Innovative E-Commerce Document Platform HotDocs Market Reports on Successful First Year

HotDocs Market, the innovative e-commerce document assembly platform launched by HotDocs in February 2015, today highlights the achievements of the first year of operation.

There are presently over 7000 automated templates available on HotDocs Market, which enables legal professionals across the USA to save time and money drafting documents, allowing greater focus on high value work for clients. For publishers, HotDocs Market provides a ready-made e-commerce platform where customers or bar members can subscribe to publishers’ automated legal content.

Jonathan Hoy, VP HotDocs Market, said: “Since launching HotDocs Market a year ago, we have grown to more than 2,000 subscribers who have created nearly 80,000 different documents. Moving into 2016 we expect business to expand exponentially as we on-board more publishers, rapidly increasing the number of available templates and practice areas from the current 7,000 strong library, which will, in turn, attract even more new subscribers.”

Russell Shepherd, a technology and publishing entrepreneur and the CEO of HotDocs Group, commented: “Our goal is to expand over time to provide useful content in all practice areas and all States. We are delighted to have these initial partnerships with so many State Bars in our first year, and we are talking to many more. We feel these partnerships are a great way to serve legal professionals who may not see State or City specific forms and documents from the major publishers. In Iowa, we have more than 75% of law firms in the State subscribing to the HotDocs service, and we are looking to enable other State Bars to provide similar valuable services to their members.”

HotDocs Market uses HotDocs’ powerful document assembly technology to transform publishers’ content into dynamic HotDocs templates. This allows subscribers to quickly complete an interview and generate a document – or set of documents. The answers to the interview are automatically applied to produce an accurate, customized legal document or form that saves time, effort and cost – providing attorneys with increased bandwidth to focus on higher value fee earning work, rather than routine document drafting.

Publishers on HotDocs Market include global legal content providers, regional and speciality publishers and multiple State Bar Associations. A wide range of legal content is available to subscribers covering forms-driven practice areas such as family law, business and real estate. During 2016, HotDocs Market content will expand to include more forms for more US states across more practice areas.

The latest State Bar Associations to publish content on HotDocs Market are Illinois and Wisconsin, joining Nebraska, Arkansas, Iowa, Minnesota and New York (via LexisNexis). Over the next few months, more State and City Bar Associations are anticipated to join the ranks of HotDocs Market publishers, offering a wide range of State and City specific content to further complement the State and Federal legal forms already available.

Tim Slating, Assistant Director of Publications at the Illinois State Bar Association and a new publisher to HotDocs Market, said: “Since publishing IllinoisBarDocs on HotDocs Market a month ago, we have seen large numbers of members subscribe. Creating customized documents from IllinoisBarDocs templates on HotDocs Market saves our members time and effort each time they use the service. We’re happy to be providing our members with this benefit that helps them practice more efficiently.”

Harry Shipley, Assistant Executive Director with the Iowa State Bar Association and a founding publisher on HotDocs Market, concluded: “In just over a year we have seen outstanding results from publishing IowaDocs on HotDocs Market, with many of our members using the platform to access templates covering business law, civil litigation, family law, employment law and other practice areas. Thousands of documents have been assembled by IowaDocs subscribers on HotDocs Market, providing a ringing endorsement of the value that this service brings to our members.”

The HotDocs Market team will be attending the ABA TechShow in Chicago on March 16-18 and will be delighted to meet with new publishers and end users of the service.