Do you find yourself re-keying information? Do you spend a lot of time re-spacing, re-numbering and general administrative tasks that are adding no value to your day?
Compared to traditional drafting methods, using Arken Professional to draft Wills and other associated documents like Lasting Powers of Attorney, can create huge time savings to your business, and not just in the document drafting itself. But how do we do that?
Digital fact finds, client commentaries, Trust choice and tax advice, Online Wills
Arken.Legal’s suite of solutions contain many efficiency enabling tools, from allowing your client to pre-populate some key information themselves digitally, to preparing a commentary that sits hand in hand with the document, explaining the Will content clause by clause. We also have tools to help you decide which Trust is appropriate to use for a particular client, and tools to allow for simple Wills to be drafted by the client entirely themselves.
Document drafting – but so much faster!
Our core product Arken Professional that sits at the heart of our product suite, is the tool for the professional drafter. It allows for highly complex Wills, to be drafted so much more quickly compared to traditional methods, all with the inbuilt controls of the system, and risk management in place.
At Arken.Legal we believe the professional advisor should be able to focus their valuable time on the advice-giving portion of their role, working with their client to understand their needs, and come up with a Will which is perfectly tailored for them. Using Arken Professional takes away the numbering, formatting, and clause re-arranging aspect of drafting, allowing the professional to concentrate on their client, and not on formatting Word documents.
But how much time could you save?
We decided to take the time saving to a real test, and undertake a full series of speed tests to compare Will Writing on Arken, to those using traditional methods, where re-keying data, and re-organising clauses all plays a role.
All case studies are fictional individuals. The results are as follows.
Speed test case study 1:
Client A had quite straightforward requirements. Her partner as Executor but substituted by a solicitor firm if her partner was not able. She left her partner her estate at first level subject to a few money and property gifts prior to distribution of residue. There were a few substitutions of gifts and per stirpes requirements. She also wanted certain of her chattels to be distributed by rotation. At the second level, she wanted her estate to be left to charity
Average time to draft on Arken: 9 minutes 6 seconds
Average time using word precedents: 31 minutes 04 seconds
RESULT: Time saving shows that 3 of the same Wills could have been drafted in the same time it took via Word precedents.
Speed test case study 2:
Case Study 2 shows Client B asking his partner and then his friend as substitution to be an executor. He has funeral directions and wants to look after his pet too once he has passed away. He has several other gifts to charity, to family and a Discretionary Trust to his friends children for their education. The residue goes to his partner but if she has passed away, the residue is split into shares with additional gifts prior to the residue being allocated.
Average time to draft on Arken: 9 minutes 3 seconds
Average time using word precedents: 36 minutes 09 seconds
RESULT : Case Study 2 shows that 4 of the same Will could have been drafted in the same time it took via Word precedents.
Speed test case study 3:
Case Study 3 saw the client wanting to make a mutual Will to specify that the Will is not mutual and that the Will would only cater for the property in England and Wales. There are funeral directions, and gifts to be given prior to the distribution of the residue. These gifts are to the Executor and wish to be paid even if he declines to act as executor. There is also the need for a Discretionary Trust which is split at the end between family members. There is a life interest with power to advance capital but not the overriding power to advance capital. The residue should then be split into equal shares to the sons but to take into account any advances to them during their lifetime over £1000.
Average time to draft on Arken: 6 minutes 9 seconds
Average time using word precedents: 38 minutes 13 seconds
RESULT: A time saving of over half an hour on this one document alone.
Using a combination of both complex and straightforward Wills, you can see how by using Arken Professional, the process of writing documents significantly decreases and the time-saving efficiencies quickly add up – and this is drafting only. More efficiencies can be achieved by using the other tools in our product suite. In our test, the average time saved was 27 minutes and 3 seconds.
Therefore, on an average of 50 Wills a month, that saving becomes 22 and a half hours per month. Spread over an entire year the total time savings are 270 hours in total! The equivalent of 38.5 workdays, nearly 2 months’ worth of time.
By having this additional time to dedicate to growth and client-facing activities, your practice could be transformed. Why not book a 15-minute consultation meeting to begin seeing immediate time saving? https://calendly.com/arkenlegal/arken-introductory-call?month=2022-04
*These times were calculated using experienced users of Arken Professional