Seth Rowland

Document Assembly – The Contenders

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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 contenders, but also included some contenders I had never heard of.  So, who are these contenders?

The text below is drawn directly from the website of these vendors.

ActiveDocs

ActiveDocs Opus facilitates the simple and effective creation of your essential business documents and the automation of a wide range of mission critical communications. A scalable, affordable, high-performance document production solution, ActiveDocs Opus enables you to quickly create accurate, professional documents that meet a variety of business needs.

Business Integrity / Dealbuilder

Business Integrity launches ContractExpress.com, the world’s first premium document assembly product to be delivered exclusively as “software as a service,” requiring no set-up costs or infrastructure. ContractExpress.com builds on Business Integrity’s trusted DealBuilder technology, which is used by many of the world’s leading law firms and corporate legal departments.

Epoq/ Rapidocs

– Rapidly automates legal and business documents
– Creates dynamic and interactive interviews
– Delivers to end-users instantly in the browser
– Displays real time document changes live to the user
– Supports all popular web browsers
– Handles both text and PDF forms
– Offers ‘try before you buy’ technology for your customers

Exari

Exari accelerates your contracts, reduces costs and risks, and streamlines authoring complex documents.  …. With Exari, business people create their own legally pre-approved documents and agreements by completing a web-browser interview. It eliminates the need to wait for the legal department while still providing legal compliance and contract visibility. Exari saves time, lowers costs, improves document quality and minimizes risk. Exari contract creation and contract management solutions are used by leading companies to automate various document types including those used in sales, insurance, and banking.

Korbitec /Ghostfill

GhostFill is no longer offered directly for sale.  However, GhostFill is embedded in several applications, including AIA Forms, DWTA, and Nebraska Probate System V.

GhostFill is one of Korbitec’s flagship document assembly software engines, and has over the last decade been utilized in thousands of document-centric software solutions at law firms, banks, publishers and other institutions, world-wide.

Napersoft

Napersoft CCM (Customer Communication Management) solutions streamline business processes for document creation, personalization, publishing, distribution and archiving. Quickly & easily create complex real-time customer documents, including correspondence, letters, emails, notices, alerts and confirmations and distribute them via print, email or the Web.

Pathagoras

Pathagoras™ is a multi-faceted document authoring tool. First and foremost, Pathagoras is a ‘Plain-text based’ document automation system.  In just two clicks, using your current collection of documents, Pathagoras can present a list of forms or clauses on a designated topic. From that list, you would select an appropriate form, group of forms, or a subset of clauses to be assembled One more click presents your selections, fully assembled, onto the editing screen for final processing.  No complex or time consuming setups are required. You can create automated documents within 5 minutes of installation. You will begin cutting document produc-tion time immediately.

SoftPowerHouse/PowerReuse

PowerReuse is a document assembly software designed for boosting productivity for professionals (lawyers, insurance agents, real estate agents, project managers, sales, marketers and consultants) in small and medium-sized companies. Taking advantage of its patent pending technology, it organizes related Word, Excel and PowerPoint files into projects for better accessibility, updates many documents at a time and pastes pieces of text from the created library by simple drag & drop. The functions ensure accuracy and consistency of all your documents.

Thunderhead

[With the CorrespondNOW module] customer communications are as personal as they get with this module, which allows you to create individual ‘ad hoc’ communications quickly and simply. Streamline correspondence creation, allowing your customer service teams to respond more quickly and efficiently to customer inquiries while bringing new levels of control to the desktop.

Zumesoft

WordFusion is an advanced web-based Document Assembly Platform.  In very simple terms, WordFusion allows you to automate document templates, and then distribute them within your organisation or across the internet. WordFusion also provides work-flow management for the preparation, review, payment and finalisation of documents. This enables professionals from a number of disciplines to effectively collaborate on the production of a document. In essence, WordFusion is a project management tool, to connect you with your clients and other professional partners, to efficiently collaborate on the production of sophisticated and high-value documents.

There were a few MORE that should rightly have been on the list.

XpressDox Docussembly

XpressDox Docussembly™ saves you time, saves you money.  XpressDox Docussembly™ is a document assembly system that will help you become more productive when creating repetitive documents. Using XpressDox, you can easily create a template that asks you for only the information which changes. This improves your efficiency and effectiveness, and ensures that all documents you create conform to your organization’s standards. The result is faster, more accurate documents, which saves you time. And saving you time means saving you money, too.

ActiveWords

ActiveWords relates words and actions, giving you instant access, making you more productive, and improving the quality of your work.

Memba Genesis

The Memba Contract Management Platform is constituted of three main components which work integrated or independently. Memba Genesis Editor is the editor of contractual documents and templates. Memba Genesis Formation Server supports contract drafting and negotiation. Memba Genesis Execution Server supports portfolio and diary management.

Intelledox Enterprise

Intelledox Enterprise is the fully featured Intelledox document creation software solution. Built on Microsoft technology, Intelledox Enterprise is a user-friendly, document creation solution that enables the fast, accurate and compliant production of documents; tailored to individual business requirements and delivery methods.

DrawLoop Technologies

Drawloop is a complete document automation service. We help businesses, organizations and individuals close more deals, increase revenue and improve productivity through automating document creation. In minutes, you can web-enable the same Microsoft Office files your business has been using for years. There is no hardware or software to buy, install or maintain. All you need is your documents and a web browser!

Ultimus

Ultimus automates and simplifies key business processes so you can dedicate more time to your business and customers. Ultimus’ Business Process Improvement Suite reduces the potential for human error, eliminates waste, and decreases the amount of paperwork companies use on a daily basis. Moving far beyond standard workflow automation, Ultimus (Business Process Management) BPM Software provides a flexible solution that connects technology systems to enable data sharing and enhanced visibility throughout your entire organization

Ultimus has automated more business processes than any other BPM software provider worldwide and has over 15 years experience helping organizations across many different industries implement business process optimization. We have more than 1,900 customers and thousands of process templates to enhance every division of your company.

*This list is by no means an endorsement of any or all of these products.  As independent document assembly specialists since 1996, we have worked with a number of these products.  Our entrepreneurial clients have generally favored HotDocs as the best dollar value, given its historical pricing.  However, over the years we have partnered with GhostFill, DealBuilder, and Exari on projects, and we have carefully evaluated a number of other products.  Any decision on a document assembly platform should at least consider these contenders.

Merge Templates and Clause Libraries

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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 the 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.

Read moreMerge Templates and Clause Libraries

Custom Imports and Updates

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Time Matters has a very advanced and sophisticated import system.  There are many reasons one would wish to import data into Time Matters.  The most common is for new users of Time Matters who are converting from other systems.  If they are using Outlook, you can use “synchronization”.  For other practice management system or contact management systems there are pre-set import routines.  But there are other circumstances where you will need to use the Custom Import.  It is for those circumstances that I offer a few tips or best practices.

Circumstances where Custom Import is Required

(1) Your data source is Outlook, but you have used custom fields.
(2) Your have worked with Seibel CRM On Demand, and only have CSV (Comma Separated Value) Files.
(3) The built-in import doesn’t support the record type you want to bring in, such as “Notes”
(4) You are doing a “mass” export and cleanup and reimport
(5) You are enabling User Defined Records from a custom database or spreadsheet.

We use Excel to cleanup the data before import and prepare
(1) Always “index” your imports with some unique record ID.  In Excel, you can add an ID column, with data such as ADV001, ADV002.  By dragging the corner of the cell, Excel will complete the series.
(2) Use concatenation (e.g. =CONCATENATE(A2,” “,B2,” “,C2) ) to merge data from multiple columns.
(3) Use Cell Formatting on Dates and Numbers to get the “data” to look the way you want, and the “copy/paste” into a new column as text
(4) Replace the column heads with the Time Matters Core Field Name, or Field Label for the record type you will be importing.
(5) Mark as “DNC” for Do Not Code, any columns of data which you don’t wish to import.
(6) Search and remove all QUOTES “” in any of the cells, Except for Cells where there are Formulas
(7) When done, save worksheet to CSV.

When you are doing the import:
(1) Create a sample data set with only 2 or 3 records
(2) Save the Import Template and test it until it works perfectly.
(3) Then rerun the template, but change the data source to the full set
(4) Be sure to include the RecordID as a field you are importing, and set it as the matching field.  This is a critical step to avoiding the creation of duplicate records.

Flat World … Big Cloud

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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 called 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 Auckland, 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.”

Here was a lawyer in London, contacting a consultant in New York, to assemble a practice management suite with “case data” hosted in the U.S. on Salesforce.com and “accounting data” hosting in New Zealand, to service clients in Florida and England.

Go figure this brave new world.

Wordle Revisited

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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.

So … back to Wordle for the test.

Will let you know. I suspect the reason has to do with the fact that Wordle uses Google Analytics and it may be that the feed has not yet registered in Google.  Not sure if that is true, but will check back later.  Must return to real work.

The Open Source Manual

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We are going to try an experiment.  We are going to use Wiki technology – MediaWiki (the same used by Wikipedia) to create an open-source manual for Time Matters.  We will start out the core of it with our current knowledge of Time Matters.  We will require contributors to “register” in order to make contributions and revisions to the manual.  The hope is that this Wiki will fill the void between what is in the “help text” and what constitute “best practices”.

We will be making a general announcement later in the month when the Wiki is ready.  All contributions will be subject to a “Creative Commons” license.  That means that Basha Systems LLC as host will have license to use and republish any contributions submitted to the Wiki.  However, you will also be free to “republish” content and link to it, so long as that content contents source attribution and a hyperlink back to the website source for the article.

The more people contribute, the better the resource will become.  This Wiki is designed to “refine” the knowledge out there as to best practices and specific tips, using group-sourcing to improve on the content.

Wordle and Cloud Maps

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I recently WORDLED this blog.  It turned out the hot word was SAAS.  Even though our predominant focus is document assembly and workflow, those words did not show up.  HotDocs, XpressDocs, GhostFill, Time Matters, Amicus Attorney, and AdvologixPM did NOT show up. There was some mention of ContractExpress and DealBuilder.  This could be because Wordle focuses on the RSS feed which is the Summary para of the blog entry, and not the body.  It also could reflect that HotDocs, XpressDocs, GhostFill, Time Matters, Amicus Attorney, and AdvologixPM don’t have prominent mention in the summary. And so if I use the words: HotDocs, XpressDocs, GhostFill, Time Matters, Amicus Attorney, and AdvologixPM more often in my summaries, then it is likely that HotDocs, XpressDocs, GhostFill, Time Matters, Amicus Attorney, and AdvologixPM may show up more often.  And so I am testing Wordle to see how responsive it is for these words: HotDocs, XpressDocs, GhostFill, Time Matters, Amicus Attorney, and AdvologixPM.

My apologies for the redundancy, but I am checking an experiment.  This is also an advise to those using social media to pay special attention to Summary/Abstracts if they are targeting key words.

And yes, there is method to my madness.

Database Connection – Vista64 and Windows7

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Have you ever tried to add an Access database as a new “datasource” in Vista64 and Windows7? In most cases, you will go WINDOWS START -> Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Data Sources (ODBC).  When you click ADD, you will get SQL Native Client and SQL Server.  There will be NO opportunity to add Access or any of the OLDER data types.  These 32-bit datatypes are effectively banished from the system.  Quelle disaster!!!  Well we have a solution, one that is REAL EASY

Read moreDatabase Connection – Vista64 and Windows7

The Place to Go for News on Document Assembly and Case Management

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It’s live!!!! The new Basha Systems legal technology news site. Come for a visit.  For TOO long, there was no source for news on developments in practice management and document assembly.  And yet, several vendors has started getting savvy about social marketing.  For example, Exari and ContractExpress have launched blogs and twitter feeds of news and development.  And so, rather than hunting everywhere for developments, I created a page for myself to track these latest “feeds” and then set it up for you to enjoy.  Come take a look; bookmark the site, and come back regularly.  If there are OTHER feeds you want to see, please suggest it.  Best of all, check out the new technology.  This is the first consultant website that you can “PERSONALIZE”. Yeah, you can reorder the feeds, change the priorities, and move it around to suit YOUR technology needs.

I am very excited about the site.  It saves me from having to hunt around for news.  At the moment, it is limited to “public feeds”.  There are actually several vendors that have feeds that require a LOGIN to get access to their blog.  I can configure the website to access those feeds, but only with permission.  If you want me to add your business feed, and it is behind a login, please send me an email granting permission, along with an appropriate login to see it.

The more that people know about developments in different products, the more informed will be their decisions, and the more likely they will take the technology plunge.  That is my hope.  Enjoy.

Running HotDocs Player and HotDocs Developer (in different versions)

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Face it: we don’t always upgrade to the latest version of a program. There is the cost of the upgrade, and the cost of “conversion”.  The cost of conversion on HotDocs upgrades has been over-rated.  With HotDocs 2009, you can keep the CMP in the HotDocs 2006-2008 format, ensuring painless upgrades.  However, if you don’t upgrade, some issues can arise.  This is particularly true for those who purchase LexisNexis automated forms or other published form set such as Wealth Transfer Planning.  These programs typically come with a license to “HotDocs Player 2009”.  This is the SAME as HotDocs User (previously HotDocs Standard) with one exception.  It will ONLY run “published form sets” and to publish a form set you need a “publisher’s key” and a special license arrangement with HotDocs corporation.  This is a non-issue if you have HotDocs 2009 (or the latest version).  However, if you don’t you can find that your own firm-developed templates NO LONGER WORK.

The Cause of the Problem

When you install a published form set it check if you have the most current version of HotDocs Developer, Standard or User.  If your machine does, the templates are installed and everything works.  If you do NOT have the most current version, it find the HotDocs6 folder in your program files directory, and inserts a subfolder called PLAYER.  It installs HotDocs player in this subfolder.  When you launch a one of the Automated Forms libraries, Windows “associates” the .HDL (Library files) with HotDocs 2009 Player.  So, that the next time you launch a library .HDL (assuming you have shortcuts to each of your libraries), it launched HotDocs Player and your library.  However, HotDocs Player will not PLAY your templates, so they are locked and unusable. Conversely, if you launch HotDocs 2008 (or earlier), it will open the last library, which will be the Automated Forms, which will throw an error that says cannot run templates, wrong version of HotDocs.

The Solution

Upgrade to HotDocs 2009 is the easiest solution.  However, you can also take advantage of the “command line” options of HotDocs to effectively tell Windows which version of HotDocs to run with each library. This is done by creating a shortcut to each library and putting them on your desktop:
1.  Right-click on each library (.HDL) file, and choose: Send To -> Desktop (create shortcut)”
2.  Right-click on the Shortcut and Choose Properties
3.  Under Target, insert the following “before” the path and name of the library file
For FIRM created Templates (Windows XP or Vista/Windows7):
“C:Program FilesHotDocs 6HotDocs6.exe” /lf="path and file name”
or
“C:Program Files (x86)HotDocs 6HotDocs6.exe” /lf="path and file name”
For AUTOMATED Templates (Windows XP or Vista/Windows7):
“C:Program FilesHotDocs 6PlayerHotDocs6.exe” /lf="path and file name”
or
“C:Program Files (x86)HotDocs 6PlayerHotDocs6.exe” /lf="path and file name”