Managing the document automation life cycle: Six steps to success

Document automation represents a major step forward in making law firm processes more streamlined and robust, helping make lawyers’ lives easier, and delivering high-quality contracts, wills, or deeds (to name just a few of the typical outputs) for clients even more cost-effectively. It is a way to take high-volume, repeatable tasks and develop automated templates that are structured in a logical way. These templates can then be used to create standard form documents that are swift and simple to produce and that are always accurate and up to date. 

Doing so saves significant amounts of time, increases productivity, leverages valuable know-how residing within the firm, and reduces the risk of manual error. Internal resources can then focus on other, less monotonous, more value-adding tasks, client satisfaction can be enhanced, and profitability boosted.

As with any important initiative, project life cycle management is vital. That means understanding what will be involved along the way, from inception to deployment to replication across different types of documents, to maximise the chances of success and deliver the most value. Once you have determined the most likely use-cases, selected the right solution for your requirements, and are ready to deploy, there are six core steps in the document automation life cycle to be managed.

1. Prepare

Successful document automation starts with good preparation. 

This includes analysis and planning to determine what activities will deliver the greatest ROI—for example, consider which documents can most easily be replicated and would be most beneficial to deliver in large volumes. 

It requires suitable project design to map what (and who) should be involved. This may mean deciding whether it makes sense to create a suite of document templates, or to input data into one single form that can automatically generate several different types of inter-related documents as required (such as property purchase or sale transactions). 

Another important consideration is whether, and how, to integrate the document automation software with other business systems—such as document management or client/matter intake systems—so that data is extracted automatically to populate documents.

It is vital to ensure each source document is ‘clean’ and ‘robust’ before they are used for document automation purposes, so that, as one law firm user put it, “It won’t let you down.” ‘Clean’ means documents that are formatted consistently in terms of the house style used for headings, numbering, or body text; are clear and easy to understand; and do not contain any tracked changes or other haphazard edits which could corrupt the file. ‘Robust’ means ensuring that the intellectual property within the document provides the best starting point in terms of content. 

2. Automate

Once the source document has been properly prepared, the next step is to set out the logic which will underpin the automation process.

A suitable author should be assigned to mark up the template with helpful guidance notes and compile a questionnaire comprising not just what questions should be asked, but also how they could be answered, such as via multiple choice options, drop-down boxes or free-text fields. Depending on those answers, conditional logic can be applied by the rules-based software to determine what questions should be asked next or what clauses or wordings should be inserted. A dictionary of terms to help define the language to be used also should be developed. 

The key here is to think about the end-user experience as well as what output you want so that the process delivers the right documents for the right people at the right time in a straightforward manner.

3. Test

At this point, the logic and reliability of the automation process that has been put into place should be put to the test. The questionnaire should be given some trial runs to ensure that all the options work correctly—for instance that the right drop-down menus appear or the right follow-up questions are asked—and output documents should be critically assessed. Once their quality has been assured, the templates can be passed to the project administrators and put into the preview environment.

4. Review

Now the template is ready to be shared internally with peers for a further layer of evaluation and review. Lawyers will have an opportunity to ensure that the document automation process meets their requirements and to flag where any amendments are needed.

5. Launch

After this the templates are ready to be published and access can be shared with those who will need to use them. Communication is vital at this stage to promote document automation as a value-adding, time-saving tool, and to get buy-in across the firm. Some people may be resistant to change, so they may need to be trained in how to use the new solution and be educated about why they should use it. This includes the benefits in terms of speed, simplicity, compliance, and quality. Having some demonstrable use-cases to show people at launch and during rollout can be very powerful, as can having internal ‘champions’ to evangelise about the advantages.

6. Evaluate

The automation life cycle is not over: Now it is time to consider issues such as whether handover sessions are needed, what further training is required, and address any maintenance issues that have arisen, as well as to review the success of the project and apply any learnings to other use-cases.