Consumers create demand letters with Write My Rights

Tangowork worked with the lawyers at Write My Rights to build a software product that generates demand letters for consumers.

Technologies used

  • Docassemble

  • Python

  • Bootstrap 5

  • AWS Lightsail

Services provided

  • Prototyping

  • Web development

David Kandestin, a Vancouver-based lawyer and CEO of Write My Rights, saw a recurring pattern at his legal practice. “Frustrated consumers often want to take legal action, but 90% of the time what they really need is a strongly-worded letter.” Kandestin was happy to write these letters, but he also saw an opportunity: a software startup that would help consumers write their own. 

Kandestin partnered with a local college to produce a working prototype, but it didn’t have the functionality and flexibility he was looking for. So he approached Tangowork to build the production version.

Tangowork built WriteMyRights by leveraging an open source document automation platform called Docassemble.

We quickly saw that the functionality Kandestin needed was at the core of software products in the document automation space. One open source platform, Docassemble, is so powerful that it’s used as the engine for several commercial document automation solutions. So we began developing Kandestin’s product on top of Docassemble.

We configured Docassemble to conduct guided interviews, to produce demand letters in Word and PDF format, and to manage user accounts. We also performed extensive customization to achieve a look-and-feel that matched Write My Rights’ emerging brand.

Guided interviews lead consumers through a series of questions that are used to generate a strong letter in Word or PDF format.

“Today Write My Rights is helping consumers write demand letters in three initial areas: neighbour disputes, phone company problems, and severance issues,” according to Kandestin. “We’re getting fantastic feedback on both the quality and efficacy of our letters, and we’re working on adding more.”

By leveraging an existing open source platform, Tangowork helped Write My Rights build a powerful, flexible demand letter generation platform for a fraction of the cost of building it from scratch.