Practice Specific

After installation, the Cowles system opens to a preferences screen where you set up your law office, customizing the default attorney and default notary. The program is state specific; that is, you license the program state by state, so that documents are generated in accordance with the appropriate local standard. You also establish your document preferences, selecting your word processor of choice. Cowles generates documents in Rich Text Format (RTF), readily convertible to most processors. Enabling auto load allows the system to interact with your word processor, automatically loading documents into the processor for editing as they’re generated.

A series of steps leads you along the path of estate planning and document preparation. Confidential Client profiles, detailed questions and answer booklets prepared manually while you are meeting with the client drive document preparation. The checklists are designed to allow the preparation of documents by the lawyer or members of the office staff.

Frankly, I could not see how a staff member could use the checklist to follow through with other than the most basic input, but the program is flexible enough to shift between users. I did use the will checklist when meeting with a couple to discuss an estate plan. I found that the checklist kept me on track and allowed me to obtain the information I needed to prepare a complete plan for them. It took me a few hours to become comfortable enough with the program that I was able to successfully prepare a complete set of planning documents, but I was very pleased with the results.

The program includes an extensive, substantive help feature that does an effective job explaining the law and the logic behind each phrase selection option. The notations were pertinent and accurate, lacking only inadequate specificity about occasional discrepancies between state and federal law.

I have yet to find a package, that accurately explains estate planning differences from state to state, so I can’t say that the Cowles package is lacking for that reason. I was pleased with the complete set of documents generated by selection of the “create documents” option. The program opened my word processor and smoothly merged the data with my selections to produce a full set of professional looking documents. I was grateful not to have to spend time fiddling with removal of codes or seeking an errant merge field. The merge worked like a charm.

As for the documents themselves, I was disappointed to see that the system utilizes the more generic “personal representative,” rather than the more specific fiduciary terms common in New York. The state has yet to adopt such national standards, and most of my documents and those of my colleagues don’t appoint personal representatives, but rather executors and trustees.

Finally, the documents sometimes followed drafting customs, which aren’t common in New York. There was also specific attestation language required for the wills, which isn’t included in the program. There are methods for modifying system text, but the process seemed rather intimidating for the lonely lawyer.

I was pleased to see that most of the documents integrate language that was easier for the layman than that of most other software programs. This ultimately resulted in greater client understanding of the process.

Particularly helpful in the program is the total document creation process. Not only are the planning instruments themselves created, such as the wills and the trusts, both revocable and irrevocable, but the other steps in the planning process also are automated.

Included are both springing and statutory short form powers of attorney. The legal minds drafting the language used in the instruments are attuned to the endlessly shifting estate planning sands to highlight alerts for practitioners in the substantive help areas, such as gifts by the attorney in fact.

Further, the drafting is complete in another way — it prepares, if selected, letters to the client explaining the documents, the necessary transfer documents, instruction letters to banks, brokers, insurance agents and other third parties, client invoice and even a pocket reference card for the client who may be further funding the trust at a later time.

The program comes with a box full of videos, tapes, checklists and 10 marketing books, which I could do without, but as for the entire Cowles2000 system, it certainly offers the whole enchilada.

Windows 95/98/2000

$4,990; also sold with the TrusTerminator for $6,990

Reviewed by Denise Ward, Esq., Grean & Ward, Port Chester, N.Y.

Oct/Nov '00 Issue

PROS
Very thorough document generation; seamless integration of data collection and document drafting.

CONS
Got turned off by 10 books on marketing techniques and how to organize an office. Use of generic, rather than specific, fiduciary terms.

VERDICT
I recommend this product. If you really can follow the entire system, the price will indeed be justified by the income increase.

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Updated 09/19/01
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