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Docracy - Free (community curated) Legal Documents
- kmfrk 15y agoGorgeous website. What need or frustration fuelled the creation of it?
- matt2000 15y agoHi 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.
- shotgun 15y agoYay! It's about time someone did this.
- leoedin 15y agoA 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.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- username3 15y agoAsk the Samwer brothers. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3656156 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3656156
- munaf 15y agoLove it. Will a rating system be added? Would love to know which documents are better than others in a particular category.
- pents90 15y agoI'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.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- robinjfisher 15y agoLove 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 15y agoI 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 15y agoThis 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.
- agentultra 15y agoCool 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 15y agoAbsolutely love this idea!
- irrationalfab 15y agoGreat 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.
- benwerd 15y agoAbsolutely 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?
- Bostwick 15y agoThis 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.
- ubervero 15y agoI'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/ 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/75/employment-offer-letter http://www.docracy.com/103/founder-collaboration-agreement http://www.docracy.com/103/founder-collaboration-agreement http://www.docracy.com/35/founders-equity-agreement http://www.docracy.com/35/founders-equity-agreement http://www.docracy.com/263/founder-advisor-standard-template http://www.docracy.com/263/founder-advisor-standard-template http://www.docracy.com/367/consulting-agreement-for-hourly-work http://www.docracy.com/367/consulting-agreement-for-hourly-w... http://www.docracy.com/2817/standard-agreement-for-design-services-interactive-web-works-full-assignment http://www.docracy.com/2817/standard-agreement-for-design-se... Of course, any feedback is welcome!
- munaf 15y agoNot 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 15y agoI'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.
- slav 15y agogreat website and the idea - I was looking for content like that when starting my first company
- liber8 15y agoFantastic 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.
- bostonvaulter2 15y agoCouldn't this help lawyers as well? Basically like a simple standard library of documents.
- liber8 15y agoYes, most definitely. There are companies that do nothing but produce form documents (for a hefty fee) that could be eliminated. But again, the caveat is that, depending on the circumstances, a good lawyer might need to significantly modify even his own well crafted standard document to protect his client. The benefit of a good lawyer is knowing when things need to be modified.
- iamwil 15y agoFrom clicking around, docracy allows you to make branches of the document, and also see what changes have been done. So I think it's meant to be a tool to bring version control available to software developers to finally be available to lawyers, organized in a way that's easy to organize and browse for the lawyer's clients.
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- quanfucius 15y agoBookmarked! Looks like it will definitely help startups get some general direction in regards to legal docs.
- parvinsingh 15y agoI 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.'
- patrickaljord 15y agoThis is Latin, not Spanish/French. I'm surprised an HNer wouldn't know that.
- simonbrown 15y agoThat's placeholder text. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorem_ipsum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorem_ipsum
- sek 15y agoNow 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 15y agoSuch things exist -- they are called legal treatises. For laymen, the equivalent would be books like the Nolo series.
- mkramlich 15y agoI 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 15y agoThe 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 15y agointeresting. 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.
- azov 15y agoIt 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/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/)
- zalew 15y ago> Download PDF / Download Word Providing a non-proprietary format such as ODF wouldn't hurt.