Epoq.co.uk Legal Services News

Content update:

Epoq have today added new templates to the range of Rapidocs templates available to our customers, with a new service for personal legal customers, as follows:

Housemates/flatmates sharing agreement

Use this agreement if you are, or are planning to, share a house or flat with another person or a group of people (maximum of 4 other people). The agreement will set out the financial (e.g. responsibility for bills) and other obligations that each housemate/flatmate will have to each other while living together in the property. Please note that this agreement is not suitable for use where you want to have an agreement to protect you financial interests while living together as a couple (where a cohabitation agreement should be used instead) or where one of the housemates/flatmates is the landlord of the property, or the property is not rented.

Existing Epoq customers interested in adding these documents to their service should contact either their Account manager or Project manager in the first instance.

Law you can afford: Epoq are proud to announce that their comprehensive online legal document service ‘Desktop Lawyer‘ has this week been relaunched, giving customers acess to over 300 legal documents that can be drafted live online.

Quite apart from the sleek new look, Desktop Lawyer now also boasts a wider range of features than ever before: there is more content available, the service can put you in touch with a Legal 500 law firm from our sister network (’MyLawyer‘) who can review your document or take on a case for you, and - perhaps most importantly - users can draft their documents online with no need to download specialist software to their desktops.

Any document can be tried out for free, and everybody who signs up with the service (it’s free to join) is given their own ‘My Services’ page where they can access and edit their documents online. Existing users can still accesss the old site if they prefer: the option to do so is provided when you first visit the site. (The site also merges the services of some existing Epoq sites under one banner: previous customers of the ‘Epoq Wills’, ‘Epoq Identity Recovery’ and ‘CVworks’ sites can now find the documents and services they need on Desktop Lawyer.)

The site still features its comprehensive free law guide, which is browsed by over 18,000 visitors a week, and to celebrate the relaunch we are also providing, for a limted time, access to a number of legal documents completely free - the perfect opportunity to try the service out.

We’re keen to see what you think of new site, so please feel free to comment below or to get in touch…

New Media Knowledge, the learning and business hub for for companies and inviduals working in Digital media in the UK, has interviewed Epoq’s founder and joint CEO, Grahame Cohen, on the MyLawyer service.

Grahame discusses the inspiration for MyLawyer, the competitive landscape,  and the benefits that MyLawyer can bring to those who enage with the law on the web, as well as explainaing how the service operates. The full article can be found here.

The MyLawyer service has this week been featured in Real Business, one of the Uk’spremier titles for business entrepeneurs, and the publication that hosts the annual Growing Business awards.

Rebecca Burn-Callendar reviewed the site and interviewed both Richard and Grahame Cohen, joint CEOs of Epoq, and decided that the service was a potential boon to thousands of small business ventures, concluding: “If you think the site sounds too good to be true, now’s your chance to test it. You can do a walkthrough of the site, using a real problem or an imaginary legal query, to see how mylawyer.co.uk handles your document. If you like what you see, you buy, if not, you still get an idea of how the final document will look. It’s win - win!”

You can read the full online coverage here.

Content update:

Epoq have today added new templates to the range of Rapidocs templates available to our customers. The new documents are updated versions of our Cohabitation agreements - in addition to updating the main Cohabitation agreement, we have added two letters to assist employees in the process of registering an option to purchase a share in the joint home. These documents are designed to be sold together, and the details are as follows:

Cohabitation agreement: This document has been completely re-written from our previous cohabitation agreement and includes an option for the user to create an option to purchase their partner’s share in property. You may not be aware, but living together does not give you an automatic right to a share in the joint home if your relationship ends. An option to purchase is where an owner of the home gives another the right to buy his or her share in it at a particular price to be agreed or valued at the time the option is exercised. This will give each cohabitating partners rights they would not normally have because they are not married or in a civil partnership.

Application to enter an agreed notice: This document is for people to register an option to purchase that they have created in our new cohabitation agreement.

Form K1 – Application for registration of a land charge: Another document to register an option to purchase as above.

Existing Epoq customers interested in adding these documents to their service should contact either their Account manager or Project manager in the first instance.

Content update: Epoq have today added new templates to the range of Rapidocs templates available to our customers. The new documents are for flexible working requests, and are filed in the Personal/Workplace category. We have created the following two letters to assist employees in the process of applying for flexible working from their employers. They are designed to be sold together.

The details are as follows:

1. Application for flexible working
Description: Use this document to request from your employer that you work flexibly. The document will also help you to determine whether you qualify for the right to make an application for flexible working under section 80F of the Employment Rights Act 1996. If you do not qualify for this statutory right, you can still use this document to ask your employer to change your working pattern.

2.Flexible working appeal letter
Description: Use this document to appeal against a refusal by your employer of your application under section 80F Employment Rights Act 1996 to work a flexible working pattern.  Your employer should have met with you to discuss your flexible working request and have notified you of their decision within 14 days of that meeting.  If you disagree with your employee’s decision, you have a right of appeal.  If you wish to exercise that right, you must make your appeal in writing within 14 days of receiving your employer’s written notice refusing your request.  This document will assist you to set out the grounds for making the appeal.

If you are an existing Epoq customer and are interested in supplying these documents through your service, please contact your account or project manager in the first instance.

The LegalTech 2009 exhibition was in New York last week, and in between a full programe of conferences and customer discussions, Richard Granat, president and CEO of Epoq US, found the time for a video interview with Incisive Medias’ Beth Bianculli. The clip is hosted on YouTube and can be found at the page for all LegalTech09 videos.

In the interview Richard discussed DirectLaw,  the US service that uses Rapidocs to provide law fims and lawyers with the means to operate a virtual law firm, hence “leveling the playing field for solos and small law firms who want to compete with larger law firms - without spending capital resources for developing or licensing complex software applications”.

Richard discusses the state of the market today, describes how delivering legal services online is a proven strategy for capturing new clients and offering more efficient services to existing clients, and explains how the ‘virtual law firm in a box’ can help law firm in the increasingly competitive US legal market.

Epoq are please to announce the availability of some new document for use by our institutional or law firm partners using our Rapidocs applications. These documents together form a new service to help people in managing their debts – a very topical project given the current economic climate. The project consists of a series of letters to help people deal with creditors and also an income and expenditure statement to help work out their finances.

The new documents are as follows:

Holding letter to creditor. Use this document to inform a creditor that you are or will be in difficulties maintaining your payments and to explain the reason why. The letter will ask the creditor to hold from taking any action in respect of the debt until an anticipated improvement in your financial circumstances occurs, or after you review your financial situation, you are able to formulate a proposal to the creditor in respect of the debt.

Income and expenditure statement. Use this document to record your income from all sources and total expenditure, and to record what your debts are and where (if applicable) you have fallen into arrears with such debts.  The document will then calculate what surplus income (if any) you have.  With this information, you can review and make decisions about whether you need to reduce your expenditure, and if so, where you might make savings; and about how best to use any surplus income that you have.

Offer letter to creditor. After you have completed a review of your financial circumstances using the document ‘Income and expenditure statement’, use this document to make a proposal to your creditor in respect of your debt, supported by your completed income and expenditure statement. This document can be used whether the debt to this creditor is a priority debt or a non-priority debt. Although a creditor does not have to accept your proposal, this document will improve your chances by guiding you towards making a fair proposal that is backed up by full and frank disclosure of your financial circumstances.

No offer letter to creditor. After you have completed a review of your financial circumstances using the document ‘Income and expenditure statement’, you can use this document to inform your creditor that you are unable at the present time to make a proposal in respect of your debt, that you will contact your creditor again when your circumstances change and to request that your creditor hold action in respect of the debt in the meantime.

Letter regarding mortgage debt or arrears. If you are having difficulties, or know that you will within a relatively short period have difficulties meeting the payments due under your mortgage, you can use this document to help you to explain the problem to your mortgage lender and to outline the steps you will be taking, and the assistance you would like your mortgage lender to provide to help you, to address the problem. You can use this document whether or not there are already arrears that have arisen on your mortgage account.  It is better if you tackle any problem, or even any anticipated problem, with your mortgage payments at the earliest opportunity before it becomes unmanageable.  This document may be used in conjunction with the document ‘Income and expenditure statement’.

Epoq partners interested in including these documents as part of their online services should get in touch with their Epoq Account manager in the first instance.

The newly launched MyLawyer service is featured today in this week’s edition of the Financial Times digital business podcast.

Epoq founder and joint CEO Grahame Cohen discusses the ‘lower costs, but no compromise’ concept that underpins the MyLawyer service with presenter Peter Whitehead. Grahame explains how MyLawyer is good for consumers, small businesses and the law firms involved, by using Epoq’s  bespoke technology to simplify the process - and hence remove some of the cost - of getting a high quality first draft of a legal document to a law firm for review and approval.

Those who wish to listen to the podcast can access it here - it should be available for at least a week.

You can also try out the MyLawyer service for yourself, for free, here.

Epoq’s Rapidocs v4 technology and the MyLawyer network were featured as part of a discussion on the changing face of the legal services market in Radio 4’s ‘Law in Action’ legal show on Tuesday the 27th January.

Presenter Clive Coleman interviewed both Richard and Grahame Cohen, Joint CEOs of Epoq, and tried out the MyLawyer service for himself, creating a prenuptial agreement as part of a live test.

The programme examined the changes that are happening to the legal industry and included commentary from reknowned industry experts such as Professor Stephen Mayson, Richard Susskind and Des Hudson, Chief Executive of the Law Society.

Details on the programme can be found on the BBC site here, and for the first week after transmission the site will host links to both a downloadable podcast and the BBC i-player for those who missed the show and would like to hear it.

You can also try out the MyLawyer service for yourself here.