Tangowork launches improved document builders for People's Law School
Who is People’s Law School?
People’s Law School is a non-profit organization that aims to help British Columbians effectively deal with everyday legal problems. One of the resources People’s Law provides is templates for agreements or letters that need to be in writing, like an agreement for selling a used car.
What did People’s Law School need?
People’s Law had template letters and agreements on its website already, but they weren’t ideal. The templates were set up in two different systems, provided a poor, outdated user experience, and didn’t work well on mobile phones. Agreements could be downloaded either in RTF or PDF files, but the average consumer couldn’t easily modify them.
Template letters and agreements on the People’s Law School website
People’s Law wanted site visitors to be able to answer a simple series of questions, and then receive a ready-to-use letter or agreement customized to their situation. People’s Law needed an improved user experience, but as a busy legal non-profit society, they didn’t want to have to worry about configuring a new platform and transferring existing information to it. It was also important to People’s Law that any data collected remained in Canada, where they are located.
How did Tangowork help People’s Law?
Tangowork introduced People’s Law to the open-source Docassemble platform. Docassemble is an expert system that provides guided user interviews and document assembly. Tangowork helps People’s Law and other clients take advantage of Docassemble’s features by providing consulting and hosting services.
Template users answer questions and provide information that is automatically added to the correct parts of the agreement
Tangowork created People’s Law’s existing templates in Docassemble, and provided hosting, which includes configuration, backups, software updates, and performance monitoring. Tangowork also provided instruction and training for People’s team of content writers, so that they could feel confident creating their own template generators in Docassemble going forward.
Results
The end result for People’s Law is letter and agreement builders that are friendly, attractive, and easy-to-use. (See it in action!) End users can come to the People’s Law website, go through a simple question-and-answer process, adjust sample agreement wording as desired and download the template agreement with all of the details filled in.
Terms that may be unfamiliar are defined in pop-ups
The new agreement builder works beautifully on mobile devices, making it easy for British Columbians to access. Along the way, explanations, pop-up definitions, and progress bars ensure the user feels confident in completing the process. Once they download the agreement, it is ready to sign, or it can be opened in their word processor of choice for further edits. If the user decides that the agreement is ready to go, they can email it directly to the other party, with the email coming from a verified People’s Law School domain name.
Sections of the template agreement allow sample wording to be edited as desired
The template tool is now much easier to use. (Try it for yourself.) Tangowork was also able to accommodate People’s Law’s need for all data collected to be hosted in Canada, and Tangowork provides monitoring to make sure that the system is always up and running.
The goal of People’s Law is to make the law accessible to everyone. Tangowork helped People’s Law accomplish that by setting them up to provide simple, step-by-step tools that provide an end product that can be immediately useful to users.