Setting Up Your Document Presets

Review how to set up the preset areas of your business that will automatically generate to your legal templates.

First, login to your account and then head to the top right of your screen. Click on the icon (1) and then click on Manage Account (2). Once in Manage Account, navigate to Document Presets  (3) on the side menu. From there you can begin to complete the preset area after reviewing the details below.

While some of the information in each legal document will be unique, some of the information will most likely be the same in all of your documents. Things like your company name, contact email address, and choices about how disputes will be resolved. You can always fill that information in for each document you create, but you can also use the Document Presets functionality to make those decisions once and have it applied to all the documents you create.  

By answering questions in the Document Presets section, you can avoid having to answer these questions each time you create a legal document. Our system will autofill the information you provide in your Presets into your legal documents. 

Because our system will automatically fill in the information from your Document Presets (and won’t even ask you the questions), we recommend using this feature only for information that you won’t want to vary between documents. 

You can change your answers at any time in the Document Presets area, but the best use of this section is for information you won’t want to change very often.

Here are the particular fields.

Basic Business Information

The first section of the Document Presets is about your basic business information. If you are using Plainly Legal™ for a single business, you’ll almost certainly want to complete this information because it will not change from document to document. Using the Document Presets will save you the time of having to fill in this information for each document you create.

Company Name

Legal agreements have to be between two or more persons. The law recognizes two kinds of persons, individuals and legal entities (e.g., LLCs, partnerships, etc.). Your Company Name needs to fit into one of those two categories — your personal name or the name of a legal entity. 

If you have created a legal entity, your company name is the legal name of that entity. If you have not created a legal entity, your company name will be your name as a person.

NOTE: We highly recommend you set up a registered business entity. 

For example, Plainly Legal™ is a brand name operated by a legal entity named Your Online Genius LLC. In our terms, you’ll notice that we refer to "Your Online Genius LLC" as the party. 

Your Company Name is not your course name, membership name, or other brand name unless that is also the name of your legal entity. If your brand name is different from your Company Name, you can always include a "doing business as" to the end so people will understand. If you want to go this route, you add "dba" and your brand name at the end of the entity. For example, we sometimes use "Your Online Genius LLC dba Plainly Legal™" as our company name in agreements.

Signer Name

We’ll use this information to fill in the "signature block" for agreements that include an actual signature (as opposed to a "click-to-accept"). This is a feature of legal entities being parties to contracts. A corporation obviously can’t sign an agreement; that’s done by an actual human being who is authorized to sign on behalf of the company. Because signatures aren’t always legible, it’s common to include the printed name of the person signing on behalf of a company. 

The information you provide here will fill in below the signature line for your company in all signature agreements.

Contact Email Address

In some legal documents, you’ll need to include an email address where people can contact your business. Specifically, your website policies and any agreement that includes a refund or cancellation policy will include an email address.

The best practice is to choose a generic email address (e.g., "admin@mycompany.com" or "support@mycompany.com") rather than an individual’s email address. Note, that the email address you include here needs to be monitored on a regular basis. 

If you fill in the "Contact Email Address" preset, we will use that information in all your documents. If you’d rather use different emails for different purposes, leave this field blank. 

Business Address

Certain legal documents require you to provide contact information. We’ll use the information you provide as your Business Address to fill in those documents. If your physical and mailing addresses are different, use your mailing address here. 

If you operate your business out of your home and don’t have another mailing address, this will be your home address. Many people are uneasy about including their home address, so they get a P.O. Box or other mailing address.

Dispute Resolution

The second section of the Document Presets is all about how you want any disputes to be resolved. Many of the legal documents you’ll create using Plainly Legal™ will include sections to address how you’ll handle the (hopefully) unlikely event that a dispute arises. 

Using the Document Presets for this information is useful because you will be making some substantive choices. Rather than having to think about these issues each time you create a legal document, using the Presets allows you to make the decision once and have it pre-populated in all documents.

Choice of Law

If a dispute arises between you and someone who lives in a different state (or country), one of the first legal issues that will have to be decided is what law applies to the dispute. In a contract, the parties can agree that a particular state’s law applies, and that decision will govern. Without a choice of law provision, there are arcane and sometimes complicated legal standards that the judge will use to decide which state’s law applies. 

Although the relevant law doesn’t vary all that much when it comes to contract issues, the best practice is to include a choice of law provision in your contracts to avoid having to deal with this kind of preliminary dispute. That’s why many of the documents you create with Plainly Legal™ will include a choice of law provision. 

Most businesses choose either the state where they are based or where the legal entity was formed (if that is different). We generally recommend following that common practice unless you have a strong reason to pick a different state. 

Arbitration vs. Court Proceeding

Next up, you’ll need to decide whether disputes will be resolved through arbitration or a court proceeding. You probably know what a court proceeding is; that’s where you have a judge (and maybe a jury) decide disputes. Those judges are paid by the government, and the courts are generally open to anyone, although there are some fees and costs that parties have to pay.

Arbitration is a form of private dispute resolution. In arbitration, the parties hire a private person (often a former judge) to decide disputes. While an arbitration has a court-like feel, it is generally more streamlined. The person you select to decide the arbitration has more authority to set rules and decide what evidence to consider. In the United States, parties to a contract have the absolute right to choose that arbitration will be the sole venue for disputes related to that agreement. 

Choosing between Arbitration and Court Proceedings is a business decision you have to make. While particular circumstances will vary, here are some of the general pros and cons of each.

Arbitration’s Advantages:

• Quicker Resolution - Arbitration proceedings will generally move much faster than a court proceeding, so you can put disputes in the past more quickly.

• Less Complicated - The person deciding your arbitration can choose more simplified rules of procedure and evidence, to make things simpler. 

• Privacy - There is no public record of someone filing an arbitration proceeding or of the result.

• Less Expensive (usually) - Although you’ll have to pay the person to serve as the arbitrator, it will generally cost less because the quicker resolution and less complicated nature will mean you’ll spend less on attorneys. 

• Finality - The decision of an arbitrator is very hard to challenge. Outside of exceptional circumstances, the arbitrator’s decision is the final say. 

• Class Action Waiver - For any group program, one of the major benefits of an arbitration clause is that you can require participants to agree that they will bring any claim through an individual arbitration. That means participants can't team up in a group to bring a single action against you (something that could make a claim financially feasible for them). 

Court Proceeding’s Advantages:

• No Upfront Costs - While a court proceeding might end up costing more over the long run, it avoids the need for you to hire and pay an arbitrator right up front. 

• Jury Decision - While it will depend on the amount in dispute, you will often have the right to have a jury decide a dispute in a court proceeding. This can sometimes be an advantage because it means multiple people are involved in the decision.
• Review of Bad Decisions - Unlike arbitration, a bad decision in a court proceeding can be reviewed on appeal. This review can make decisions a bit more predictable over the longterm.  

While we can’t offer advice on what you should choose, here at Plainly Legal™, we have opted for an arbitration clause for all of our agreements.

Where would you like disputes resolved?

Once you’ve decided between arbitration and a court proceeding, the next decision is where you would like that arbitration or court proceeding to actually occur. Generally, companies opt to have disputes resolved where they are physically based. Requiring proceedings to occur in your home base will simplify your life if a dispute arises because you won’t have to travel. 

You should generally pick either a City, State or County, State combination. For example, you might choose Bethesda, Maryland for Montgomery County, Maryland. 

NOTE: If you opt for arbitration, you’ll want to make sure the location you select is large enough that you would realistically be able to find an arbitrator in that location. If you reside in a rural area and want arbitration, you’ll likely want to pick the nearest metropolitan area.

Enable Fee Shifting

A fee shifting provision is a provision in contracts that will require the losing party to pay the winner's legal fees. This is not the standard practice in the United States. In the US, the default rule is that each party will pay their own fees and costs associated with a dispute (with attorney’s fees being the biggest component of that). 

Under this default rule, the winning party never fully recovers what they lost. They will win a damages award on the underlying claim, but they will be out the costs associated with pursuing the claim. 

If you enable fee shifting, we’ll include a clause in agreements that requires the losing party to reimburse the winning party for their reasonable fees. With this provision in place, the party that wins in a dispute has the potential to fully recover what they lost. 

Because very few disputes will ever get to a final decision (whether by an arbitrator or a court), it’s unlikely that a fee shifting clause will ever be enforced. That being said, including a fee shifting clause can affect the incentives at play earlier in a dispute. For example, fee shifting clauses can encourage people to bring smaller dollar-value claims because the ability to recover fees makes them worthwhile to pursue. 

While we can’t provide you advice on which option to choose, the most common practice is to not include a fee shifting clause. If you want to follow this most common practice, select "no" for the Enable Fee Shifting question. 

Disclaimers

While many of the legal documents you create with Plainly Legal™ will include some general disclaimers, some business owners may want to include more specific disclaimers in their agreements. This will generally be true for businesses that relate to regulated professional fields. Because these businesses will tend to want the disclaimers in all relevant documents, we added this option in the Document Presets Section. 

In this section, you can opt to include disclaimers related to the following subject areas:

• Legal Advice - If you select this option, we’ll include a standard disclaimer saying that the information is not legal advice or a substitute for legal advice. 

• Medical Advice - This will trigger more extensive disclaimers to comply with state regulatory requirements and FDA requirements.

• Financial or Investment Advice - If you select this option, we’ll include a standard financial advice disclaimer. 

• Tax Advice - If you select this option, we’ll include a disclaimer that you are not providing tax advice and that your clients may not rely on anything you provide as a defense in any tax proceeding. 

Generally, you would not need to include more than one of the specific disclaimers. The exception would be businesses that touch on tax matters, which also touch on either legal issues or financial/investment issues.