Document assembly vendors may be the biggest beneficiary of the alternative billing movement. Automated routine documents help clients save time and money; strengthen attorney/client relationships; and help firms win the more profitable (and interesting) premium work.
Last June, Victoria Lee, a licensing attorney in our Palo Alto office, approached IT because she needed a better way to create and manage a collection of Microsoft Word-based template documents, to give to startup clients and prospects. Her "Starter Kit" included eight useful documents, including employment, nondisclosure, consulting, and invention agreements. Though typically provided free as a loss leader, our attorneys spent time modifying documents to include pertinent clauses and language based on where the company was incorporated.
We had recently created a document assembly tool based on Exari, from Exari Systems (www.exari.com). It helped us create web-based interviews, and then generate one or more documents based on the user's answers. Lee thought the Starter Kit might be a good candidate for document automation, especially if we could make it available directly to clients.
We had licensed Exari several years ago to automate a client's sales agreements. Since then, our developer, Tom Rehor, had gained more expertise automating client documents and internal administrative files.
Lee spent a few days with Rehor collaborating about what information to collect, and the logic driving the use of alternative provisions into the documents. For example, overtime laws differ from state to state.
It took four days to convert Lee's documents into a web-based document assembly application. The online Starter Kit was recently made available to members of our Venture Pipeline (www.venturepipeline.com) program so that our clients and prospects can create their own documents. It also is used internally by attorneys to generate documents for their clients. Documents can be generated in minutes, freeing our attorneys to devote time to other billable matters.
A key lesson was the importance of documenting requirements and managing changes. While true of all development projects, document assembly presents particular challenges. It's difficult for an attorney to spend hours working with a developer to define requirements; typically they are communicated to developers via e-mails, voicemail, and conversations. But platforms such as Exari make it easy for developers to implement initial requirements and then make subsequent changes. On smaller projects with straightforward logic, developers can use rapid prototyping techniques and become very prolific. But on complex document assembly projects you must document the detailed requirements in a format that is easily understood by the attorney, helpful to the developer writing the application, and useful to the quality assurance teams who test scripts.
Requirements must be kept current, and cross-checked for consistency during the process. We didn't do this on our first big project and thus endured a long, painful test/fix phase. That lesson taught us to be diligent in documenting and managing requirements.
As for costs, because we already had a document assembly infrastructure (server and software license) in place, only our time was involved. Plus we simultaneously built an Incorporate Kit. For the two projects, we spent approximately 32 hours of developer time and about 16 hours of attorney time.
We expect that demand for document assembly applications will increase as alternative billing models become more prevalent and clients apply rate pressure on repetitive legal work. We've already implemented a lateral hire questionnaire, and are working on several other projects.
David Jensen (David.Jensen@dlapiper.com) is senior director of knowledge management and information systems with DLA Piper U.S., based in San Diego.
