Document Assembly & Case Management Blog

Document assembly projects are subject to the 80/20 rule ... the final 20% takes 80% of the time.  And for that reason, many projects don’t get perfected.  When a system is for internal use, the benefits of automation are good enough; but when turned into an saleable application, or a client-focused application, much more is required.  This blog focuses on techniques for working with the template to reduce the time to get from 80 to 100%.

Is it the process or the document that comes first?  Does the user view the world as a series of data, with document as the outputs; or a series of documents, with data as the inputs.  These views govern how you will design a document assembly library.

Working with template systems (as opposed to individual templates) requires attention to detail and planning before execution.  The rewards of planning come from ease of maintenance, and flexibility to change.  The blog looks at formatting and design questions in Document Assembly system.

A few recent posters to the HotDocs list have suggested it was not “best practices” to use computation in the INTERVIEW computation; that is was best to use a series of ASK statements, surrounded by IF EXPRESSIONS to guide the interview. This Blog add looks into Best Practices for creating a document-scope INTERVIEW computation in HotDocs

How does one explain to a web developer that document assembly is more than just throwing up some web-forms with fields tied an SQL database?  Sometimes, the hard way, by letting them try it themselves ...

Irrelevant answered variables in HotDocs can have their consequence.  This blog notes the problem, its consequences and some solutions.

In working on the CIC exam for HotDocs, I took the opportunity to master the HotDocs Markup Tool and HotDocs Template Generator.  In this article, I examine some tips on how to use the tool to the best advantage.