Preparing enduring powers of attorney (EPAs) is essential but can feel like a frustrating process for New Zealand lawyers and legal executives. Slow and clunky forms, repetitive entry, and poorly formatted PDF outputs turn a core legal service into a loss-leader. Every minute lost to manual document prep is a minute taken away from clients or high-value work.
Daily Frustrations Facing Firms
Many practitioners are all too familiar with these pain points:
- Repeatedly re-entering clients’ names, addresses, and details across multiple documents.
- Inconsistent or rigid templates that require intensive review and reformatting by senior staff, increasing overhead and turnaround times.
- Output that is often a non-editable PDF, making last-minute tailoring or branding updates difficult to accommodate.
- Escalation of the simplest files due to risk of human error, rather than enabling safe delegation to junior staff or legal executives.
All these factors make it hard to competitively price EPA services or offer them alongside wills, leading to lost opportunity for firms and clients alike.
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Why Modern Automation Changes Things
Document automation fundamentally alters the EPA workflow. Instead of clunky, error-prone manual processes, firms using advanced tools like LawHawk’s solution based on HotDocs Advance, complete:
- Entire EPA suites - including wills and explanatory documents—from one structured questionnaire. With this combined approach, if a couple comes in looking for wills, a law firm can easily generate mirror sets of will and enduring power of attorney documents with minimal extra time. This combination of documents and additional value can make the whole scenario much more attractive to both clients and the law firm than doing them individually in a more manual way.
- Editable, branded Word files ready for individualised touch, not just PDFs.
- Automated cross-population of repeated data, significantly reducing the risk of error.
- In-app compliance and logic features that guide staff step-by-step, reducing senior lawyer time and protecting quality.
Firms opting to leverage online intake forms (e.g., via Cognito Forms, such as here) can also gather client data before meetings, optimising time and accuracy.
As an example of how quick it can be when you have all the information needed, the video below shows the creation of mirror EPAs for a couple, in around 10 minutes (without any editing to speed it up)
Real Practice Benefits
Consider the commercial advantages for your practice:
- EPA and will packs can be assembled in minutes, letting you advise and complete witnessing and certification rather than enter data.
- Delegation is safe—junior staff or legal executives handle most of the process, with senior lawyers focusing on review and bespoke advice.
- Consistent output in both content and style means fewer late-stage changes and easier client explanations.
- With less friction, firms can actively market EPAs as an add-on to every will file, turning what used to be a slow, marginal service into a scalable profit centre.
Enhance Client Value
Accessible, streamlined workflows mean clients spend less time filling out forms and more time making meaningful choices. They feel the difference with clear, readable documents, timely service, and an advisory experience rather than box-ticking.
By modernising your EPOA process, you make these vital legal protections available to more New Zealanders - without adding overhead for your team.
Getting Started
If you are frustrated by your existing EPA process and ready for a faster, more profitable way to prepare enduring powers of attorney and wills (or just want to know what else could be out there):
- See more details of LawHawk’s automated solution, or
- Contact us to discuss how document automation and digital intake can be tailored to your workflow
Unlock more value from every EPA and will file, empower your lawyers and legal executives, and help your clients protect their future.
