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In my time with HotDocs and GhostFill both in Australia and the United States, I have come across some statements or beliefs that were not only misguided, but caused massive misunderstanding of what document assembly can be, and what it should be.
If any of the titles of these articles match a thought that you have or have had in the past, you may wish to click the "read more" link. The rest of this article deals with a general warning regarding the sale of "bundled" suites of products. If you are considering buying a package that has more than one feature set (ie: case management, workflow, accounting, document assembly, document management), you should read the remainder of this article.
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Document assembly takes too much time to do it properly
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This one is not a myth: its very possible, depending upon what your vision of "too much time" is and what your firm wants/needs from document assembly...
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It cannot produce truly complex documents
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It can, it does, and I do it every day for a living. In all honesty, I couldn't justify my hourly rate to draft simple systems that reflect no logic trees or decision making processes - it just wouldn't be a smart investment for clients of my company. If you can sit down with your most complex series of documents and explain what decisions are made and what the results of those decisions are, I can program a system to reproduce your thinking for leverage by members of your firm.
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It is only useful for simple forms and documents
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Utter rubbish. This is the most common application of document assembly however, its not the only application of document assembly. Document assembly can be as simple or complex as you want it to be. In most cases, the question is not whether document assembly can but whether it makes economical sense. |
There is small return on investment - no real profit
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Formfill type libraries which could be set up quite easily with MSWord merges will yield very little return. Pro-forma precedent packages (for the most part) which are not tailored to your firm and require post assembly editing will probably yield a small return on investment - they are a "quick fix" to get you started and will take care of the statutory parts of your documents (court headers, required text and the like). The key here is that its not your drafting and your expertise - you really are just producing "shell documents" that handle all the common stuff, rather than a system that is producing the content of your finest legal minds.
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Buy product, get 2 days training and start printing money!
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In most cases, this is false. Like any programming language, it takes time to learn the intricacies of it. Believing that you can learn any programming language (without prior or similar experience in another language) is akin to thinking that you will be able to learn Spanish in a week. The reality is that by the time you have finished your first document assembly system, you will wish to start it over, as you have learned so much since commencing the project. The learning curve for the first few months is almost straight up.
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We have a quality control manual and it cannot comply
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Unless your quality control / assurance manual is written specifically to inhibit document assembly projects, this may be true. Otherwise, very very doubtful.
Document assembly is possibly the most powerful tool to assist your company with quality control compliance procedures, especially in terms of formatting, signing clauses, template maintenance, headers, footers and any other aspect of your document base.
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Document and Case Management are more important
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This one isn't a myth: it is quite possibly true if your firm is having real issues with missed dates, a poor follow up system or terrible document saving procedures which means no one can find anything.
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I have to sack staff to make document assembly profitable
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This is not true. If you ask any mathematician to look at any formula, they will tell you there are always two sides to an equation. In the case of profit margins, it is a case of staff time and overheads expended vs. billing amounts; its just another equation. Document assembly can simultaneously lower the left side of this equation (less time spent to produce the same output) and increase the right side of the equation (same staff producing more work output or billing amounts).
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Document assembly programs cost too much
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At a few hundred dollars a seat (exact pricing differs on product and licensing option chosen), document assembly software is relatively cheap when considering the benefits it provides. Lets say you spend $400.00 per seat. Each seat entitles a user to access whatever libraries and templates that have been built with your document assembly product. Well designed and programmed document assembly systems (conservatively) reduce document production times by around 300%. This is a huge increase in workload capabilities for each staff member that has this product.
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