Subject Guide
Using the Form Builder
For the purposes of this guide, the form being built is a Florida Living Will for an individual.
To get started, go to the Westlaw Form Builder homepage and select your jurisdiction:
Next, select the volume in which you could reasonably expect to find the form you need. For this guide, I selected Small Estate Wills. After you select a volume, you'll see a list of options. Click on the plus sign to the left of each item in the list to see specific forms available for each type of situation. The "product information" dropdown list contains information about the content collection, including a list of all forms available and recent changes.
You can select one or multiple forms to build on this page. For this example, I expanded the item list under "Individual's Estate Planning Documents" and checked the box next to "Living Will." After selecting the form, you may use the button on the upper right corner of this menu to download a blank form or click on "build" to use the Form Builder-- see below. If you simply click on the name of the form, you may view it as a document outside of the Form Builder.
Proceed to the next tab of this tutorial entitled "building the form" to learn about completing the next steps.
The Westlaw Form Builder has 'guided' and 'self guided' modes. To begin building the selected form, you have the option of selecting a client, a matter, and an answer set. These tools are available to help practitioners who may use this form builder for multiple forms across different clients. If you do not wish to input clients and matters here, you may select "Build without selecting a client and matter" and then press continue. For the purpose of this example, I will use guided mode and will enter the information manually in the form builder.
In guided mode, users are provided a step by step input interface which provides relevant statutory authority for key parts. Read and respond to the prompts on the left side of the screen and press "Next" after entering each piece of information.
If you find the document preview too distracting, or with longer forms, unhelpful, you may hide it until you are done entering information by clicking on "Hide Document Preview" to the right of the form builder. For the form used in this example, I needed to enter the name of the person signing the document (likely the client), the names and addresses of two witnesses, the date on which the will will be signed, the name, phone number, and address of the client's healthcare surrogate, and additional instructions. When appropriate, the form input window will display statutes or even examples of acceptable language. When you click "next" on the last item, you'll see a pop up window where you can download the form-- see below.
Download the form to view it in Microsoft Word. For many uses, the form is ready as-is, but the next tab in this box will provide tips on some finishing touches you may wish to apply to the document.
After you've downloaded your form, there are a few things for you to consider:
- Always proofread the final document. You are accountable for mistakes, not Westlaw!
- Depending on the situation, it may be in your best interest to "scrub" the document of metadata. This prevents the recipient of the document from seeing information about the document's author and time spent writing. See the link at the bottom of this box for instructions on how to do that.
- As an example of info you might not want a client to see, the Living Will when downloaded provides a total editing time of zero minutes and the metadata also says that the document was created in 2012.
