportunities that increased demand will bring.

Older clients may not be as up-to-date on legal technology, making it more difficult to arrange online meetings or have them sign documents remotely.

Plus, previous bad experiences or cognitive decline can make building trust with older clients difficult. That trust is essential for you to handle their affairs for the best possible outcome. This becomes even more difficult when your client's mental capacity is in question. Protecting your client from exploitation while also respecting their autonomy is an incredibly difficult tightrope to walk, and one that practiced elder law attorneys are very familiar with.

Gavel is document automation software that can transform your practice area. Automated document creation allows you to spend less time drafting and more time on client relationship management (CRM). Use your time to guide older clients through the legal process while our software eliminates repetitive tasks.

No one is suggesting outsourcing client interactions to a piece of software. Instead, Gavel can streamline your client intake and document creation process, freeing up more of your billable hours to spend with clients and their families. Our smart workflows can reduce the time you spend on document drafting by up to 90%, so you spend less time on data entry and more time guiding existing and new clients through the system. Removing time-consuming repetitive tasks increases your profitability, and perhaps more importantly, it lets your law office focus on providing improved client communications and that all-important human touch.

Let our software handle drafting legal documents so you can spend less time on administrative tasks and more time on these important areas of your elder law practice. Gavel lets you streamline the creation of documents and other administrative tasks so you can focus on dealing with clients on a human level.

Why Automate Elder Law?

 Elder law demands not only legal expertise but also strong interpersonal communication skills. By automating routine document generation, you can reduce the time spent on administrative drafting and focus more on direct client interaction and strategic planning.

Gavel enables you to build comprehensive, client-facing intake workflows—including guided questionnaires enriched with contextual explanations, tooltips, and embedded video—to collect accurate information efficiently. Clients can complete these digital forms independently or with your assistance, streamlining case initiation and improving the overall client experience.

A template tagged with the fields you’ve included in the workflow lets you automatically complete a document with the information you gather from your questionnaire. For instance, you can create a template for a will or living trust to gather the information provided by your questionnaire and automatically input it.

Elder law attorneys and estate planning attorneys nationwide benefit from Gavel automation software. Here’s how you can use our platform to make case management easier and provide a better service to vulnerable clients:

• Improve accuracy and efficiency. A smart questionnaire helps you gather the information you need in a single time and use it for multiple purposes. For example, the information you use in a will can also help you draft letters to beneficiaries when you need to inform them of a death. This does more than just save you time; it also ensures accuracy by reducing human error.
• Streamline routine tasks. Practicing elder law may require you to generate a huge variety of documents, including:
  
  • Last Wills and Testaments
  • Revocable Living Trusts
  • Health Care Powers of Attorney (or Proxy)
  • Living Wills/ Advance Directives
  • HIPAA Authorization
  • Durable Powers of Attorney
  • Guardianship or Conservatorship Petitions
  • Medicaid Applications and Supporting Forms
  • Care Contracts / Personal Service Agreements
  • Petitions for Probate / Letters Testamentary
  • Final Accounting and Distribution Documents
  • Elder Abuse Reporting or Protection Orders

Gavel can dramatically reduce the time you spend drafting these documents and even allow you to productize your legal services by offering items like DIY wills online. It can also improve cash flow with online payment processing and give you a source of passive income while also helping you gather referrals.

• Improve the client experience. You can use conditional logic to build a questionnaire that you or your staff can fill out based on consultation with your client, ensuring you get the answers you need. The software can use the answers you collect in multiple documents, so you don’t need to ask clients the same questions and can spend your time helping them understand the legal process instead. 
• Speed up client turnaround. Sometimes, you may need to deal with an urgent situation on behalf of a client, like a medical crisis. Gavel lets you simultaneously produce all the documents you need based on a single completed workflow. With just a few clicks, you can generate wills, powers of attorney, petitions for probate, and other documents, speeding up the process and ensuring nothing gets missed.

Gavel lets you:

• Ensure accuracy across multiple documents
• Respond to emergencies with faster document generation
• Guide clients through sometimes complex legal processes
• Generate a new source of revenue with online,  cloud-based legal services
• Spend less time drafting documents and more time providing a great client experience

Gavel Features for Elder Law Automation

Gavel’s advanced features are streamlining elder law practice:

• Document Automation: Gavel’s customizable questionnaires can be completed by the client themselves or under the guidance of an attorney. The answers provided in the questionnaire can then be transferred to a Word or PDF document with just a few clicks, ensuring the accuracy of information and speeding up the drafting process.
• AI-Enabled Processes: Make document drafting more accurate and less time-consuming. Gavel lets you use the same questionnaire for multiple clients and have it automatically create the documents you need. Gavel’s Blueprint artificial intelligence lets you upload completed templates from your existing files or practice management software. Blueprint will scan the template you provide for fillable fields and create a workflow with suggested questions for your questionnaire that you can customize and adapt to your needs. No-Setup Automated Forms: Gavel is designed to be easy to use. If you're unfamiliar with automation, you can get started with no set-up automated forms and customize them to meet your needs.
• Question Logic: Older clients are often less comfortable with technology, but you can simplify the client intake process by controlling the questions your client is asked to answer according to their previous answers. So, for example, you can ask if a client is married or has children, and they will only be asked for the names of their family if they confirm that they have one. This helps to keep clients from getting overwhelmed by unnecessary questions.
• Whitelabel Capabilities: You can brand client-facing workflows with your logo and color scheme. This creates a more professional look, helping to build trust with clients who may be initially mistrustful of technology. It also helps to build brand awareness when productizing your services for remote clients.
• Integration Capabilities: Gavel easily links with law practice management platforms like Clio and Zapier to import data from various databases. Thus, you can easily add your existing clients to Gavel, making onboarding a breeze.
  
  

Driving Results with Elder Law Automation

Automation can transform your elder law practice.

For example, Streeter Law Firm has used Gavel to create full estate plans for clients in as little as 30 minutes. This has allowed them to reduce errors that creep in when copying and pasting existing information and reduce the need for additional staff. Plus, the user-friendly interface makes it easy for clients from all walks of life to understand the process.

Rogue Family Law has used Gavel to build a remote law firm that provides self-service tools to people who may not have access to a traditional attorney. Thanks to Gavel's easy-to-use software, clients gain greater control over their cases and can save thousands of dollars in legal fees.

Testimonial

• “Gavel is infinitely powerful, but also super easy to use. It can handle nested conditional logic and complex calculations. But what makes it stand out are the client-facing features." -Erin Levine, Managing Attorney at HelloDivorce.

Use Cases for Elder Law Automation

Client guidance, document automation, and conditional logic features can transform your elder law practice. Here are some of the ways Gavel can free up your time for client relationships and follow-ups instead of drafting documents:

• Intake Questionnaires. With smart intake questionnaires, you can enter all the information from consultation with your client and automatically generate the necessary documents. Question logic helps streamline the forms, ensuring nothing gets missed out during intake.

• Drafting Petitions for Probate. Client information questionnaires can help you easily fill out court forms like petitions for probate. Gavel’s Blueprint AI can scan the official form and automatically suggest questions and document tags to create a workflow that will instantly generate the completed form based on your client's information.

• Create an Advance Health Care Planning package. Bundle multiple necessary documents into a single package. For example, you could create an Advance Health Care Planning package that produces a Health Care Power of Attorney (or Proxy), a Living Will/Advance Directive, and HIPAA Authorization.
• Produce educational materials. You can use Gavel to create output documents that will inform clients and their families about the legal process and help them better understand the work you are doing for them.

Features to Consider for Elder Law Automation

• User-Friendly Interface. Build a workflow that anyone in your firm can use to intake clients. The straightforward and intuitive design reduces the time you spend training paralegals and assistants and can even be used as a training tool for junior staff.
• Ease of getting started. Save time mastering the learning curve. Look for pre-built questionnaires to help you get started fast.
• Multiple Output Document Capability. To save even more time on drafting, look for the capability to generate multiple documents from a single questionnaire. It’s easier for your client to fill out the information only once, and it also helps improve the accuracy of your information if you can create multiple documents from a single source.
• Safe AI. Artificial intelligence is a powerful tool to create templates and workflows, but you need a secure AI that will never share your client’s data outside the platform.
• Customer Support. If you've never used automation software before, you want a customer support team you can rely on in case you get lost. Make sure you can get unlimited support when you need it. 

FAQs About Elder Law Automation

My client intake process works fine. Why automate it now?

Gavel lets you:

• Collect and store client data seamlessly
• Automatically populate multiple documents with your client data with a click
• Increase accuracy and reduce errors through a repeatable process
• Save time on tasks you can’t bill for
• Improve the client experience

All that, and it can save you up to 90% of the time you spend drafting documents, too.

I want to automate my client intake, but I don’t have time. Can I hire someone to build it for me?

Yes! Our software is designed to be easy for everyone, but you also have access to Gavel document automators (“Gavel Experts”) who can help build your platform for you. Gavel Experts have been vetted for their expertise, critical thinking, quality, and efficiency, starting at $35/hour. They are often law students, paralegals, and lawyers themselves.

Does Gavel offer help throughout the building process?

Yes, our award-winning customer service team is always there to help you, no matter your service tier. Contact Gavel via phone, live screenshare, email at [email protected] or even via the Slack community for immediate support.

Do I need any technical background to build on Gavel?

Nope! Gavel is easy to use, no matter how much technical knowledge you have.

Transform Your Elder Law Practice with Gavel

By handling routine tasks, Gavel helps you free up more time to improve the client experience, which is especially important in elder law. Start your free trial to see what Gavel can do for you.