LEGAL CENTS: What lawyers need to know about forms

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“You got to fill out the form first, and then you wait in the line.”

Paul Simon wrote that in a recent song, “The Afterlife,” describing his vision of heaven’s waiting room. But if you’re new to the practice of law in Wisconsin, that sentiment could apply to your new work, too.

Since 2000, the Wisconsin Court System has mandated the use of forms for criminal, civil and juvenile matters. It’s not required for family law — yet — but nonetheless there are dozens of family law forms on the court system’s website as well.

Baraboo attorney Gretchen Viney, who also serves as the associate director of the Lawyering Skills Program at the University of Wisconsin Law School, is not fond of mandatory forms.

She said, “A lot of practicing law now is figuring out what the most recent mandatory form is and using it, and supplementing it, because sometimes they require us to practice law poorly.”

Like it or not, a lot of lawyers complete a lot of forms — so this week’s topic is what every new, or not-so-new, lawyer needs to know about them.

I limited it to family law and real estate, because these are two of the most popular bread-and-butter practice areas.

Family law forms

Two of my best friends in the mid-’90s when I was a new lawyer were the State Bar’s “The Guardian ad Litem Handbook” and the “System Book for Family Law.” I cracked them often, to learn divorce and paternity procedure, for basic legal research, and especially for their sample forms.

Viney said to this day, those remain excellent resources for new lawyers. “Most family law lawyers do not use the circuit court forms. They make up their own. So the forms in the family law system book and ‘The Guardian ad Litem Handbook’ are still very much used.”

Bottom line: If you’re a family law newbie, make the modest investment. The bound, paper edition costs $185 for bar members for the System Book and $155 for The GAL Handbook. These days, the bar additionally offers Books UnBound, where an individual lawyer can get 12 months’ unlimited access to the online versions of both books, for $129 each.

Or, if you live in Madison or Milwaukee, these titles are on reserve at the libraries of both law schools, as well as the State Law Library.

Green Bay attorney Tom Walsh, incoming chair of the State Bar’s Family Law Section, said the family law forms on the court system’s website are useful for pro se litigants — although the court’s website is mostly silent with regard to explaining to them which forms they need, and when.

Still, he said they can be a decent starting point for new lawyers, too, and their price is right — free. In conjunction with forms in the bar’s books, you can tailor the circuit court forms to you and your clients’ preferences as you learn the practice, and what you like and don’t like about each of the various forms.

Another resource you will absolutely need immediately is the Mac Davis Tax program, available as a free download at Milwaukee attorney Ernesto Romero’s website.

Although strictly speaking (it’s not a form), the program, developed many years ago by Waukesha County Judge J. Mac Davis and annually updated, calculates the after-tax effects of various maintenance and child support scenarios. You’ll print those out, for when the judge at the pretrial asks, “Counsel, where are your Mac Davises?”

There are other helpful, free tools at Romero’s website, such as Port Washington attorney Ray Meyer’s Marital Property Division Excel program, and the Department of Workforce Development’s child support calculators.

Real estate forms

Real estate is an extremely forms-centric practice area. But a movement has been afoot for many years now to bring more uniformity to property law forms, said Elkhorn lawyer Bob Leibsle.

Leibsle, who concentrates in real estate, has headed a State Bar committee charged with developing standardized real estate forms for attorneys for many years now.

Step one for new lawyers is a visit to the Wisconsin Department of Regulation and Licensing website, for free, basic real estate forms. There you’ll see the forms that realtors use, such as the ubiquitous WB-1, Residential Offer to Purchase, which realtors (but not attorneys) will be required to use starting July 1.

Step two is to join the State Bar’s Real Property, Probate & Trust Law Section, according to its chair, Milwaukee’s Joe Tierney of Davis & Kuelthau.

For $30 beyond your State Bar dues, members have free access to a forms bank developed by peers, including warranty deeds, bills of sale, satisfactions, affidavits of correction, etc.

Leibsle has participated in the development of several of the forms, which were “extensively debated and vetted tremendously.”

Section membership also opens the door to the list serve, which Milwaukee lawyer Hal Karas said is extremely beneficial because members discuss a wide range of topics, both simple and complex.

It’s also quite common for members to express a willingness to share a particular form they’ve developed to anyone who contacts them, offline. “There’s a lot of lawyers helping lawyers like that,” Karas said.

Like family law, there’s a “Real Estate Transactions System” book available from the bar that Karas recommends, at $185 for members for a bound version or $129 UnBound. He also uses the bar’s “Wisconsin Real Estate and Real Property Codebook” at least twice a week, he estimated, even after 33 years of practice.

For all the previously mentioned forms, you’ll need to import them into your own forms library and save as Word templates, or the like. They’re not high-tech, allowing you to merge fields of information, for example. They can be time-consuming and a pain, particularly if you don’t have staff.

Cognizant of that, vendors have emerged to make life easier for lawyers — for a price.

Karas said he occasionally comes across a document drafted by someone else that inexplicably cites New Jersey law, for example. He attributes it to a poor forms-purchasing decision, from an out-of-state vendor.

To avoid that kind of embarrassment, you might want to stick with a Wisconsin-based vendor, such as INFO-PRO in Fond du Lac, owned by attorney Louie Andrew Jr., also a real estate practitioner.

INFO-PRO sells digital forms, in fillable PDF format so you’re not repeatedly entering the same information.

Kari Arndt is a legal assistant to attorney David Fugina in Fountain City, whom he’s entrusted to make form-purchasing decisions in his real estate and probate practice for many years now.

Arndt said they’ve used INFO-PRO forms for 15 years. They save time, compared to the bar’s forms, and they’re easy to use, she said. Moreover, Fugina serves a rural client base and INFO-PRO has several forms that are suitable for transactions involving farms that the bar doesn’t offer.

INFO-PRO typically sells forms in sets, but individual forms can be purchased as well. Its PRO Complete Real Estate package is $499, which includes quarterly updates for a year. After that, there’s an annual assessment that’s lower than the original purchase price for updates.

At the Fugina firm, they spent $168 for INFO-PRO probate and real estate forms updates this year — a bargain, Arndt said.

On the Web:

• Wisconsin Circuit Court Forms

• Judge Mac Davis Tax Programs for divorce

• Real estate forms at the Wisconsin Department of Regulation and Licensing

• State Bar of Wisconsin Real Estate forms

• INFO-PRO forms