ProDoc Florida July News You Can Use

Normally, the story would end there, but in this instance, the problem was that this guy was homeless and all of his worldly possessions were in the back of his truck. Before the truck was auctioned off, the repo company took all of his possessions and threw them into an open storage bin located outside their building. This guy went to a law firm looking to sue the repo company for property damages of his possessions, which he valued at $12,000.00.

It is extremely difficult to get any type of emotional distress or punitive damages in such property damage cases in the state of Massachusetts and the recovery is usually strictly limited to property damages. But what made this case unusual was that the client had photos of his clothes in the storage bin showing them soaked and covered in snow with the bin open to the January weather thus establishing his version of events. Given the obvious evidence of intentional negligence, the guy's lawyer was hoping to get his client a quick settlement of around $7500, which is a lot of money for a dude living out of the back of his truck.

So the guy's lawyer starts his case against the bank and the repo company. The repo company's and the bank's counsel totaled four attorneys. They impleaded their subcontractor who in turn impleaded its subcontractor so that by the time impleading and cross claiming was done; there were six defense counsels on the case. By the time these defense counsels working on a billable hour basis were done and the case finally settled on the eve of a jury trial, they successfully generated $80,000.00 in legal fees. So a case that would have settled for $7,500.00 eventually settled, with the addition of emotional distress and punitive damages, for $30,000.00. In exchange for $80,000.00 worth of legal work, the bank was able to more than quadruple their expenses for a case they could have settled a year and a half earlier.

When you have a trillion dollars in assets, you are not required to act intelligently.

from LegalHumor.com

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Updates Review

Coming Updates

September
The Florida Legislature recently enacted some major bills which are effective October 1, 2009, and which will affect almost every domestic case filed involving children. Here is an overview of the more important features of the September update:

Senate Bill 258 requires that a person filing a petition for a change of name should have fingerprints submitted for a state and national criminal history records check, before the court hears the petition.

Senate Bill 904 made numerous changes to the Florida Statutes affecting family law filings and parenting plans, including the following:

An address for the purposes of the children's school is now explicitly required.
The court must now expressly acknowledge if evidence of domestic violence was considered when determining parental responsibility.
The manner of paying child support was significantly revised – with or without an income deduction order, by direct payment, and/or through the State Disbursement Unit.
The standard for modifying a parenting plan has been revised – there must now be a "substantial, material, and unanticipated" change in circumstances.
The procedural requirements concerning the relocation of a parent with the children were extensively revised.
New provisions for a parenting coordinator were added.

Numerous revisions will be made to our Family Law volume consistent with the legislative changes for the September release, both (a) to the original ProDoc forms authored by our attorneys, and (b) to the Supreme Court forms, including:

The three Supreme Court petitions for Change of Name (Adult, Minor Children, and Family) are being revised pursuant to SB 258.
The ProDoc and Supreme Court parenting plans will reflect the new requirements re: school address, payment of child support, and other items.
Orders and judgments will display the new domestic violence finding, when appropriate.
The Supplemental Petitions and Judgments will reflect the new standard for modification.
The forms for relocation are being completely redrafted, including: (a) the Agreement to Relocate, (b) the Petition to Relocate, (c) the Response to Petition, (d) the Temporary Order (Permitting or Restraining Location), and (e) the Judgment.
New forms for the appointment of a Parenting Coordinator will be added.

New local parenting plans will also be added in the September release for the following circuits:

First Circuit (Escambia County).
Eighth Circuit (Alachua County).
Tenth Circuit (basic, and Models 1, 2 and 3 - nonlocal).
Twelfth Circuit (Basic, Long Distance, Safety Focused, and Highly Structured; plus the Notice of Filing Parenting Plan).
Fourteenth Circuit.
Eighteenth Circuit (Brevard County).
Twentieth Circuit (Parenting Plan and Time-Sharing Schedule, for one child or multiple children).

Other user requests will also be included in the September release, such as:

Motion for Additional Time to File Answer (new form).
Motion for Court to Set Trial (new form).
Certificate of Service (which is being streamlined, and will have more options available)

December
This update will contain updates to our FLSSI Probate, FLSSI Guardianship, and FLSSI Real Estate volumes for changes pursuant to Florida Lawyers Support Services, Inc. (FLSSI) changes effective January 1, 2010. And, we'll update the tax calculator with the 2010 IRS tax charts.

Past WebUpdates
Here is the CD update that you should have received in June. If you did not receive it, be sure to alert us.

Family Law – We modified 26 forms relating to health insurance provisions for children per HB 5129.

Probate – We updated the DR-313, Affidavit of No Florida Estate Tax Due When Federal Return is Required form pursuant to a change by the Florida Department of Revenue.

Lipman's Wills & Trusts - We added numerous additional options to wills and trusts forms, removed the Comprehensive Wills and Trusts, added Supplemental Needs and Retirement Benefits Trusts, and more.

Real Estate – We updated the W-9, Request for Taxpayer Identification Number pursuant to a change by the IRS.

Business Organizations – We added an email address option for contact person in eight forms. We also updated the Change of Registered Agent, Office, or Both form based on a change by the Florida Department of State.

View more specific details about this update >>

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Be Sure You Installed that June Update
In addition to providing you the valuable updates listed above; installing the June update keeps your ProDoc current so it does not timeout on you in the future.

If you are not sure whether you installed it, there is an easy way to determine this. Open ProDoc and look in the extreme upper left corner. It should show ProDoc Version 5.24. If it shows an earlier version, you are not current.

If you cannot find the CD or you cannot find the KeyCode to install the update, call the Tech Support team at 800-759-5418, option 3, for assistance.

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Customer Questions from the Last WebNotes
The following questions were from ProDoc customers like you in response to last month's ProDoc WebNotes.

Q: Why do the client forms not have an input for the client phone number? In many forms, at least the estate planning documents, the client phone comes into play. It would seem to be a sensible addition.
A: When you set up a client and case in ProDoc you can enter all the contact info for the client so that it is easy to find by everyone in the firm. Most ProDoc volumes contain areas for you to request phone numbers from your clients. You'll find information here about how to save in ProDoc the client address and contact information you collect.

Q: I recently had to replace my paralegal who was an authorized user under my ProDoc license. Can you remove her name from the list of authorized users?
A: That is not necessary since we don't assign ProDoc licenses to a specific person. Each ProDoc subscription comes standard with three licenses. These are not assigned to a specific person. Whoever uses your previous paralegal's computer will have full access to ProDoc on that machine.

Q: I’ve been meaning to ask someone why ProDoc doesn’t allow you to create a pleading in the Probate Volume Petition for Order Authorizing Fee and Expenses of Personal Representative and a Petition for the Attorney Fees. I asked the attorney and he said because its usually not a problem, but it seems like I prepare these forms a lot and have to use and reword the similar form in the guardianship volume.
A: Our probate forms are licensed from FLSSI, and for some reason they did not include any forms for personal rep or attorney's fees. We have, however, added it to our enhancement list to consider adding our own forms in the future.

Q: I think there should be a way to save the creditors that you input in the Probate Management System part under creditors. I know in Florida we have to notify Health Management Systems and the Department of Revenue for every probate and this would be so much easier to input if we had a list of contacts to choose from.
A: We hope to add features like this to the Probate Management System in the future. It is simply a matter of resources and priorities.

Q: One thing we would recommend when doing the updates is to provide the subscribers with a list of the actual documents that have been deleted, modified or added (new). This would make it much easier on all of us than having to try and search to find them.
A: Glad you asked and we have just what you are asking for. After you install the update, open ProDoc. Click on Help, then on About the Volumes, and then select the volume for which you wish to view the changes. On the ensuing page for that volume, click on the Change History link. You will then be able to view a list of all forms that were updated along with a synopsis of the changes to that form.

Submit your ProDoc question(s) >>

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Customer Support: Adding Your Own Forms into ProDoc
You can create and add your own forms and letters into ProDoc software. If you want, you can even automate them to merge data into pre-selected fields. It is relatively easy to do so and some firms have created entire libraries of their own special-purpose letters and forms.

If you wish to create more complex forms containing logic we also provide a free program available by download from our web site. There is more of a learning curve involved in this process. We call this free download program SuppDev (short for Supplemental Developer). It is a light version of the product our attorney-developers use but you can use it to create documents as complex as almost any other automated forms authoring systems available.

Learn how to add your own forms into ProDoc >>
Learn about SuppDev >>

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Practice Tip: Estate Planning Help for at Your Finger Tips
If you have looked at our Lipman's Wills & Trusts volume you know what a comprehensive, powerful, and easy-to use product it is. But, no matter how easy we have made it to generate comprehensive estate planning documents, you probably still have questions on the topic.

For that reason, we have two excellent resources for you to obtain answers to the questions you have about estate planning. Our Estate Planning forum provides a venue for you to ask your questions and receive the answers from Ronald L Lipman, author of our Estate Planning volume. And, the Lipman's Wills & Trusts volume provides valuable information about the more important forms its manual—when and how to use them, understanding key clauses, etc.

Visit our Estate Planning forum >>
View the Florida Lipman's Wills & Trusts manual >>

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Tech Tip: Converting Word Documents to PDFs and Vice Versa
OK, you undoubtedly know what to use to covert your Microsoft® Word docs to PDFs. But, how do you convert PDFs into Microsoft® Word, Microsoft® Excel, etc.? Abbyy® PDF Transformer is the answer. It will even retain the original layout and formatting of the PDF. If you've ever tried to copy text from a PDF you know just how remarkable this feature is. And, for only about $50 (download version) it is a reasonably priced product for converting documents to PDFs, and vice versa.

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Tech Tip: Connect Your Billing System with Your Clients' Billing Systems
What do you do when your corporate client requires you to submit eBills? eBillingHub® is a web-based solution that integrates corporate billing systems with leading time and billing software platforms including Thomson Elite®, Thomson ProLaw®, ADERANT™ CMS, RainMaker® Platinum and RainMaker® Visual Pyramid ensuring compatibility and no rework to your existing data or processes. In addition, the eBillingHub supports over a dozen of the leading e-Billing vendors, making sure that you can automatically and easily connect your system to your client’s preferred e-Billing vendor.