Packages
The firm's services as reusable bundles of intake, documents, and pricing.
What a package is
A package is a service the firm offers, set up once and attached to matters ever after: "an estate plan", "a prenuptial agreement". It gathers in one place the work an engagement of that type produces and the price the firm charges for it, so opening a new matter means choosing a package rather than assembling documents and forms by hand every time. Packages live in the Data area of the console (Data → Packages), open to firm admins and attorneys.
A package's contents are an ordered list of items, each one of three kinds:
- An intake item references one of the firm's published intake forms: the questionnaire this kind of engagement sends to the client.
- A document item references a document the engagement produces: a will, a trust, a power of attorney. It names the document rather than a particular file, so a firm whose will differs by state still has one item here and the right version is picked per matter. See documents and templates for how templates themselves are set up, and working in more than one state for how that choice is made.
- A service item is a named piece of work with its own price ("Document review", say) that has no document behind it.
Each item can carry its own label and description, can be required or optional, and can apply once per matter, once per represented party, so a couple's parallel documents come out as one item for each spouse, or, for a document, once per subject, so a package a matter is running for someone other than its own client produces a copy for each of them. See planning for someone else.
A package also names which of the firm's catalog fields a matter of this type collects, and each of those can be required. Requiring a field outright only works when every matter the package touches can actually answer it, which is rarer than it sounds: a question about a spouse has no answer for a single client, and the questions feeding an optional document are pointless on a matter that declined it. So a required field can instead carry a Required when condition, and it only bites where that condition holds. It's written the same way the conditions on documents are, and can turn on an answer already on the matter, on whether the matter has one client or two, or on whether a particular document is actually part of this matter. Leave it blank and the field is required everywhere, as before. A condition that can't be evaluated is treated as not met, because a gate nobody authored should never be the thing that stops a firm working. The package also carries the engagement's pricing: a flat fee, or an hourly rate with an estimate range, plus an optional upfront payment.
A flat fee can be two numbers rather than one: an individual price and an optional joint price. Most firms charge a couple differently from a single client, and this is how one package covers both instead of splitting into a near-duplicate pair whose contents drift apart. Which of the two a matter gets follows the number of people the package is planned for, so a plan run for a couple is priced as one whether they're the firm's own clients or the client's parents. Leave the joint price blank and the package has one price for every matter, exactly as before.
Attaching a package to a matter
Staff attach a package from the matter's Overview. Required contents are always included; optional contents are offered as checkboxes, so the attorney decides at attach time whether this client's plan includes, say, a living will. Individual items can also be added a la carte without a package.
The panel also asks Planning for, and answers it with the matter's own clients, which is what nearly every engagement wants. Where the documents are about someone else, a parent most often, Planning for someone else names that person instead, and everything the package produces follows them rather than the client. That's its own subject: planning for someone else.
Before you attach, the panel shows the price this matter would get, and which of the two it is where the package carries both ("$3,200 · joint"). The matter's own agreed price starts from that number, and it's the matter's price from then on: changing the package's prices later never reaches back into a matter already under way.
A matter covered by legal insurance is the exception, and the panel says so before you click. Attaching bills nothing there, because what the plan allows is settled per claim rather than by the firm's price list. The package's price still appears on the scope afterwards, marked as a reference figure with the reason beside it, and it counts toward nothing. See insurance-paid matters.
The attached contents become the matter's scope of work, and the scope drives everything downstream: which questionnaire goes out to the client, which documents the matter prepares, what appears on the engagement letter, and what is billable. Each item shows its readiness as the matter progresses, service items are marked done by staff, and any item can be removed from scope deliberately. Removing an item reverses what it had accrued in billing unless it has already been invoiced.
Some documents belong in a package without belonging on every matter. A document item can carry an Include when condition so it's assembled only when the matter calls for it, and one of the things it can turn on is the shape of the engagement itself, whether the matter has one client or two. That's how a single package covers both a couple and an individual instead of splitting into two. Where a document has alternatives that must not both appear, the package groups them, and the editor warns when a group is set up so that it could produce more than one or none at all.
Adding an item on its own
Not every engagement is a package, and not every package covers everything a particular client turns out to need. Add items on the matter's scope adds one a la carte: an intake form, a document, or a named service. A document or a service can carry its own price, and that price joins what's waiting to be billed exactly as a package's does. The price is optional, because plenty of added work is already covered by what the client agreed to pay. An intake form never carries one; asking a client questions isn't a charge.
The same items can be added from the Billing tab's Add charge dialog, which is the door to reach for when you're thinking about the money rather than the scope. It's the same item either way.
Documents the firm has no template for
Real engagements produce one-off documents: a deed, a bespoke amendment, something drafted from scratch. Adding a document a la carte offers No template (custom document) alongside the firm's templates. Pick it, name the document, and the matter gets an honest document item rather than a service item standing in for one.
A custom document behaves like any other document in scope, with one difference the row states plainly: it reads Awaiting document, because there's no template to draft from. It asks for no intake answers, never holds up the rest of the drafting, and offers no Generate action, since there's nothing to merge. It finishes the way an engagement letter signed off-platform does: link the file once it exists, or mark it done.
If the firm later builds a template for that document, Bind template on the row turns it into an ordinary document work item, and readiness, required fields, and drafting all start applying. Binding goes one way; a document that shouldn't have been bound is replaced with a fresh custom item rather than unbound.
Lifecycle and guardrails
Packages are versioned the same way templates and intake forms are. Editing a published package starts a draft; publishing makes the draft the version new matters attach. Matters keep the package version they attached, so revising a package never quietly rewrites engagements already in flight.
Two guardrails are worth knowing:
- Re-publishing a bundled template or form never breaks a package. Its contents keep pointing at the latest published version automatically; there's nothing to re-wire.
- Archived items are flagged, not hidden. If a template or form a package references is later archived, an amber warning follows the package through the list, the editor, and the matter view until the item is re-pointed. It's a nudge rather than a block: existing matters are unaffected, but the warning stays visible until resolved.
Archiving a package works the same way as elsewhere in the library: it stops appearing for new matters, and matters that already attached it are untouched.
Bringing a matter up to the current version
Keeping the attached version is the right default, but it shouldn't be a trap. When a matter is on an older version and a newer one would actually change something, its scope shows Update available, and updating brings it forward without detaching and re-attaching.
The update is prompted, never silent. Before anything changes you see what it would do: what gets added, what the newer version no longer includes, and how each addition lands on each client of a joint matter. Work already completed under an item the newer version dropped stays on the record, because it really happened. Pricing is left alone: if the newer version is priced differently, the difference is shown and staff decide, rather than the matter quietly re-costing itself.
Publishing shows the same fact from the author's side. The publish dialog states how many matters are still on older versions, at the one moment someone is in a position to do anything about it.
A firm working in more than one state gets one more read-out on a published package: pick a state, and each document row says what a matter governed there would actually do, whether it resolves to a named file, is left out because the document belongs to another state only, or is waiting on a version that hasn't been authored yet. It answers a question that would otherwise take attaching a real matter to answer, and it changes nothing: the package is the same package whichever state you look at it through.
A client's intake is exempt from all this. A questionnaire the client already filled still counts even if the firm has published a newer version of that form since, so nobody has to chase a client for answers they've already given.
Offering a package at the contact form
A package whose current version bundles exactly one published intake form (with at least one question) can be offered on the firm's public contact form: turn on Offer at contact intake on the package. Prospects who pick that service when they reach out receive a head-start link to its questionnaire automatically. See intake for the front-door flow.