Document Assembly & Case Management Blog

Honesty by Computer.  There is one aspect of Dragon NaturallySpeaking that might end up being quite beloved by executive management types.  Having to speak out loud into a computer tends to cut down on non-work Internet surfing!  There are few employees who would have the guts to say out loud “Seach web for beach houses available in June 2010”.

John Heckman in his recent blog post, When Is Ease of Use Counterproductive? raised an interesting issue and one I have struggled with in designing advanced interview systems for document automation.  He posits that making something too easy encourages foolish and stupid behavior.  There is a balance between “constraints on behavior” and making something too simple.

Working with Dragon NaturallySpeaking reminds me very much of one of those old movies in which you see an executive dictating to a secretary. I am now gaining a good deal respect for both executive and secretary. 

Can Dragon Naturally Speaking enable you to throw away your keyboard and control your computer with just your voice?  Basha consultant, Rose Rowland, a newly certified Dragon Naturally Speaking reseller, tries a week without her keyboard to see how far the limits of spoken technology can go.

Some have asked why I don’t enable comments for this blog.  The answer is two fold. First, moderating and filtering the “spam” wasn’t worth the benefit.  The second reason is that there are better and more effective forums for these discussions.  They include “The Virtual Lawyer” group on LinkedIn.com and my new group “Future Automation (Documents, Data and the Cloud)” also on LinkedIn.  I am also managing a group for HotDocs Wizards, Amicus Attorney Wizards, and “The Time Matters Connection”.  So if you find anything I write provocative enough to comment on, I hope you go to one of those groups and have your say.

I have just returned from the Amicus 2010 Consultants conference in Banff.  They were kind enough to invite me to speak on document assembly to their consultants and to demonstrate how Amicus Attorney can support and facilitate complex document assembly workflow.  The setting, high in the Canadian Rockies, was nothing short of spectacular.  Some days were sunny and warm (I wore T-shirt and shorts) and other days it snowed.  But what was real exciting was the transformation from Amicus Attorney from the “warm familiar” attorney practice management system that “anyone” can use into a powerful, fully customizable, extensible workflow powerhouse.

When you think “document assembly” for law firms, who do you think of?  For many years, there has been a single answer, HotDocs.  This is not because of any great marketing effort by LexisNexis (the former owners of HotDocs). Rather, it was a combination of “automated forms” delivered by LexisNexis and a grass-roots movement of lawyers and consultants building systems from the ground up with a “cheap” software tool.  It was word of mouth that caused the spread of HotDocs, one license at a time.  Now that HotDocs is “established”, who are the contenders.  I was given the following list of contenders: ActiveDocs, Business Integrity/Dealbuilder, Epoq/Rapidocs, Exari, Korbitec/GhostFill, Napersoft, Pathagoras, SoftPowerHouse/PowerReuse, Thunderhead, and Zumesoft.  It is interesting that despite my 15 years in the business, this list failed to include some interesting contender, but also included some contenders, I had never heard of.  So, who are these contenders?

Early Days of Automobiles
In the early days of the auto industry, a team of mechanics would put together a car in a week.  This was no mean feat of engineering.  In many cases, the car would have “custom parts”.  There would be “user” preferences.  And there was the inevitable unintended variation.  To achieve efficiencies (and thereby profits which was the ultimate goal), the engineers would create a template (a master design) with instructions to be “manually” completed by the engineers.  Further efficiencies were achieved by laying out he workspace; adding labeled shelves with all the key auto parts.  Some items were “pre-assembled” or partially assembled, leaving a few remaining steps that could be used for customization.  Nevertheless, it required a team of skilled engineers to put together a car.  Quality control was a matter of “experience” and not something that could be measured.  Each car had a unique character.  And of course, cars were expensive; in fact, too expensive for most people to afford.

Last week, I received a call from London.  An American lawyer, based in London, with clientele in Florida was setting up a firm “in the cloud”.  He was planning to use a Salesforce.com application for lawyers calls AdvologixPM and an accounting service called Xero.com.  After some research, we discovered there was integration between Force.com and Xero, an accounting software package offered as a SaaS model (monthly fee) and hosted out of New Zealand.  After speaking to an accountant in Ackland, New Zealand, we were able to advise the client.  What makes it interesting in the “multinational” nature of this engagement made possible by “The Cloud” and requiring “no software installation”, but rather the engagement of “services.”

Apparently my experiment with Wordle did not change the results for HotDocs, XpressDocs, GhostFill, Time Matters, Amicus Attorney, and AdvologixPM. Perhaps, if I reorder the phrases HotDocs, XpressDocs, GhostFill, Time Matters, Amicus Attorney, and AdvologixPM so that they are alphabetical:  AdvologixPM, Amicus Attorney, DealBuilder, GhostFill, HotDocs, HoudiniESQ, Time Matters, XpressDocs.  Maybe if they are reverse alphabetical:  XpressDocs, Time Matters, HoudiniESQ, HotDocs, GhostFill, DealBuilder, Amicus Attorney, AdvologixPM, it will push me over. Alternatively, I can try them by word length:  Amicus Attorney, Time Matters, AdvologixPM, HoudiniESQ, GhostFill and HotDocs.