
Docracy - Free (community curated) Legal Documents - carlsednaoui
http://www.docracy.com/
======
liber8
Fantastic idea, but as a lawyer, it makes me a bit nervous for those who would
rely solely on the documents available.

Even if those documents are flawless and cover exactly what someone needs
(incredibly unlikely), in many areas the documents themselves aren't
necessarily the problem: it's knowing what documents, in combination, you
need.

For example, if I want to make a real estate secured loan to someone, what do
I need? If you're fairly sophisticated, you might say a Note and a Deed of
Trust. Great, but what if that someone is a business or a single asset entity?
Should you make the loan? Should you get a guaranty from the principals? Would
that guaranty even be enforceable? In many cases, just having access to the
documents really isn't enough. There's a reason attorneys are the only
profession that get paid to _research_ the very subject they're supposed to be
experts in. This stuff is _complicated_.

I like the idea though, and if you could fill some of those knowledge gaps,
this could be really valuable.

~~~
ChuckMcM
I would like to see when the documents have been litigated and under what
circumstances. But of course that information is _really_ hard to come by some
times.

That being said, if they invested their time and energy into taking the output
of the Superior Court docket and documents used there and the arguments made
for and against the documents. Well that would be a really cool service.

~~~
rprasad
That would not help. Supreme Court filings are so specialized that they
generally only apply to cases being heard before the Supreme Court. The
documents underlying the cases litigated before the Supreme Court (i.e.,
contracts, etc.) are generally not analyzed by appellate courts in any detail
unless they are specifically relevant to a discussion of the legal issues
being contested before the court.

~~~
ChuckMcM
Wasn't really thinking about Supreme Court filings, I was thinking the more
mundane civil filings that happen day in and day out in say Santa Clara County
Superior Court [1] where you can get a copy of all the documents filed in all
the cases where the judge hasn't ordered the documents sealed.

I realize its kind of an odd thing to do, but you can go down to any US court
house and just sit in the gallery and listen/watch. There are people who do
this for Groklaw when they were following every bit of the SCO/Novell
litigation.

The Novell/SCO case (and Groklaw for that matter) provide what I think would
be a great service (when combined with copies of the original documents) so in
the Novell/SCO case there were agreements about the assignment of copyright
(or not) and how they were pleaded both by the defense and the prosecution.
Reading how they were attacked and how they were defended gives tremendous
insights into how such documents get litigated. Of course it costs time and
money to have someone do that, but that (rather than just copying various
public web sources for documents) would provide a real value proposition for
someone who was trying to either come up with a document for this or wanted to
know what questions/guidance they should give their attorney who is preparing
such a document.

[1] <http://www.scscourt.org/self_help/civil/faqs/docket.shtml>

~~~
rprasad
Litigated documents are generally a good example of what _not_ to do, but are
a poor example of best practices. That is generally how budding lawyers are
trained in law school, and consequently the reason most legal documents are
unnecessarily complex.

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ubervero
I'm in charge of content here at Docracy and here are answers to some of the
initial questions: 1) All content is user generated, and we just started so
please be patient if something is missing! We hope to get a solid library of
US document to start, and then hopefully spread enough to cover also different
jurisdictions/regions. 2) As pents90 said, rating system is pretty tricky for
legal content, but we do track signatures and data to help people identify the
most used documents. There's a discussion page for every document, where you
can share questions and opinions, tell us if you need a specific version, etc
3) We'll co-host a legal hackathon next month, where people will use Docracy
to branch the current draft of SOPA and PIPA and make it better. More info:
<http://legalhackathon.blipclinic.org/>

Last but not least, here is some stuff useful to startups/hackers:
<http://www.docracy.com/75/employment-offer-letter>
<http://www.docracy.com/103/founder-collaboration-agreement>
<http://www.docracy.com/35/founders-equity-agreement>
<http://www.docracy.com/263/founder-advisor-standard-template>
[http://www.docracy.com/367/consulting-agreement-for-
hourly-w...](http://www.docracy.com/367/consulting-agreement-for-hourly-work)
[http://www.docracy.com/2817/standard-agreement-for-design-
se...](http://www.docracy.com/2817/standard-agreement-for-design-services-
interactive-web-works-full-assignment)

Of course, any feedback is welcome!

~~~
munaf
Not to bug you with feature requests, but I think it would also be helpful to
know which editors/users are verified attorneys - but I understand the
complications and overhead involved with implementing that.

That said, terrific job. I could see myself being a paying customer (assuming
you go that route). I think I'd just need some usage stats or perhaps
testimonials from trusted parties to actually use a document.

~~~
praxeologist
I'd think most attorneys (or whomever) wanting to participate in a site like
this might want to upload something such as a photo of their JD. There could
be some way to offload the work of the site owners and give at least some
credibility.

Anyhow, this site looks pretty awesome and I am going to check it out. As
someone hyper-bootstrapping his first startup (poor), a halfassed privacy
policy or something may be better than nothing anyhow. Maybe I can get some
idea what I will be looking at before I take the dive and hire a real lawyer
too.

~~~
ubervero
Yes, we are planning a verification system for lawyers' profiles, although you
can already tell a lot by looking at their profile information (website,
twitter, etc)

~~~
praxeologist
Thanks, I see these now. I should have looked around more before commenting
and I bookmarked it!

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azov
It would be great to also add a short human-readable (i.e. non-legalize)
version of each document. Something along the lines of what Creative Commons
folks do with their licenses (e.g.
<http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/>)

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leoedin
A really interesting concept! Unfortunately it's only really applicable for
Americans though. It'd be nice if there was support for other legal systems,
but I guess that'll come with time.

~~~
username3
Ask the Samwer brothers. <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3656156>

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robinjfisher
Love it!

As a lawyer (UK based if you're thinking of expansion!), I think it's a great
idea. I've been mulling over something similar for in-house teams but based on
precedent clauses rather than entire documents.

~~~
aaronpk
I would love to see a site that let you piece together a contract by choosing
certain clauses to get the contract you want. Even in a simple subcontractor
agreement you have to make decisions like a) what kind of non-compete do you
want? b) who owns the copyright to the work, etc.

~~~
robinjfisher
This is a great idea too. One of the UK providers does a good job of this
using technology they call FastDraft. Plugs in to Companies House to get
company data for the parties to the agreement; allows you to specify how you
want non-competes to work etc. For individuals or small companies it is cost-
prohibitive though. A small legal team (3 or 4 people) can pay around £10k a
year.

Generally, I think the legal market is ripe for disruption and can be
demystified through applications like Docracy.

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Bostwick
This is fantastic. As a student looking to start a company after graduation,
I've wondered a lot about the legal issues surrounding equity, incorporation,
and founders agreements. I feel that with this site, I can read sample
documents so that, when I do need to talk to a lawyer, I will be much more
informed.

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benwerd
Absolutely fantastic. Anticipating the questions I'll get asked, what's the
best way to do due diligence against these? The discussion is a great first
step, but is there a way to file explicit "bugs" against a document, or show
verified legal support for a document's worth?

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parvinsingh
I just signed up with docracy, but as soon as I signed up and visited the next
page- Test Signing Document (Non-Binding)

There is some spanish/french content, which I think is from the web design
template that you used. You should think of removing it.

'Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, noster periculis dissentiunt eam in, cu vivendo
splendide sea, vidisse phaedrum mel ea. Vis ne paulo corpora suavitate,
salutandi theophrastus vel ei, facilisi mediocrem deterruisset cum ex.
Mandamus expetenda vis ad, cu dicit offendit constituto cum. Ad eos wisi
pericula assueverit, in eum soleat insolens convenire. Has oratio aperiri
aliquam ei, mei ex nostrud comprehensam. Summo quando eos ut, mundi maiorum cu
sed.'

~~~
simonbrown
That's placeholder text.

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorem_ipsum>

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irrationalfab
Great implementation of an idead that I guess often crossed the mind of many.

One feature request, please make it regional. It would be very nice if every
document would have a geographical area and language attribute.

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sek
Now a semantic analysis of the text would be great.

A legal document is just a combination of generic words for specific
circumstances.

Maybe law language is just a programming language in some way and we need
coffescript for that.

~~~
rprasad
Such things exist -- they are called legal treatises.

For laymen, the equivalent would be books like the Nolo series.

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kmfrk
Gorgeous website. What need or frustration fuelled the creation of it?

~~~
matt2000
Hi there, I'm a Docracy founder. The frustration that fueled the creation of
the site was us trying to sign an NDA in my previous startup. None of the
parties involved really knew what NDA would be a good one to sign, we both
just wanted that part of the relationship protected but over with as quickly
as possible. We were surprised to find that there wasn't a repository of
accepted standards for some of these things, so ultimately we decided to take
a shot at making it ourselves.

When the site works best is when a document becomes a standard (for example, a
NYC startup NDA) and you sign it on the site. Then you know it hasn't been
tampered with by the counterparty and you can execute it quickly and
confidently.

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agentultra
Cool site! It's like github for legal documents. Perfect.

Now if there was a way to encourage democratic gov'ts to draft their bills
using something similar...

~~~
carlsednaoui
Absolutely love this idea!

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munaf
Love it. Will a rating system be added? Would love to know which documents are
better than others in a particular category.

~~~
pents90
I'm a Docracy founder:

We may consider a rating system. Right now, we're keeping track (anonymously)
of usage metrics, especially how often each document is executed (signed) via
the site. Each execution is evidence that both the party and the counter-party
found the terms to be sensible and fair, so we think this is a strong metric
of quality for the document.

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shotgun
Yay! It's about time someone did this.

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quanfucius
Bookmarked! Looks like it will definitely help startups get some general
direction in regards to legal docs.

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slav
great website and the idea - I was looking for content like that when starting
my first company

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zalew
> Download PDF / Download Word

Providing a non-proprietary format such as ODF wouldn't hurt.

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mkramlich
I like the spirit of this and LegalZoom. I never understood how come we
couldn't just fill out and submit a web form to create most kinds of
businesses, assuming generic enough details. I understand there are complex
edge cases and situations but there are ways of making them a non-issue if we
have the collective willpower and make the right base premises.

~~~
rprasad
The forms themselves are easy, even trivial to fill out. However, the
Secretaries of State generally do not have the resources to fully modernize
their filing systems to handle web-based submissions.

Also, in many cases (i.e., California), the SOS's are barred by statute from
accepting non-physical business filings for new entities.

~~~
mkramlich
interesting. thanks for insight. so both of those still fallback to a case of
lacking willpower and political inertia

this area feels like one of those cases where if we could start with a blank
slate, from scratch, and design it "right, from the start", this problem would
go away. actually a lot of government and banking feels that way. much of it
is an echo/zombie from an era without computers, without the Internet, without
telecomm, etc. they just shamble on and very slowly and incrementally
incorporate the state-of-the-art, usually only in little pockets and niches.

