Introduction
It has been over a decade since I first set my eyes
on a category of computerized automation software
now known as document assembly software. This
category has been dominated for a number of years
by HotDocs, sold by LexisNexis through its Certified
Independent Consultants network and GhostFill,
sold by GhostFill Technologies, Inc. through its
consultant network.
Desktop Delivery Systems
Both HotDocs and GhostFill have served as platforms
for delivering automated templates to the
desktops of tens of thousands of attorneys in areas
of litigation, estate planning, court filings, contracting,
lending, and real property transfers. As a consultant
certified in both products, I have played a role in
bringing some of these products to market, including
the development of Wealth Transfer Planning (Hot-
Docs), Drafting Wills & Trust Agreements (GhostFill),
and Nebraska Probate System V (GhostFill).
These products require installation of a "fat client" on
each desktop - in other words, you must physically
install the software on each machine that needs to
access the templates. Given the right configuration,
you can update these applications via the Web, but
that requires local maintenance and support. Using
remote access technology, such as GoToAssist, you
can maintain them off-site at reduced cost, but the
developer of the templates must support these systems
on multiple operating systems across multiple
network environments - a daunting task.
The Conventional Wisdom on Online Drafting Systems
At the present time, conventional wisdom states
that lawyers wishing to protect their work product
and protect their confidential and privileged client
data remain unwilling to use Web-based document
assembly systems. The perceived risk of waiver
of privilege and breach of security has kept and
continues to keep many lawyers from using online
systems. The other, less discussed reason lies in
the perception of lawyers that their clients will place
less value on work product generated as part of an
automated drafting system.
As is often the case, the conventional wisdom is
wrong. With respect to security, you can make
online systems as secure as desktop-based
systems. By using the extensive audit trails in
online systems, and active-directory and group
security, these systems give the administrator a
great amount of control over who can access what
and when. Moreover, these online systems protect
the rights of the "Author" of the content. Content
is published to the server in a form such that the
end user cannot access either the templates or the
template logic.
Hosted document assembly systems can provide a
great degree of user-access control at a fractional
cost. DocEngine offers a hosted HotDocs Online
solution. Exari and Ixio offer a hosted solution option.
In a hosted environment, the hosting company
will maintain and support the software. The authors
have a secure login with which they can upload
templates and set the access privileges of trusted
users. The end users can log into the system and
see only those templates and interviews they are
authorized to use, as well as those documents and
answer sets that they may have created.
Competitive pressures in the practice of law have
dovetailed with the increased sophistication of online
systems to produce truly first-rate documents.
In fact, it has been reported by industry experts
that the quality of litigation pleadings generated by
pro-se litigants and Legal Aide lawyers with one
online system, was superior to that of pleadings
generated by their much higher-paid colleagues in the bar.
People Multipliers - The New Measure for ROI
If you didn't believe that document assembly had
a high Return on Investment ("ROI") you would not
have read this far. However, few other people really
understand how high the ROI is on document
assembly. When perceived as a mere software
purchase with incidental installation and training,
document assembly investment seems both costly
and highly disruptive.
The online document assembly systems reviewed
in this article start at $12,000 and range upwards to
$200,000. The upward range practically matches
the cost of hiring a new associate (when you factor
in salary, benefits, office space, and secretarial
overhead).
That is exactly my point. The return on a well implemented
document assembly system enables you
to EXPAND your legal practice WITHOUT hiring a
new associate attorney. You can double, triple, and
quadruple your existing volume of business without
hiring ANY more attorneys. The software industry
calls this PEOPLE MULTIPLIERS.
The people multiplier on a well implemented online
document assembly system is between 2 and 5,
which means the same person can handle 2 to 5
times the amount of work as they handled prior
to the implementation of such a system.
By replacing attorneys with paralegals, the People
Multiplier can increase. Paralegals are well suited
to the rule-based constraints and guidance built
into an online document assembly system. A
team of 10-15 paralegals, using an expert drafting
system and operating under the supervision of two
or three attorneys can handle an immense amount
of work.
The people multiplier for online systems is actually
greater than desktop-based document assembly
systems because you can outsource the data-entry
and data-validation to your clients, by giving them
input into the system, thus making your internal staff
even more productive.
You can take your dividend in two ways: (1) reduce
staff or risk your current employees spending a lot
of time playing Tetris and watching downloads of
Desperate Housewives on ABC.com or (2) go out
and secure new business from existing clients and
new clients to keep your staff from being bored. I far
prefer the latter approach.
Different Approaches to Document Assembly
For this article, I examined QShift, DealBuilder, Perfectus
IPManager and Exari.
These systems are similar in that they all rely on
Web servers to host the templates and data, as well
as deliver interviews and content to users. However,
each system has a different philosophy and approach.
The choice of one over the other depends
on how you want to practice law and the degree of
control and discretion over the assembly process
which you wish to endow the authors and the end
users of the system. HotDocs Online has not been
included in this survey as it has been out for a while
and has already received extensive coverage in
TechnoLawyer.
In this article, I will not recommend one system over
another, but rather focus on the underlying philosophy
of each system as to how authors and end
users should interact with the particular document
assembly system.
Trusted End Users
These systems differ in the degree to which the end
user (the one answering the questions to create the
document) is a "Trusted User." On one end of the
spectrum, QShift assumes the primary user will be
an attorney seeking to build document models from
a powerful clause-based knowledge management
system. In the middle, Exari enables the user to
preview their document and make changes from the
Web viewer. And at the other end, DealBuilder and
Perfectus build rule-based systems that constrain
the user to a feature-rich interview that results in a
finished document.
Scripting the Interview
These systems also differ in the arena of syntax and
coding. Developers of all four systems have gone
to great lengths to make the markup of documents
as easy as possible, and for basic documents, all
succeed. However, there remains a fundamental
difference in philosophy over whether the interview
represented to the end user should be the result
of careful scripting and design in a dialog builder
or the result of nesting of rules in the document
templates.
QShift, mostly focused on Clause Selection, presents
the interview in a single page list of variables,
showing only those variables which appear based
on the current clause selection.
IPManager gives the developer perhaps the most
extensive scripting controls. Each page of the
interview is designed and laid out. Each variable and
object on the page has properties associated with it,
which includes display conditions.
Exari assigns the rules at the XML object
level, whether as a paragraph note or a text
note. Rules are inherited based on XML
dependencies. Variables are assigned to groups.
The interview is the sum of the dependencies
in the template being assembled, with only
relevant variables appearing, nested in the appropriate
group.
DealBuilder eliminates all interview scripting.
The interview is a byproduct of the nesting of logic
and dependencies in the sum of all templates
being assembled. Variables are both part of a
group and a page. The actual scripting is entirely
the process of a powerful relevance engine that
combines template rules and variable properties
to determine what is displayed to the end user
in the interview.
Workflow and Integration with Document Management Systems
Document creation can seem an isolated process
(run the interview and create a document) or part
of a workflow (open matter -> client data input ->
document creation -> final approval). While you can
integrate each of these systems into a workflow, the
commitment of the vendors to an out-of-the-box
solution varies.
QShift has no built-in integration. The authoring
and assembly process exists entirely separate
from the law firm's document management system.
Drafts exist entirely inside the QShift manager until
finalized, at which time they are exported to Word
for management by the law firm's DMS.
DealBuilder has a powerful transaction manager
that manages the data used in the DealBuilder
interview, as well as a product called Deal.manager.
It produces hooks and links that can pull data from
a DMS and push documents into a DMS as many
of its clients have done. However these are custom
tools that need to be built with an understanding of
the application's API.
Exari, which is more document-centric, manages
the XML documents and data in its own document
manager while it exists in draft form, but then relies
on the user to export the document to Word/RTF or
Acrobat/PDF and manage it in its own environment.
Custom scripts need to be written with an understanding
of the application's API.
Perfectus has gone the farthest with workflow and
integration with Hummingbird and Interwoven/iManage.
The close integration remains a central feature
of the offering and covers not only document output
management, but also management of clauses,
templates, interview packages, and EasyInterview
answer data.
Template Version Control
Many end users, having realized that documents
are the product of templates and answers, have
started returning to the interview to "negotiate" final
documents by changing their answers. But what
happens if the template has changed between the
time the first draft was created and the second draft
was negotiated?
This is where template version control (and the
associated rules) can become invaluable. Both DealBuilder
and Perfectus include metadata in the outputted
document as to the name and version of the
underlying template. With both, you can choose to
rerun the assembly with the version of the template
in place at the time the document was first created
or with the current version of the template.
Thin-Client Versus No-Client
One of the chief virtues of a Web server-based
document assembly system is the reduced cost of
maintaining hundreds of workstations. By centralizing
most of the processing onto the server, you
eliminate the installation and maintenance cost of
servicing hundreds of workstations. DealBuilder,
Exari, and Perfectus are zero-footprint solutions and
can be run in any Web browser. By contrast, QShift
requires the installation of a local fat client and relies
on integration with Microsoft Word.
Conclusion
In the second part of this article, I will examine each
of the product offerings in detail focusing on the
strengths of each system.
Click here to download the PDF of The Other Document Assembly Systems Part
1 of 2
