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The explosion of legal technology has allowed practitioners to build in-house solutions and offer new products and services to clients. Learn how Dennis Doss, an experienced mortgage attorney, uses Gavel’s document automation software and its DocuSign integration to offer a complete DIY mortgage loan documents solution to clients.
Customer: Dennis Doss
Company: Doss Docs and Doss Law
Industry: Mortgage Law
Dennis Doss is the founder of Doss Law, a small law firm in California, representing mortgage lenders of all types–including business purpose lenders. Recently, he decided to offer a ‘do-it-yourself’ mortgage loan documents solution, Doss Docs. This would allow lenders looking for mortgage loan documents to use Doss Docs, a document generation platform built using Gavel, to generate their own mortgage loan documents by entering the requisite information into forms that would automatically generate the documents.
The new process would be completed within minutes and for a fraction of the cost of the traditional method of hiring an attorney to manually draft the documents. A process that might previously have taken days and upwards of $3000 in attorneys fees can now be done by the clients themselves, in the comfort of their own home or office, for $399 and within 20-30 minutes. Gavel’s DocuSign integration has made this process even more seamless, allowing clients to quickly and efficiently get parts of the prepared documents signed in Doss Docs as well.
Gavel is the backbone of Doss Docs and plays a key role in its success, as it was built using Gavel’s software. Clients are exceptionally happy with the option to create their own loan documents using Doss Docs and sign them with Gavel’s native DocuSign integration. This prevents clients from having to go to multiple providers and through multiple steps to obtain, print, and sign their mortgage loan documents.
A few years ago, Dennis noticed a competitor firm offering a ‘do-it-yourself’ loan document generation option to its clients. Seeing the product’s success and also its missed opportunities, he sought software to help him create something similar. Building a loan document generation product would allow him to meet client demands, all while growing his own business and practice.
He knew document automation technology could offer an effective solution to meet his needs as well as a way for him to tackle the challenge of building and creating the product. With this, Doss Docs was born. Once the initial product was built with Gavel, Dennis determined an e-signature integration would further elevate his product– a feature not yet seen in competitive offerings that would allow his clients to generate and sign their loan documents in one place, online.
Prior to building with Gavel, Dennis spent time researching different technologies to build Doss Docs, but he was not fully sold on other solutions on the market. As he explored the space and continued to flesh out his specific needs, his requirements became crystal clear.
Gavel’s advanced features and functionality, ease of use, and exceptional customer service make it a no-brainer option for many attorneys looking for a document automation and generation solution. Dennis found the same when researching Gavel.
As Dennis was looking for an end to end complete ‘do-it-yourself’ solution for his clients, a few Gavel features stood out to him: the ability to integrate a payments system right within the platform, ability to compute advanced mathematical calculations, and ease of use for his clients.
Doss Docs stands out amongst competitors thanks to the following Gavel features:
Using a combination of Gavel and DocuSign has allowed Dennis to productize his mortgage loan documents offering, providing value to both his clients and his business. His 45 years of expertise are incorporated into the template documents and logic within Doss Docs. Mortgage lenders can pay for Dennis’s expertise and consistent, error-free results, all without having to pay for his time spent preparing and reviewing his documents. Dennis shared,
“They get my 45 years of experience as a mortgage lawyer … and by filling out a workflow, there’s consistent naming in the document. It’s very easy for them. We provide a summary of the fields in the first couple of pages of our documents … so they can review and know whether it’s right or wrong. They can look at that summary and bingo!”
With Doss Docs, Dennis is innovating in the mortgage lending space by offering a complete ‘do-it-yourself’ mortgage loan document generator that features calculated disclosure and e-Signature abilities, thanks to Gavel and its DocuSign integration. Doss Docs allows clients to prepare their own mortgage loan documents at their own convenience and for a fraction of the price, $399 (instead of upwards of $3000).
Dennis’s clients, mortgage lenders, usually pass the document preparation fees along to their own clients, so the reduced price prevents mortgage lenders from passing on thousands of dollars of attorneys fees to their own clients, allowing them to stay competitive as well.
Most importantly, to Dennis’ knowledge, no one else has integrated DocuSign into this specific loan document automation process, allowing him to stay ahead of the competition while meeting client needs.
Prior to Gavel’s DocuSign integration, Dennis’ clients had to go through a much more manual process to have the prepared documents signed. They often needed to download and print their own documents, sign the documents by uploading them to their own instance of DocuSign, in-person, via mail, or through more cumbersome methods.
With Gavel’s DocuSign integration, Dennis’ clients can now quickly send documents for signature through one seamless integration. Clients save time by using Doss Docs, which is built on Gavel’s platform, to prepare and sign their documents in one place. Dennis proudly shared,
“[We] do it all. It takes you 20-30 min… you can edit it and sign it [...] it’s all you need. No going anywhere else.”
Most importantly, this experience aligns with other industry standards, including conventional home loan documents (or for a majority of other mortgage documents), where clients are accustomed to e-signature. Providing Doss Docs’ clients with this DocuSign integration within the product allows them to prepare, receive, and sign documents as they may in parallel industries, aligning with clients’ expectations and creating an even better experience.
When speaking about Gavel’s DocuSign integration, Dennis shared,
“Ease ... people get this big stack of papers and they just need to click a few buttons. That's what people today are expecting and are used to DocuSign … It’s mainstream in the real estate world.”
While attorneys may be hesitant to incorporate legal technology into their practice, fearing that offering ‘do-it-yourself solutions’ that maximize efficiency may take away from their bottom line, Dennis understood the value of productizing and monetizing his expertise.
His loan documents offering had been requested by many clients, and once built, it received very positive feedback. Not only are current clients happier, but Doss Docs has also served as a mechanism for attracting new clients, who may want the generated loan documents reviewed by an attorney or require other legal services. Doss Docs has and continues to help Dennis grow his legal business, and Dennis sees great opportunity for others to do the same.
“[Gavel’s] got tremendous monetization capabilities. You can do car leases, rental agreements ... and all kinds of contracts for hire. A lot of [documents] can be monetized through Gavel.”
Dennis also notes that his firm’s team also uses the loan documents generator in their practice, creating efficiencies with time saved and increased accuracy and consistency. Gavel’s platform helps make the law firm profitable and has been a great addition.
While Gavel’s document automation software and DocuSign integration have been a boon to business as well as time and money saved for clients, Gavel also boasts ease of use for attorney users as well. Dennis created his loan documents package himself with the help of the Gavel team - notably this loan documents package, which is available for all 50 states. Each state requires its own template, logic, and fields. However, Dennis’ tenacity to learn, create, and grow his legal product offerings have paid dividends for his clients and his business.
For those interested in document automation and looking to kickstart their own projects, Gavel’s free trial, automation specialists, support team, and even its marketplace are a great starting place for lawyers who are less familiar with the technology. The Legal Document Automation Guide is a great place to start, as well.
Doss Docs and Dennis’ firm, Doss Law, are both thriving now that he’s not only successfully adopted Gavel, but also incorporated the native DocuSign integration into their workflow. Dennis foresees getting just as positive of a response to continuing to incorporate Gavel’s DocuSign integration into his practice as he has to the Doss Docs offering itself.
Dennis envisions Doss Docs becoming even more successful than his law firm. He sees the value in attorneys using this type of technology for a number of different document types.
Join hundreds of attorneys like Dennis who are now thriving in their legal practice. You can easily start your own journey with Gavel and experience the same benefits by productizing your own offerings and automating the generation of any number of documents!
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