Document Assembly

The June issue of the ABA’s GPSolo magazine is devoted to a variety of technology issues, from planning and purchase of new computers and software to disaster recovery.  This can serve as a companion to the recently released book “The 2008 Solo and Small Firm Legal Technology Guide” also published by the ABA.

For my money, one of the most important articles is the one on Document Assembly by Seth and Rose Rowland. If only a third or so of small firms implement a case management or document management program, certainly not more than a third of those firms use any significant document assembly routines (and that’s being generous).

Yet a document assembly program can provide the biggest return on investment of any technology you use.  I once had a client who invested in customizing his Trust and Estates practice using HotDocs linked to Amicus Attorney.  By having the information available in Amicus, and answering some questions, he could assemble a complete set of documents - a basic Will, Trust Agreement, Living Wills, Health Care Agent, Power of Attorney, Guardian, and Conservator for both the client and the spouse. Typical of document assembly routines, you begin by being asked whether the client is Male of Female. Based on that answer, the gender all the pronouns and references to “Client” and “Spouse” are adjusted accordingly. Of course, not all of these documents might have been relevant to the particular case, and he still had to customize them for the client’s particular needs, but instead of taking several hours to assemble and edit the relevant document, he was ready to proceed to detailed customization in a matter of minutes.

HotDocs document assembly provides the user with considerable “intelligence.” That is, you answer questions in an interview, and based on the answers, it assembles the document and makes a variety of changes (gender being one of the most obvious).

There is another set of document assembly programs that are “clause based.” You create a library of clauses and then pick and choose from the ones you want. Pathagoras is one of this. I recently saw another similar program called “PowerReuse” (the name gives you an idea of what is does. 

To a lesser degree, simple document assembly functionality is also from within Practice Management programs such as Time Matters and Amicus Attorney.

The key here is to figure out exactly what your needs are (and how complex the documents you wish to assemble are), and then choose the appropriate level of document assembly.