Gavel Review 2024: AI-Enabled Legal Document Automation that Generates New Law Firm Revenue

Do you spend your time drafting multiple iterations of the same document? Do you wish you could tell a system how to create your documents and have them automatically created based on your client’s facts and intake?

Gavel addresses this pain point by enabling lawyers to automate their document creation process using a no-code, user-friendly builder. Moreover, you can create a client intake on Gavel that automatically drives data to draft your documents.

Rather than manually inputting data into documents, Gavel allows you to transform your existing templates into automated client-facing workflows, eliminating the need for manual data entry. All you need to do is provide the client-specific data (which can be done by your clients themselves). It seamlessly populates the template set, significantly improving the efficiency of the document drafting process.

By automating document creation, Gavel alleviates the administrative burden on lawyers, freeing up valuable time and resources that can be redirected toward higher-value tasks and client service. This not only increases efficiency but also enhances the overall quality of legal services provided to clients.

For those attorneys who are looking to truly uplevel their practice, Gavel also allows you to build legal products that you can sell (à la LegalZoom or TurboTax) to end-users. Gavel also allows you to add a paywall to your workflow or legal app to collect payments, scaling the number of clients you can serve and allowing you to generate new forms of revenue through the platform.

Problem

The problems are twofold:

• Lawyers need powerful document drafting. Legal professionals often face significant challenges in drafting documents and managing workflows efficiently. Traditional document creation and client intake process methods can be time-consuming, error-prone, and resource-intensive, hampering productivity and service delivery.
• Lawyers want ways to build more profitable firms with higher margins. The legal field is competitive. Clients are price shopping and flat fees are popular in most areas. Meanwhile, more people than ever need legal services. How can lawyers profit while also serving the clients who come in their door?

Some of the key problems include:

• Repetitive data entry: Copying and pasting information from various sources into document templates is tedious and error-prone, consuming valuable time and effort.
• Inconsistent data and formatting: Maintaining consistency across multiple documents, especially when dealing with complex legal templates, can be challenging without proper automation.
• Inefficient client intake: Manual client intake processes, such as collecting information through emails or paper forms, can be cumbersome and lead to data entry errors.
• Siloed systems: Integrating various practice management tools, CRMs, and document generation platforms can be complex, leading to disjointed workflows and inefficiencies.
• No way to scale. Over 77% of legal needs are met without using a lawyer. How can lawyers participate in the economy while providing quality legal services?

Solution

Gavel solves the problem of inefficient document drafting and workflow management. As a powerful document automation tool, it is an all-in-one solution for client intake, automation, and monetization.

Gavel's intuitive no-code builder maps templates to your dynamic client data sources for consistent document generation and optimizing workflows and client experiences, from client intake to generating complex documents. Its features include integrations with practice management tools, white labeling, and AI assistance, allowing customization to reflect brand identity.

Most importantly, it’s powerful. If there is an “if this … then that” rule you can think of, there is a way to set it up in Gavel, ensuring that the system generates your documents to nearly 100% final every time.

Use Cases

Gavel caters to a wide range of use cases across the legal industry. Law firms of all sizes can leverage Gavel to automate any legal document creation, streamline client intake processes, and manage client data efficiently.

Solo practitioners and small firms can use Gavel to sell online legal services and create client-facing tools. In contrast, larger firms can benefit from Gavel's ability to create custom workflows tailored to their needs. The integration with DocuSign enables seamless electronic signature processes.

Gavel's Blueprint Artificial Intelligence feature also empowers legal professionals to design and automate complex document workflows, making it an invaluable tool for legal startups and innovative firms seeking to optimize their operations and deliver exceptional client experiences.

Top Features

Truly Powerful Document Automation

After having tested many of the document automation tools around, Gavel was the only one that could handle all of the rules that a typical solo family law or estate planning lawyer might need. The two most powerful features here are:

1. The ability to add endless conditional logic - in the client intake and the document sets.
2. Repeating items and nested repeating items. These are essentially “lists,” which you can gather and populate into your documents in many formats. For example, you can collect a list of children, executors, or shareholders in your intake. Then, Gavel allows you to populate them into your documents in the exact format you need (e.g., embed them into a sentence with a comma before the last, put them into a table, and many more formats).

Building Legal Products with Bundles

If you want to build a tool like TurboTax or LegalZoom for your own area of law, Gavel has supported the biggest ones out there - companies such as JusTech, Landlord Legal, and Hello Divorce are all built on Gavel. In recent years, this has become an increasing source of revenue for law firms as online services have gone online.

Native Integrations

Gavel offers native integrations with popular platforms like Clio, Zapier, Stripe and DocuSign, enhancing its functionality and workflow capabilities. With the Clio integration, you can seamlessly fetch data from your Clio account, including contacts, matters, and custom fields, without manual copy-pasting. Additionally, you can send the generated documents back to Clio once they are completed. The DocuSign integration lets you directly send documents for e-signatures and receive signed copies back within Gavel, streamlining the document signing process.

If you're using other practice management platforms like Lawmatics, ActionStep, or HighLegal, you can easily connect them to Gavel via Zapier integrations. However, for those who are engineers, note that you cannot connect a DocuSign developer account for a testing environment.

API

For tech-savvy users and developers, Gavel offers an API integration that enables the creation of custom applications, integrations, and automation beyond what is possible with Zapier. A prime example of this capability is developing a complete custom front-end application, with Gavel powering the backend functionality. This opens up the possibility of recreating platforms like LawDepot or RocketLawyer by combining Gavel's API with a custom user interface. Note that API access requires an Enterprise plan.

White Labeling

Gavel allows users to incorporate their brand identity into their workflows seamlessly. They can easily upload their logos, favicon, and custom fonts, ensuring a consistent brand experience. Additionally, you can add Custom Domains to their Gavel accounts, such as docs.yourwebsite.com, providing a professional and branded URL for their workflows. Furthermore, Gavel offers the ability to apply custom CSS, enabling users to completely customize the look and feel of the workflows, ensuring they align with their brand's unique style and design preferences.

AI Assistance

Gavel has developed an integrated AI Assistant called Blueprint to help you generate documents from templates efficiently. Blueprint can analyze your desired final document, identify the necessary information, and intelligently construct a logical workflow with appropriate questions, streamlining the process for you. Additionally, you can easily modify the phrasing of the questions or make any other adjustments to the workflow as needed.

Automation Experts

As a busy legal professional, you may not have time to review documents thoroughly, create questionnaires, and design workflows from scratch. Therefore, Gavel offers a team of independent contractors called Gavel Experts, who can efficiently create tailored workflows for you. All you need to do is review and approve the workflows prepared by these experts, saving you valuable time and effort.

Automating PDF Documents

Through its powerful PDF automation capabilities, Gavel streamlines working with PDF forms and documents. With Gavel, you can:

• Automate data entry into fillable PDF forms and court documents.
• Map workflow questions to PDF fields for seamless data population.
• Add fillable fields, signatures, and checkboxes to PDFs using Gavel's PDF Unlocker

This feature eliminates the need for manual, repetitive data entry into PDFs, saving legal professionals valuable time and effort. By leveraging Gavel's PDF tagging functionality, you can ensure consistent and accurate data across PDF documents, improving efficiency and reducing workflow errors.

Community Led Growth

Gavel's growth is driven by a strong community-centric approach, where user feedback is pivotal in shaping the product roadmap. The company's "wishlist" feature proves this commitment, allowing users to request new features easily and ensuring that Gavel's development aligns with the evolving needs of its user base. This direct incorporation of user feedback into the product development process has fostered a sense of ownership and engagement within the Gavel community. Moreover, Gavel boasts an exceptional support team, complemented by an active Slack channel where users can seek assistance, share insights, and engage with fellow community members. Regular Zoom sessions and interviews strengthen community bonds, fostering a collaborative environment where ideas are exchanged and collective growth is nurtured. This community-driven approach contributes to Gavel's continuous improvement and cultivates a loyal user base that actively shapes the platform's future.

Security, Privacy & Reliability

Gavel takes comprehensive measures to ensure the security of sensitive data entrusted by law firms, government entities, and courts worldwide. Each customer has an isolated subdomain and database, with data encrypted in transit and at rest using industry standards. Data is securely stored in compliant AWS data centers, with flexible data residency options available. Gavel prioritizes protecting sensitive information through its unwavering commitment to best security practices.

Conclusion

Gavel offers a comprehensive legal document automation solution that streamlines the drafting process, saving lawyers valuable time and resources. With its user-friendly no-code builder, native integrations, API capabilities, white-labeling options, and AI assistance, Gavel caters to the diverse needs of legal professionals across various practice areas and firm sizes. Furthermore, Gavel's community-driven approach, exceptional support, and unwavering commitment to security and data privacy make it a trusted partner for law firms, government organizations, and courts worldwide. As the legal industry embraces digitalization, Gavel emerges as a powerful tool that empowers legal professionals to optimize their operations, deliver exceptional client experiences, and stay ahead of the curve.