Suspend Cynicism

If you have previously explored document assembly, HotDocs, GhostFill, MS Word merges or anything else to produce documents more efficiently, you may have a small problem with some of the content on this site. Even if you have not explored document assembly at all, you may find it difficult to believe exactly how far this industry has travelled in its short career.

All too often, document assembly is used as a means to create simple documents quickly - the sort of forms that do not require any decisions to be made, just simply filling in the blanks. If you hold the belief that document assembly is useful for this and not much more, you are probably in for a series of rather large shocks.

Don't get me wrong - this common application of document assembly does have its uses and is beneficial. However, it is only one type of document assembly. Much like you could buy "a computer" to play Solitaire. Sure, your computer will allow you to play Solitaire, and play it well, but a deck of cards would have been more appropriate because of the vast array of other features your computer has beyond playing Solitaire.

I know for myself personally, and several other developers, who are able to design and program extremely complex legal documents that are thought to be "unique". Where there is a definite thought process of a lawyer (or other professional person producing a document) to be followed, it can usually be programmed. The question is usually not whether its possible, but whether it is worthwhile to program a system to the n'th degree.

If you have a professional who is aware of every decision and consequence that applies to a specific type of matter (meaning a staff member who runs matters of a particular area of practice from day to day), I am able (with time) to "convert" this into a document assembly system. Higher levels of complexity simply means it takes a little longer to make that "conversion" from the professional's experience and decision making process into a fixed, yet flexible, logic tree that forms the backbone of any document assembly system.

One of the key themes of this site is to attempt to differentiate between the common view of the capabilities of document assembly and the true capabilities of well designed document assembly systems. Remember - just because document assembly can do the highly complex documents doesn't mean that your firm should use it for this purpose.

Remember...

I am not saying you can program every single facet of every document in every practice area, or even that you should try. In short, if you are doing something over and over again, you should automate it. If that something you are doing is related to revenue generation, you should automate it fully, so that you can lower your production times, improve your quality of output, increase your efficiency levels and generally raise the bar on your profit margins.