Overview
Form E is a critical financial disclosure document required during divorce proceedings in England and Wales. Traditionally, it is completed by solicitors on behalf of their clients, relying heavily on long email chains, repeated clarification, and manual transcription into rigid court templates.
Our client set out to fundamentally rethink this process. The goal was not simply to digitise Form E, but to redefine the relationship between solicitor and client, shifting solicitors away from administrative data entry and into a higher-value review and advisory role.
Woods & Walker partnered with the client to design and deliver an online platform that enables individuals to complete Form E themselves, with structured guidance, solicitor oversight, and court-ready outputs.
The Challenge
The existing process presented several systemic problems:
- Excessive administrative burden on solicitors, who spent large amounts of time copying and pasting information from emails into Form E.
- High risk of errors and omissions, caused by unstructured client input and manual data handling.
- Poor client experience, with limited visibility into progress and repeated requests for clarification.
- Inefficient collaboration, where feedback and corrections were fragmented across email threads and document versions.
For a profession under increasing time and cost pressure, this model was unsustainable.
Our Approach
Rather than treating Form E as a static document, we approached it as a guided, collaborative workflow.
Working closely with the client, we focused on three core principles:
Empower the end user
Clients are guided step-by-step through the information required, using plain-English explanations and contextual prompts. This reduces confusion and improves the quality of information submitted.
Reposition the solicitor
Solicitors interact with the same platform, reviewing client inputs, leaving structured comments, and requesting clarification directly against specific sections—similar to collaborative document review tools.
Maintain court compliance without friction
Once complete and approved, the platform generates a court-ready Form E PDF in the correct format, removing the need for manual assembly or reformatting.
Throughout the project, we remained deliberately technology-agnostic in our thinking, ensuring the platform could evolve alongside regulatory changes and future service models.
The Solution
The final platform delivers:
- A guided digital journey for clients completing Form E independently.
- Real-time collaboration between client and solicitor within a single system.
- Clear auditability and version control, reducing risk and ambiguity.
- Automated generation of court-compliant PDF submissions.
- Secure handling of sensitive financial and personal data.
The system integrates seamlessly into existing legal workflows without requiring solicitors to change how they practise—only how they spend their time.
The Outcome
The impact was immediate and measurable:
- Significant time savings for solicitors, who no longer manually transcribe information from emails into Form E.
- Improved data quality, with more complete and consistent client submissions.
- A shift in solicitor value, from administrative processing to review, judgement, and advice.
- A better client experience, offering clarity, progress visibility, and confidence throughout a stressful process.
- A scalable platform that supports growth without a corresponding increase in operational overhead.
In effect, the platform turns Form E from a bottleneck into a structured, collaborative process that benefits both solicitor and client.
Our Role
Woods & Walker acted as a long-term technology partner, not just a delivery team. We worked across discovery, system design, delivery, and iteration—balancing regulatory constraints, user experience, and operational efficiency.
The result is a platform that doesn’t just digitise an existing process, but changes the economics and expectations of how legal services are delivered.