Levels of Document Assembly

Everybody uses some form of document assembly, even if it is only the primitive, inefficient and error-prone “cut and paste” from an old document to a new document. But once you get beyond this, there are a number of levels of document assembly options.

The first is to use Word’s auto-text or similar features to automate whole paragraphs of text. This can range from closing signature blurbs (“Please feel free to contact us at .... if you have any further questions regarding this matter”) to more extensive paragraphs. I had one client who had about 20 or more auto-text entries to be used as canned objections to interrogatories, for example.  A commercial program, ActiveWords (www.activewords.com), extends this functionality to an industrial-strength level. For an interesting take on creating “boilerplate” documents, see the article by Vivian Manning on “Document De-Construction.”  She proposes creating a master document with all possible options and then “de-constructing” it by deleting what you don’t need. This might work in some cases but is still labor-intensive with respect to more advanced document assembly.

A second level is to create a system of Word templates that correspond to commonly used letters:  retainer agreements, various acknowledgments, etc.  Some firms may have 50 or more of these templates. Obviously the frequency of use has to be sufficient to justify the amount of work it takes to create such templates.

A third level is integration with Practice Management programs such as Amicus, Time Matters or Practice Master. This allows you to create Word templates that pulls information out of the Practice Management program and inserts it into Word. This can range from addresses, to docket numbers or client ids. I had a Trusts & Estates client who used this kind of system to assemble 50 pages of basic trust/will documents pulling the information from Amicus. This included basic Wills, Trust Agreements, Living Wills, Appointment of Health Care Agent, Power of Attorney and Designation of both Guardian and Conservator for both Client and Spouse. Sure, it cost him a fair amount of money to set up, but it reduced his drafting time to about 3 minutes. If all you want is a few basic types of form letters, it may not be worth your while to graduate to the next level.

The highest level of document assembly is dedicated programs that allow you to use intelligence or responses to an “interview” to assemble a document by pulling together relevant sections, paragraphs or even documents. Pathagoras (www.pathagoras.com) is one of the simpler programs of this type. HotDocs (www.hotdocs.com) and Exari (www.exari.com) are among the most sophisticated. You will probably want to use a consultant to do any extensive development of the latter two programs.

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[Marshall]

These are some intelligently put levels of document assembly described in this blog. A program based out of the highest level of document assembly is what's best for any firm. But at the same time, I have been using web-based document assembly apps and blown by the workflows of the available tools. Among those, I have found GroupDocs Assembly (http://groupdocs.com/apps/assembly) to be quite intuitive and handy for users. This kind of document automation saves time and effort while being cost-effective at the same time.

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[Elliot Kozolchyk]

The kind of document assembly that I think is best is a hybrid between the "third level" and the "highest level." The user would enter data into the database like in the third level, but the resulting document doesn't just merge information, but also is logic-based, inserts blocks of text, inserts different-sized tables, adjusts text grammatically automatically (including grammatical changes to the dynamic blocks of text), etc.

I think the interview format described in the highest level of this article, while more user friendly, is less efficient for data entry and therefore less preferable to simply entering data into a database.

Imagine if 100 versions of the same document had to be created, but each had completely different information. Requiring the user to undergo 100 different interviews is not as efficient as entering all the data into the database and just generating the documents based on the data in the database.