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How to Prepare Legal Documents

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Whether you are involved in a lawsuit, entering into a contract, or planning your estate, there are times when you just want to prepare your own legal documents and avoid the expense of an attorney. If you are in a situation where you want to prepare your own legal documents, and are not sure where to begin, you are in the right place! Just follow the steps below to prepare your legal documents.

Steps

1. Determine what kind of legal document you will prepare. The formatting of the document will depend on what type of document it is. There are three (3) basic types of legal documents that you may want to draft yourself:
   • Letters. Demand, notice, and negotiation letters are all legal documents that you may be able to prepare without the assistance of an attorney. Letters may be written, for example, to an adverse party in order to resolve a dispute without a lawsuit, in response to another’s demand or offer, or as legal notice that a lawsuit will be filed.
   • Directives and Agreements. Directives and agreements describe parties obligations to one another and/or how some event or series of events will be governed. Wills and Trusts are examples of directives, and contracts to purchase a home and agreements to provide painting services are examples of agreements.
   • Pleadings. Pleadings are documents that are meant to be filed with the Court. A pleading may be a complaint, petition, motion, affidavit, or a set of interrogatories.
2. Create a heading. The heading of a legal document may be letterhead, a case caption, or simply the title of the document, depending upon the type of legal document you are drafting.
   • Letterhead. Letterhead goes at the top of the first page of a letter, contains the letter writer’s name, address, and telephone number, and may contain an e-mail address, fax number, or company logo. You may include anything you like in your letterhead, as long as it identifies you as the letter’s author and provides a way for the reader to contact you, such as a mailing address or e-mail address.
   • Case Caption. If you are drafting a pleading, you will need to put the case caption at the top of the first page of the pleading. A case caption contains the name of the state, county, and Court, the parties names, and a case or cause number. A case caption can also contain other information specific to the case, such as the parties’ addresses, social security numbers, or the name of a special Judge hearing the case.
   • Document Title. Directives and agreements generally have headings, which contain the name of the document in large and/or bold font. A document title for an agreement or directive may be something like, “Last Will and Testament of Bill Smith” or “Paralegal Services Agreement”.
3. Find some good forms or examples. There is no need to reinvent the wheel! Whatever letter, pleading, agreement, or legal document you need to prepare, someone has done it before, and so there is no reason to not learn from his or her experience. Find a few forms and/or examples for the legal document you want to prepare, and use them to create your own version. Some good places to find forms include:
   • Your state Court’s website. Many state Courts offer free downloadable forms for attorneys and non-attorneys in their forms or self-help sections. You can find your state Court’s website by following the appropriate link from the National Center for State Courts’ State Court Web sites page.
   • Your county or city Court. You can locate your county or city Court from your state Court’s website or by running a search at your favorite search engine. Search for “YOUR COUNTY AND STATE Court”. So if you live in Madison County Ohio, of example, you would want to search “Madison County Ohio Court”.
   • Your local library. Many legal publishers publish entire books of forms that you may be able to check out from your local library. Oftentimes one book will contain 100+ forms.
   • A paid form site. Paid legal form sites such as Legal Zoom and US Legal Forms offer 1,000’s of forms for prices around $25 per form or form packet.
   • A free form site. Many free form sites offer 1,000’s of forms for every state and many are of the same quality as paid forms. Free forms can be found at LexisNexis, Forms Workflow, All About Forms, and Law Smart.
4. Create the body of the document. Using the forms you found, write the main part of the document. When writing, you want to use clear, concise language to ensure that there is only one way of interpreting the words. You want every person who reads the document to understand it to mean the same thing. Some tips for making the document clear, include:
   • Be specific. For example, if describing a parent’s visitation schedule, instead of just saying “every other weekend and one day a week after school,” you would want to say “every other weekend from 6 p.m. Friday to 6 p.m. Sunday and every Wednesday from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. when school is in session, and from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. during school breaks”.
   • Remain brief. Say only what you need to say and nothing more.
   • Use formatting. Numbered paragraphs, bold headings and sub-headings, and white space can all be used to make your document more readable and cohesive.
   • Include a definitions section. While probably not appropriate for a letter, a definitions section can be used in a pleading (many interrogatories include definitions) or a directive or agreement (most long contracts include a definitions section and many Trusts contain definitions).
   • Date the document. Including the date on which the document was signed can provide a reference point, if needed, for events described in it. For example, if a power of attorney (“POA”) states that it “becomes effective immediately” but has no date, we cannot sure on what date it became effective later, if something comes up which makes us need to know when the POA was in effect and when it was not.
   • Avoid legalese when you can. A certain amount of legalese, or the “legal speak” that lawyers commonly use in their writing, may be necessary. For example, many pleadings begin “Comes now the Plaintiff” or “Come now the Defendants” and that language is a sort of standard language for beginning a petition or a motion, so is okay to use. However, overusing phrases such as “to-wit”, “herein”, or “hereinafter” can make a document hard to read and understand.
   • Be consistent. For example, if you start out referring to the parties as “Plaintiff” and “Defendant” continue to refer to them that way throughout the entire document.
5. Make a signature block. A signature block provides a line for each person who will sign the document to sign, with his or her name typed or printed beneath the line. It may also include a space for the signatory to date the document.
6. Proofread and spell check.

Warnings

• You should consult with an experienced attorney before signing anything that may affect your legal or financial rights and obligations.

Article provided by wikiHow, a wiki how-to manual. Please edit this article and find author credits at the original wikiHow article on How to Prepare Legal Documents. All content on wikiHow can be shared under a Creative Commons license.

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