Automation

13 July 2021

Avvoka snapshots: Could automation help mitigate some of the fallout from significant changes to the gig economy?

eliotbenzecrit Automation, Avvoka, Legal Tech, Software Updates, Technology Article, current issues, Document automation, gig economy

(3 minute read)

In this post we will discuss:

1. What is the ‘gig’ economy?

The gig economy is the colloquial name for the labour market in which workers are not classed as employees, but as freelancers, moving from ‘gig’ to ‘gig’. These jobs are also characterised by their flexibility – people who work as drivers on ride-sharing apps, couriers, or delivery drivers for example would be classed as ‘gig’ workers, and we have about 5-million of them in the UK.

The concept of the gig economy has also become a hotly debated topic in the labour market – whilst some argue that it allows significant freedoms such as flexibility to work when you want, others maintain that it restricts workers from enjoying benefits like holiday pay or National Minimum Wage (NMW) (benefits typically only available to workers officially classed as employees).

2. How and why is it changing?

Due to a landmark ruling by the Supreme Court in March 2021, drivers on a particularly popular ride-sharing app were deemed to be ‘employees’, and therefore entitled to benefits such as holiday pay and NMW.

This marks a significant change to the concept of the gig economy, as the reality of the relationship between worker and employer was deemed to not be characteristic of contractor work. Big changes following scrutiny over the changing relationship between employers, employees and those deemed ‘self-employed’ have also been making waves in the regulatory world.

3. Why should I care?

The repercussions of such a ruling are many, but two of which are especially pertinent are to do with the strain that businesses could be under given the need to urgently revisit the status of their workforce:

It becomes a ‘test case’ for future rulings in lower courts – therefore creating pressure for thousands of companies to follow suit, and if so:
It creates a burden for companies to produce and process new pieces of legal documentation for their new employees, all of which need to be created under time pressure and at scale.

4. What is document automation and how can it help?

Document automation is the process by which documents (for example, legal contracts) are made into questionnaires or forms that allow them to be assembled dynamically in a variety of different ways. For example, contracts can have clauses swapped in and out at the click of a button, meaning that drafting them becomes quicker, easier, and less risky for busy non-legal staff. Tools like this are therefore very well placed to help generate these agreements en-masse, from the most complex employment contract to the shortest addendum.

Though unfortunately many private sector companies may opt to end the relationship they have with some contractors, more will need the means to quickly and easily generate the necessary agreements to manage their workforce in a whole new manner.

As a result of automation, companies who were previously reticent to solidify their relationship with their employees for fear of the massive logistic burden can now efficiently manage the creation, signing and storage of these new documents in an easily-accessible online portal with a super intuitive interface.

Document automation tools are exceptionally well placed to help mass-generate employment contracts and their connected agreements – we are here to help with all the new employment relationships that will be formed in the wake of these changes.

How does mass generation work in Avvoka? Firstly, users can download their Avvoka questionnaires as Excel spreadsheets. Once the Excel file questions have been answered using the information required to draft your batch of differentiated documents, the Excel file can then be re-uploaded to the platform. Once the Excel file has been processed, Avvoka will now have your 10s, 100s or 1000s of bespoke agreements automatically drafted and stored, based on the information contained within the Excel file. Read more about mass-generation here.

Some of the more general benefits of creating agreements en-masse include:

The time-saving domino effect: Given that Avvoka can generate hundreds of documents in minutes, your team will inevitably end up with more time. Teams with more time can work on complex and high-value tasks, and more high-impact work empowers employees to add more value to clients, instead of manually creating variants of the same document for hours on end. It’s a time-saving domino effect!
Use instant updates to change information: If the deal information changes across dozens of documents, your team can amend a centralised spreadsheet and re-generate the desired agreements in a fraction of the time it would have taken had it been done manually.
Organise and analyse your mass-generated documents: Generating multiple variants of the same document creates a rich, structured set of data from which you can glean seriously valuable insights. If they are being negotiated, why not run our Heatmap feature to see a graphic report detailing where you’re facing pushback? It’s never been easier to get the best insights from your contracts!

Want to find out more about document automation? Then check out our ultimate guide, which contains everything you need to know about document automation, planning and executing a document automation project, and how document automation can help your business work more efficiently and get to “yes” faster.

Read more from Avvoka:

By: Krishna Swaminathan

15 June 2021

Avvoka’s Guide to Contract Playbooks

eliotbenzecrit Automation, Avvoka, Legal Tech, Software Updates, Technology Article, Document automation, ROI

(3 minute read)

As the pandemic accelerated the adoption of legal technology, the focus shifted from when law firms should adopt such tools to how they should be used. An intriguing and brilliant method that we have seen our clients deploy is the use of contract playbooks.

In this blog post we review :

With remote working likely to be a permanent fixture of employment moving forward, helping employees efficiently manage contracts has become a business priority. Contract playbooks use the existing technology infrastructure of an organisation to improve the execution of contracts, whilst saving time and developing employees. Previous blog posts have reviewed some of the success stories of our clients, how they have made the most of document automation during the pandemic and how they’ve achieved superb ROI through using Avvoka. This week’s blog post will follow a similar line, deconstructing contract playbooks and provoking a discussion around why and how you should apply them to your organisation.

Definition

A contract playbook is a comprehensive guide for a particular contract. It provides the user with the overall strategy for executing the document, including how to approach the negotiation and markup of a contract to protect the organization’s commercial interests.

Common elements include a malleable precedent containing a number of alternative drafting options, or fall-back positions, for the most common points of contentious wording; drafting advice for the negotiator to understand which alternative wording should be used in any given situation; and ‘workflow’ instructions for any necessary approvals from senior stakeholders.

Is it worth creating one?

In short, absolutely! A contract playbook saves time when it comes to training the user and reviewing the contract. Instead, it sets the foundation for the organisation to achieve better, more consistent commercial outcomes in negotiations. The user knows what to do in each contractual negotiation (on granular per clause level), and the negotiation data from the subsequent negotiation can be utilised by staff responsible for contract maintenance. Importantly, the user can develop professionally by having an excellent resource at hand. The user will be more confident to negotiate independently, thus making them a better negotiator in the long run.

In addition, a contract playbook helps to “democratise” the management of contracts, particularly for in-house business units like the HR or Sales departments. Instead of always seeking the help of the Legal department, individuals in these business units can comfortably manage the execution of a contract on their own, which improves efficiency for the organisation as a whole.

The challenges that emerge when setting up a playbook stem from the use of data: firstly, around capturing it, and secondly, the extent to which it should be used. Data from negotiations via Word and email needs to be captured to refine future negotiation strategy. This way, staff responsible for contract maintenance can constantly iterate upon and improve contracts’ contents. This accelerates contract negotiations and achieves better final negotiated positions. Nonetheless, utilising all of this negotiation data would create an excessively detailed contract playbook. The playbook needs to guide the user, not eliminate the need for exercising intuition; its purpose is to help the organisation and the development of the user, as mentioned earlier. One of the advantages of negotiating contracts with Avvoka, is not only an improved experience in negotiation but also that all that data is captured and can be analysed with our analytics tool. This makes the process of creating contract playbooks easier and accurate.

How do I create a contract playbook?

Having worked with our customers to create their own contract playbook, we thought it would be helpful to share our best practices so you know how to approach creating one too!

Keep it simple

The key purpose of a contract playbook is to make the negotiation of a contract efficient. This can only be achieved if the user is accessing a simple guide with clear instructions. Overloading it with information will result in conflicting drafting and negotiation instructions, which undermines the purpose of the playbook and the fact it will be regularly updated. This is imperative, particularly where the playbook is used by non-legal business users or those without a legal background.

Focus on what matters to you

Achieving better commercial outcomes is at the heart of a playbook. Therefore, it needs to focus on the results that the organisation, and business unit in question, would like to achieve. For example, take a user in the HR team. The user will need to execute new hires, notably lateral executive hires, which is an obvious priority of the business unit. However, the user might want to specialize in managing intern or graduate hires too, thus the playbook for “new joiner” contracts should incorporate specialist advice around this matter too. Remember, the playbook needs to achieve better commercial outcomes, but it should also aid the professional development of the user! How do you ensure this happens? Get everyone involved when establishing and updating your playbook (we’ll cover this in more detail shortly).

Data, data, data

In today’s world underpinned by technology, data is gold. The perfect contract playbook uses data-driven instructions to guide the user through the negotiation of a contract. Therefore, it is critical that users have a way to capture and learn from that data, especially data that is unique to an individual or related suite of contracts.

At Avvoka, lessons from previous negotiations can be learned using Avvoka’s Clause Heatmaps. This feature uses negotiation data accumulated on Avvoka to show a visual representation of which contract clauses are marked up most by counterparties, using a traffic light colour system. Staff responsible for maintaining and updating the standard contracts can easily spot contract wording that is problematic, and revise it whilst also adding simple drafting advice and options.
Furthermore, using such data means the contract playbook can feed into future technological advancements within your organisation. For example, if you introduce the use of artificial intelligence (AI) to negotiate simple contracts, a contract playbook provides a fantastic, foundational set of instructions for the AI tool to use and learn from.

Iterate

A contract playbook will be a perfect product, but it is never the finished product. As negotiations continue and achieve better commercial outcomes, there will be new areas of pushback. Subsequently, the staff responsible for contract maintenance need to keep their finger on the pulse so they can understand the new pushback to update drafting advice and options.

Two solutions are detailed key performance indicators (KPIs) and quarterly reviews about each contract playbook.

KPIs: This doesn’t mean a specific set of KPIs around the contract playbooks. Each business unit as a whole will have their KPIs, and each KPI will cover an individual or suite of contracts. By adding contract playbooks as a method of monitoring the relevant KPI, these will be reviewed on a regular basis and updated to meet the necessary targets to achieve the KPI.
Quarterly review: Setting a quarterly review will ensure timely updates to the contract playbook. The time period is enough to capture the data on how contracts have fared since the deployment of the current version of a contract playbook; however, it avoids excessively tinkering with the playbook such that its purpose is undermined.

If you want to find out how you can get started with document automation, check out The Ultimate Guide: Document Automation 2022 – Our very own e-book where we provide expert legal tech advice about everything you will need to know and learn.

Read more from Avvoka:

By: Raam Jeganathan

10 June 2021

Document Automation: Key tips for a successful adoption

eliotbenzecrit Automation, Avvoka, Legal Tech, Software Updates, Technology Article, Document automation, ROI

(4 minute read)

Our last few blog posts have been exploring the implementation phase of your document automation journey. This article is the final one of the implementation series, and it focuses on a major topic for all technology solutions: adoption.

Adoption is probably one of the most demanding and vital parts of implementing technology, let alone legal technology. Many projects will fail if they cannot achieve adoption within the organisation. If the new tech is shelved and underutilised, the company will never see the benefits of the product. Many people can be resistant to change when a novel way of doing things is proposed, especially if there is a steep learning curve involved. But don’t worry! We have compiled a comprehensive list of the best practices to assist you that we have seen countless clients adopt over the years.

The best practices that we will review will help ensure that users feel engaged and comfortable with their new document automation software. Most importantly, it will allow your new document automation solution to unleash its full potential.

Below you can find our top ten tips for adoption:

1. Interoperability

You need to ask two very important questions about your new software.

Does your new software integrate with other tools or programs in your current technology stack?

Does your new software integrate with CRM tools or other document management facilities?

Adoption of technology can substantially increase if the new solution can be incorporated into existing tools. As we mentioned in one of our previous blog posts, when considering the different types of integrations you may come across in the document automation market, you should be looking at receiving data from one of the tools that you already use internally. This tool could be used to fill out the questionnaires; or send completed questionnaires and the relevant data to your CRM system (like Salesforce), document management systems like iManage; or sign the document remotely with an e-signature platform like DocuSign and Adobe Sign. We recommend that you check out the different integrations we offer at Avvoka that allow you to integrate Avvoka into your existing internal stack.

2. Training is paramount

Getting familiar with the product is vital for your software adoption strategy. This statement is also true for document automation. A successful training programme will usually introduce the new tool to different units of the business in stages. Sessions should follow the typical user journey you would like your colleagues to adopt (hands-on webinars, workshops and online ‘classrooms’ are great options).

For example, at Avvoka we offer automation training for our clients. One key differentiator is that our platform is intuitive and easy to learn, so there is a low barrier of entry, and the knowledge can be democratised and easily scaled within the organisation. With just one hour of training, most users will be able to grasp the document automation essentials. You can experience this yourself with the Avvoka Academy, our free automation workshops which are open for anyone that wants to learn how to automate a document!

3. Keep your end-user in mind

Early sessions with different practice groups, business users or departments will make it easier to achieve a smoother transition. When users feel they have been included from the start of a project they are relevant to, the organisation is rewarded in the long run.

4. Content is key

Create helpful guidance materials for your users. Using various forms of media helps to engage a broad variety of different learners. In our experience, summarised “one-pagers” and instructional videos with voiceovers work best. At Avvoka, we have a wide range of training materials to help with the onboarding process. We have catered our content for both our Avvoka Academy attendees as well as our clients.

5. Build a network of champions

These people will act as your “super-users” in various parts of the business. Ensuring that different units of the business have specialists who are well versed with the new software creates an environment where users can confidently use the software backed with a strong support system

6. Establish your success criteria

Have clear KPIs to measure the success of your new product. For example, how much faster does the new software compare to your manual process? If these performance indicators are not recorded in advance, it will be impossible to assess the performance of your new product and hence the value it is supposed to bring to the organisation.

Benchmarks and comparisons serve as hard evidence that will inspire other people within your business to adopt the new software you’ve chosen. Success brings success!

7. Set clear objectives and milestones

We all get caught up with day-to-day tasks. We recommend that you set practical but firm deadlines which force your users to put time aside and try something other than their typical daily tasks. Setting effective targets is essential in a pilot or proof-of-concept process. Your colleagues need to get familiar with the new product and start adopting it in their usual workflow.

The stress of delivering other projects often frustrates the testing and adoption of new technology. But if you send out early emails and hold briefing calls/meetings to educate people on the project and timelines, your project will be more likely to succeed.

8. Metrics and follow-up

Metrics offer a good insight into your project’s progress and serve as a backbone to your business case. Does your software have a “dashboard” to view who is using the software and who is not logging in at all or engaging with it? Tracking engagement is not a finger-pointing exercise, but it is a way for you to spot and train people who may be lagging behind. In our experience, follow-up sessions or drop-in clinics allow users who may not have had the best experience initially to get a better grip with the technology in a reliable environment.

9. Everybody loves rewards

Generally, adopters of a product with great user experience will become advocates of the same. We recommend rewarding these early adopters to incentivise those that have not had a shot yet. Company or business-unit wide “shout-outs”, greater responsibility, or even “hall-of-fame” programmes that visibly reward those using the new tools and showcasing their personal wins are great approaches to incentivise users to continue using new tech.

10. Be ready to resolve any obstacles

Like all organisations, conflicts and blockers often arise. Barriers to adoption must be resolved early, during the proof-of-concept or feedback phase. Will resistant users require more targeted and personalised training? Would it be worth checking in with users in different business units at regular intervals? Who needs to be reassured, convinced, or involved? These are critical questions that need to be addressed regularly to ensure that the adoption of any new tool is optimised.

Continuous improvement

Once you’ve launched your chosen software and ensured adoption, you will probably wonder what is next and how to keep it all going. Below are three expert tips that will guarantee that you regularly improve, hone, and tweak your process to assure you get the most out of what you’ve invested:

Keep your finger on the pulse: Periodic catch-ups, webinars and check-ins, especially with end-users and their direct managers are essential to keep up-to-date with how stakeholders feel about the new product. Being alert will help you evaluate any bottlenecks or gaps in understanding and deciding whether any revisions to the current process is needed.
Stay in touch with updates: Technology evolves quickly. By staying up to date with the latest trends and software updates, you can continue to evaluate the company’s needs against what the tool provides.
Implement and iterate: Once you have completed the previous steps, you should have a clearer understanding of how your team feels about the tool you have implemented. Through the strategic deployment of changes to your process, and identifying any blocks or bottlenecks, you will find the perfect fit for continuous improvement. It is also important to keep iterating and adapting your process to suit your business’ shifting needs.

Interested to know more about document automation? Then check out our ultimate guide, which contains everything you need to know about document automation, planning and executing a document automation project, and how document automation can help your business work more efficiently and get to “yes” faster.

Read more from Avvoka:

By: Macarena Valenzuela

4 June 2021

Technology: Breaking down how to select the perfect Document Automation solution

eliotbenzecrit Automation, Avvoka, Legal Tech, Software Updates, Technology Article, Document automation, ROI

(2 minute read)

The legal tech landscape and document automation

Legal tech encompasses many different types of technology. There are technologies that can automate contracts, manage entire suites of documents, act as a knowledge repository and do a whole host of other things! Narrowing in on document automation, there are tools that solely focus on document automation, and tools that make document automation a part of their overall offering, often pushing another capability as the overall product’s unique selling point.

In this post we will review :

What do I need to ask?

When picking a technology, it is difficult to choose one due to the sheer number of technologies available. We have a set of questions you should consider when procuring a new tool:

The most important questions

How easy is it to automate my document? This is the most critical question you should be asking. Most platforms you see will tell you that the automation is ‘easy’ or ‘no-code’ – but both terms can be a bit deceiving. The easier the tool is to use, the quicker and easier it is for people to learn how to automate. Therefore, the more documents you will end up automating. As such, a live demo or even a free trial are optimal methods to try and get as hands-on as possible with the technology; and if a company are willing to offer this, it’s a sign that their tool could be the right one for you as they are confident in delivering the value proposition.

Costs – Ask whether there be additional costs such as customer support, custom development or server maintenance fees. It is also important to note the technology’s pricing model. If you want to use the tool for the long haul, discounting by user group size is a key consideration.
Hosting – Ask if your document automation tool will be hosted by your provider in the cloud or whether the vendor will be making an on-premise installation. This is a notable security concern in the age of data that we currently find ourselves in!

Custom questions

Features – all tools will have different feature sets, but there are a few key ones to look out for you will probably need on your automation journey:
- Loops – ability to dynamically add more answers to a question. E.g. Please add the name of the directors.
- Formatting – custom numbering styles, tables, headers and footers, and so on!
Integrations – it’s vital that the document automation software you select can integrate into your existing processes. This saves time and efficiency, making it easier to add the new technology to your existing methods of working. Check if the tool has a modern API, and ask for examples of integrations that have been already done. Common ones include pre-populating a questionnaire from another system or taking data out from signed documents.

Self-serving your automation

You need to ask who will be automating your documents. You have two fundamental choices:

outsource it (to the tech vendor, or a consultant); or
learn to do the automation yourself.

Outsourcing

Outsourcing offers a quick initial setup as the external contractor will already know how to use their automation tool of choice. Therefore, they could start automating documents as soon as you have prepared the document for automation. However, there are a few downsides.

Outsourcing can be very expensive with day rates reaching £1,000 per day. In addition, it can be very time consuming to make small adjustments to the automation. If you want to make a quick change to the automation at short notice, you will have to join the queue for automation to be done. This is before considering the additional cost.

Learning to automate

Conversely, learning to self-serve your contracts has multiple positives. It is cost-efficient as after you have the licences and the know-how to automate, you can add as many templates as you want, for the same price. Moreover, the knowledge of how the document was automated is retained within your organisation, which means it can be very quick to make changes.

Negatives

There are some drawbacks to consider, but these are quickly overcome with time and experience of self-automating. Automation takes time to learn. Even the most intuitive tools will take a couple of hours to understand. Hence, there will be slower initial results.

Recommended approach

In our experience, we think there is no doubt that learning how to automate yourself is the best way to go. You will save money, quickly apply changes, and be able to spread the knowledge across your organisation. Self-serving documents puts them in the hands of those who know them best!

Read more from Avvoka:

By:  Raam Jeganathan

Partnership and collaboration vector concept metaphor

27 April 2021

Implementation: Seamless Workflows with Integrations

eliotbenzecrit Automation, Avvoka, Legal Tech, Technology, Tips Article, Document automation, implementation, integrations

(4 minute read)

One of the most important things that you should consider when looking for a software provider is what integrations they offer, as well as how you can potentially integrate.

Why? Well, no one wants to use a document automation platform that doesn’t integrate with their existing CRM. This would mean having to copy and paste the information from, for example, Salesforce directly into the platform – increasing the risk for mistakes, which you were most likely aiming to minimise in the first place when you embarked on your document automation journey. In order to encourage the adoption of your document automation solution, you should be prioritising integrations with your existing systems.

This article is going to focus solely on integrations, including:

By the end of this article you’ll be confident when speaking to vendors about integrations, as well as understanding what the integration process and rollout will look like.

What are integrations?

You’ve likely heard the word integrations thrown around a lot, especially as you’ve set out on your document automation journey, but it is best to take a step back and think about what an integration actually is. Put simply, an integration means to unite one piece of technology with another and typically to transfer data between them.

Breaking it down even further, you can think of an integration as different technology platforms speaking with each other. This normally happens in one of two different ways:

One of the systems pulls data from another;
Or the system pushes data to another.

What’s the difference? If system A pulls data from system B, that means that system A is the one that can now manipulate and use the data in some way in their system. This might be done by populating the questionnaire with a customer’s information from system B’s CRM tool, or creating new users and adding them to documents. On the other hand, when system A pushes data to system B this is likely for system B to use the data. For example, pushing a completed document back in to your document management system once you’ve signed the contract.

What’s important in both scenarios when looking at pushing or pulling data is that either system can be the one that triggers the transfer of data. This flow of data is something that you should be thinking about when you are looking at the integration options from various providers, as well as what you would need from an integration internally.

When considering what types of integrations you may come across in the document automation market, you should be looking at receiving data from one of the tools that you already use internally to fill out the questionnaires, sending completed questionnaires and the relevant data to your CRM system, or integrating with an e-signature platform like DocuSign and Adobe Sign. For example, you can check our the different integrations we offer at Avvoka that allow you to integrate Avvoka into your existing internal stack.

Different types of integrations

APIs, No-Code, and Webhooks – oh my! You might be a bit overwhelmed at the thought of integrations and the various options available, but we’ll try and make them as simple as possible for you.

What’s important to remember is that regardless of the terms used, an integration at its core is the transfer of data between two different systems. Each method is just a different way of accomplishing that transfer.

An API, or Application Programming Interface, is a set of methods that allows others to access different parts of an application. This might mean you can add users, create documents, or download documents without having to access the application itself. What’s important is that some software systems APIs are more extensive than others and will allow you to achieve more, so it’s important to look at what functions the API actually allows to ensure that it meets your integration needs.
- If they do have an API, what comes next? Typically either your vendor’s software developers or your own will programme an interface that acts as a middleman between the two systems. This means that it calls the different functions from the document automation solution’s API based at pre-defined timings. Typically, you are merging together two APIs at this stage to have them communicate.

Webhooks, like an API, are something that you can leverage for third party integrations. This time, instead of the middleman interface calling the document automation provider’s API, it is listening for calls or ‘notifications’ from the platform instead. Webhooks will send a message to your chosen URL based on different actions. These actions might include when a document is signed or created. This means that rather than your API interface constantly checking for every document created and its status afterwards, it is able to just wait for the notification.
- Typically what happens after the notification is that you might leverage the API to download the signed document, for example, after the webhook that notified you it had been signed. Webhooks are also great for integrations with tools like Slack, to send messages every time the status of a document changes.
No-Code integrations refer to integrations that have already been set up and pre-configured. You won’t need the middleman interface that you do with webhooks or an API, and you can typically provide your third party account details directly to the system’s platform. This is like when you can link your Instagram account directly from another tool. To be able to do that, you didn’t need to build the integration first.

What you should be looking for

The integrations you’ll need will largely depend on your existing software tools and how you plan to implement your chosen document automation tool at your business. Here are a few considerations to make when deciding which integrations to implement:

The tools already in use at your workplace – which tools do you already use? If there is a CRM tool relied upon across your organisation, it will be important to integrate that with the document automation tool. Picking a tool that fits in seamlessly with the software you already use will ensure you’re not adding any additional work for your employees when you are meant to be saving them time.
What you’d like to get out of your document automation platform – are you interested in integrating with an AI tool for additional insights? Or maybe you’re looking to have a more seamless workflow, rather than having to bounce between different tools. Your needs will determine whether you need any integrations!
What data do you need transferred between systems? This is an important question, as it underpins how your integration will work. Just because your chosen solution has an API and so does your existing DMS, this does not mean that they are going to integrate easily if you decide that you want to include the metadata from your document as well. Ideally, you will have considered what data you need to be integrated before looking for a solution to ensure you know that it can be easily transferred between systems.

Now if you have decided to include some integrations, it’s important to consult with your document automation team:

Do they support integration? A big one. If a provider can’t integrate with your essential tools, you’ll likely have to look for different software.
What is their current testing strategy? Will your team ensure that the integration successfully works before completing the project.
How will the integration work? Will it be seamless? Ensure you are on the same page as the software company by asking lots of questions and having them walk you through how the integration will work.

Rolling Out Integrations

Once you have asked your necessary questions and are ready to develop and roll out your integrations with your document automation provider its important to you are ready to do so. We’d recommend:

Having a plan – as we keep mentioning, it’s important to make sure that you are clear on what data you need to be sending as well as which way the data may flow. You’ll want to make sure that you and your vendor are both clear on what you expect to happen
Map out the expected user flow – do you want individual users to be able to access the integration? Where should they input their log in details? How often should the data be sent to your CRM system? These are important things to think about when defining the user workflow and touch points with the integration. It’s useful at this point to ensure that you are also communicating with those using your internal systems to make sure you are clear on their expectations
Agree a development timescale and process – you and your vendor should be clear on what the development process will look like. Note that this will vary depending on who is undertaking the development of the middleman systems if you are using their API or webhooks
Ensure you test often – try and imagine every way that the integration might be used, and make sure that you test for every outcome. What’s worse than no integration at all is likely an integration that doesn’t do what you expected it to

Summary

To sum it all up, the most important thing that you can do when planning your rollout as well as initially looking for a vendor is to understand what you’d need in terms of integrations. To make sure you are prepared you need to confidently be able to say what data you expect to be transferred between systems, whether that’s a single list of options for a questionnaire answer, the metadata attached to the document, or something else entirely.

No two APIs are built the same, so while it’s good to be on the lookout for a solution with an API its more important to understand how you expect the workflow to be executed once your integration is developed, and to ensure that your document automation system’s integration options can handle that. This is also a conversation that you will likely need to have with your existing vendor’s integration team as well.

Finally, just because a vendor doesn’t list your chosen internal tool as an integration that they offer, it is still worth discussing with them to see if you can leverage something like their API or webhooks to achieve that integration.

Read more from Avvoka:

By: Amy Conroy

21 April 2021

Implementation: Kickstarting your Automation Journey

eliotbenzecrit Automation, Avvoka, Innovation, Legal Tech, Technology, Tips Article, Document automation, implementation, project

(4 minute read)

This week’s blog will help you kickstart your document automation journey.

Highlights include:
? Choosing which documents to automate first.
? How to decide your overall automation strategy and aims.
? Why you should use standardised data points.

We will also give you some insider tips on how to plan a flawless document automation implementation. Keep reading to find out more.

Implementation 101: Template consolidation ?

You are raring to get started on the implementation of your automation project. You want to start with the automation of your documents now that you have gotten your hands on your document automation tool. You decide upon the employment agreement and eagerly open your template bank, only to be met with twelve different types of employment agreements. You then ask yourself one of the most common questions in document automation – ‘should I keep these in separate templates, or merge them?’

Merging multiple templates is often called ‘template consolidation’ or ‘template rationalisation’. It involves taking your entire universe of ‘Agreement X’ variants and consolidating them to the lowest number of templates that makes sense.

When you are thinking about the implementation of your document automation project, you should consolidate documents wherever possible. This doesn’t mean merging your employment agreement and your termination letters into the same document. Instead, similar documents should be kept in the same template, and this template should be automated to accommodate the document variations so that the end-user is guided into creating the perfect document. As a rule of thumb, documents sharing around two-thirds of the same provisions (or could be if they were re-drafted) should be housed in the same template.

Let’s look at a practical example.

I have the following template agreements in my folder:

Employment Agreement – with bonus scheme
Employment Agreement – standard
Employment Agreement – with a probation period and share scheme
Hong Kong Employment Agreement – basic
Consultancy Agreement

Assuming these all contain standard clauses and cover the same topics, you would create one master ‘Employment Agreement’ with a selection of provisions that could be dropped in.

Automation ?

Now the fun part of the implementation – automating! How you get started will depend on which software you have selected (see our guide here). However, some tips apply across all tools:

? Plan your implementation and automation

Should I template all the documents at once, one-by-one, or in groups? In deciding, you may want to consider the possible use cases your tool may cater for.

Now that you have identified the documents to template, you need to decide on an automation strategy. You have several options here. You could spend the next few months templating and testing, then release the templates all at once. On the other end would be to template only one document type at a time. Alternatively, you could take an approach which straddles the middle. There is no one-size-fits-all. Ultimately, the choice depends on the business drivers behind automation and the selection of particular templates. That said, we have learnt from experience that delivering templates in groups poses the fewest obstacles.

One-by-one
- Positives:
  - The whole team is focused on delivering a template in a single sprint, ensuring high quality in minimal time.
  - Automating one template at a time is best suited for when there is an imminent business need for a flagship contract to be up and running as soon as possible.
  - The team can identify any workflow issues in their overall templating approach early and apply them to subsequently automated documents.
- Negatives:
  - Focusing on one template for too long can lead to idle time for other teams and disengagement with the project.
  - Different contracts are owned by different legal and business teams.
All templates at once
- Positives:
  - All energy is directed to the templating process rather than being spread between rolling out and conducting training for completed templates, while still automating others.
  - This approach may allow you to plan resources better as you know your legal and business teams will be deeply involved for a few months before handing over to the end-users.
  - Planning for training may be simplified as the entire business can be trained at the same time.
- Negatives:
  - There is a risk in progressing all templates together. If an issue is spotted after going live, you will need to go back to all templates to fix them. Depending on the magnitude of the error, rectification could take from anywhere from days to weeks.
Groups
- Positives:
  - By confining templating work to a group of documents initially, you are conducting a rollout on a smaller scale, such as within one unit. This will allow you to plan better for subsequent rollouts to other units.
  - You can focus on delivering a handful of contracts in one go, thus creating a functional suite of documents for end-users and gaining competency in your automation tool.
  - User Acceptance Testing is more easily managed at this scale, helping to ensure higher quality templates are released to the end-users.
- Negatives:
  - Care has to be taken in choosing the first group to work on, as you may end up being too focused on it due to a large volume of documents or complexity of consolidation.
  - Multiple work streams will be formed as different groups will be at different stages of implementation, such as templating, rolling out, or training. You can read more about a typical implementation timeline here.

? In what order should I automate my documents?

Now you have selected your documents and your approach to automation, there is one final thing to decide on before you start implementing your document automation project – which documents to tackle first. We recommend beginning by only picking a group of three or four documents to template. Some factors to consider:

‘Readiness’
- All projects, automation or otherwise, need early success stories to build engagement levels. You can streamline your project if you have contracts that have already been rationalised, and drafting instructions exist (or could easily be created). Using such contracts will give you the ability to quickly deliver a handful of automated templates at the beginning of the process, thus buying the time and confidence you need to work through the larger documents.
User group – how many users will be using this template?
- An NDA is a classic example of a ‘group one’ contract type, but you should consider that NDAs are used by the whole business and the implications of needing to train and rollout the document to the whole business at once. That said, this may allow each business area to get used to the system with a simple generic document while their core business documents are being automated, which helps generate more engagement due to their success with the NDA.
- Consider what you want to achieve in terms of user engagement at the planning stage. If you want the political buy-in of multiple user groups, ensure the first group documents are not confined to one business area like NDAs and basic commercial contracts like assignment agreements. An alternative but still valid strategy would be to first automate the documents of a particularly receptive business group and iron out any early issues before tackling more challenging areas of the firm.
Complexity
- The best mix for your first set of documents is a group made up of mostly simple contracts and one more complex agreement. Ideally, you would get the simple documents functional fast for quick PR wins, but the complex agreement will help assure the more cynical among the group of the capabilities of your automation tool. You can learn more about Avvoka’s simple yet powerful automation functions here.

?How much should I automate?

There’s a temptation to make the perfect template, with every single word and possible option, automated. While the ‘automate everything’ approach will work in some cases, it usually leads to inefficient templates that are hard to maintain. Start small, keep it simple and aim to automate 60% of your document and then iterate. You will be amazed how much time you could save with even just five to ten key questions that lead to large parts of the document conditionally dropping in.

For each section, you should weigh up the complexity of automating that section versus doing it manually. A great example is the recital sections of documents – these can be some of the most fiddly aspects to automate – but is it any quicker than just typing it out in the document? If this leads to you typing into the questionnaire what you would too in a word document, it may be ultimately be more efficient to leave that part unautomated.

?Think about the end-user

When you are implementing your document automation project, keep in mind who will be answering the questions to create the document. Will it be the commercial team? New joiners? Legal only? Always word the questions in a way that makes sense to a user. Nothing will bring inefficiencies back into your automated process quite like ambiguity and confusion in the question.

A great example is something as simple as:

Please select the governing law of the contract.

English law
New York law
French law

Where is the deal team based?

London
New York
Paris

These two will both result in a change to the jurisdiction clause, even though they are phrased differently and aimed at different audiences.

? Use standardised data points

Another important part of automation you should consider before the implementation of your automation project is to identify replicated data points across your document, and standardizing them wherever possible. This will save you from having to write repeated questions for the same condition or data point, massively improving the end-user’s experience by saving their time. After all, no one wants to spend an hour answering fifty different questions when the same data can be collected in five different questions. You can read more about the benefits of automating with standardised data points here.

What do we mean? Think about it this way. At the beginning of your document, you see that the company name can become a placeholder that the end-user can type in. So, you create your [company name] attribute. Later on, you see square brackets around [full company name], and you create a placeholder called “full company name”. Now, your user will have to enter the data for both [full company name] and [company name] as answers to two different questions.

By standardising your data points, you can avoid that repetition and ensure the highest accuracy for your documents. Thus, before you jump into automating your documents, you should identify common pieces of data that will repeat and pick a standard name for each placeholder. With practice and time spent familiarising yourself with the data points in your document, you are much more likely to condense your questionnaire and end up with fewer questions automating various aspects of your document.

Read more from Avvoka:

By:  Yap San Zhi

14 April 2021

Document Automation Approvals – Getting your Project Green-lit

eliotbenzecrit Automation, Avvoka, Legal Tech, Software Updates, Technology approvals, Article, Document automation, project, ROI

(3 minute read)

Last week our blog covered how to nail your legaltech and document automation rollout. This week’s post focuses on one of the biggest blockers for LegalTech projects: getting the necessary internal approvals. We all know how hard it is to get everyone on board with a new and innovative idea.

This article reviews :

Approvals

You’ll need to get any document automation project signed-off by the right people.

At Avvoka, we know that every company will be different and will need different approvals. The exact approvals, and approvers, can vary depending on the project budget, scope, jurisdiction etc. Ask around internally to find out who you need to seek approval from. Usually, they will fall into the following areas:

Budget approval – the preliminary approval you will need to gain is likely from the budget holder, or head of your finance department. It’s vital you clearly communicate your project’s aims, the potential ROI, and timeline.
Information security – do you have an in-house information security team? If so, the chances are they will need to sign-off that the technology you plan to use is safe.
IT – there will be some overlap with the information security team. In general, you will need to ensure that the planned technology will ‘fit in’ with everything else you currently use.

Manage approvals — Every company will be different and will need different approvals.

Stakeholders

A stakeholder is anyone impacted by the project or that has an interest in the project. The key stakeholders will vary depending on your type of business, whether the stakeholder is a legal document automation project or a commercial one. They will almost certainly include the approvers listed above, but the group is also far broader than this. Common stakeholders typically include some of the following:

End-User: The person that will be working with your new document automation tool. Their primary concerns will be the effect on their long-term role and how it will disrupt their current workflow in the medium-term. The critical thing to do to reassure them is to bring them into the decision making process early. Highlight the benefits of the tool, but also listen to any concerns they might have. Typically people are worried about short term-disruption and the long-term impact on their job.
Project manager: This could be you! The project manager role will be dependent on your company. It is whoever is in charge of managing the budget, timeline and scope of the project. The project manager will often act as the liaison with the software company. The Project manager’s key role is keeping stakeholders informed of progress and managing their expectations.
Finance/Budget holder: As noted above, they hold the keys to the budget for your organisation. It’s essential to convince them that the document automation tool’s implementation will represent a good return on investment worth the money. We cover creating a business case below, and there will be a separate article on ROI coming up soon!
IT director: The person in charge of technology at your business. It is vital to ensure you reassure them about the need for document automation, critical use cases unique to the firm, and how much money implementing the tool will save you in the long run. They will be interested in the budget, but will also have broader interests. How does this tool fit-in with the broader IT stack, do we have capacity to implement it, what is the architecture like etc. These are points your third-party partner can help you with, ensure you’re getting enough documentation from them.
Internal Communications: If you have an internal communications team, they will be responsible for helping ensure that the rollout is a success. As noted above, communication to the stakeholders is key – ensure you are communicating with them at every stage of the process and especially in the run-up to the release of the product in your company. Managing expectations, clearly articulating benefits, and training materials are all key communications that needs to be managed along the way.
Legal sponsor: Unique to in-house or law firm document automation projects, you will want to get a senior lawyer involved in the project as one of the key stakeholders. They will help you work with smaller teams and help push the software’s release amongst their teams. It will be vital to get feedback from legal teams on how these documents should be automated, so it’s a great idea to involve the relevant people as early as possible.
Commercial sponsor: A role unique to in-house automation projects rather than law firms. You should include stakeholders from each part of the business using the automation tool. These systems need to work for everyone, and there is no point implementing a tool that the legal teams love, but the business teams don’t – and vice versa.

Involve people early – all the best document automation projects that we have seen, have engaged key people in the process early. There is no point engaging a key stakeholder group once the decision has already been made, or at a point where it is difficult to go back.

stakeholders — Involve people early in your project. This will help you managing approvals.

Budget approval and creating a successful business case

Budget, budget and budget – implementing a document automation project can be significantly cheaper than it previously was, but the chances are you will still need to get budget sign-off before you can start your automation project.

A successful business case is one which is well thought through and clearly articulated. To give yourself the best chance of success, try and make sure you:

Identify the problem – it sounds obvious, but all business cases need to start with the issues. Which documents are taking too long, which documents are error-prone, which documents do you need more visibility over.
Different problems for different people – a document automation project will solve different problems for different people. A junior lawyer might benefit from the time efficiency, but the senior lawyers in the team might want to see the overall data patterns. The commercial teams might not care too much about the clause library, but will be very interested in how fast the documents can now be turned around. Be aware of how the project will impact (positively, and negatively) on each group.
Data on the existing problems – how long does processing take at the moment, how often are errors made, how long does it take to produce reports on these contracts now? If you don’t have the data right now, start to track it, even if it is only rough estimates. It’s better to have a rough ‘finger in the air’ idea that a process takes 3 days, that no idea at all.
Select the right documents – almost all documents can be automated, but not all documents should necessarily be automated – start with the quick wins. Select documents that are ready to be automated (good templates) are used in high-volume and need some degree of customisation for each use. We like to start with documents that are a couple of levels above an NDA. Think: Terms of Business, Engagement Letters, Licence Agreements. More on how to select your documents in future articles.
Estimate your ROI – all of the above points feed into this. ROI is absolutely key. Compare the data you have gathered about your existing process, to the process you hope to put in place. Ask your potential document automation tool for some example efficiency stats on projects like yours. Then compare the cost of doing nothing against the possible cost of any solution. If you can demonstrate your implementation will cost £2,000, but you will save £200,000 – then it’s a ‘no brainer’!

A successful business case is one that is well thought through and clearly articulated. This will help you get the necessary approvals.

Read more from Avvoka:

By: Avvoka

7 April 2021

Document Automation: Nailing your Legaltech Rollout

eliotbenzecrit Automation, Avvoka, Legal Tech, Software Updates, Technology Document automation, ROI, rollout

(4 minute read)

In this article we will discuss :

Define the aims of your Document Automation Project

Automating your documents can ensure your team is working efficiently, and available for higher-value work. Therefore, your overall aim will be to implement and integrate document automation into your existing business methods successfully. On top of that, you need to establish why you are implementing the automation solution in the first place – establishing your “why” will help you gain approval for the project.

A successful tool is one that saves you time, rather than costing you time once implemented. You should be looking for a document automation solution to fit into how your business already works and isn’t a pain to use. If your solution doesn’t integrate with the other tools you already rely on heavily (think Docusign or Salesforce), then it may be a lot more effort. Check out the no-code integrations that Avvoka offers here.

You should identify what you aim to get out of the tool you are implementing. Your “what” is especially relevant when you are identifying different solutions that work well for your business. Are you interested in using an end to end tool, which sees the document through to completion? Or, are you just interested in automating the process of drafting the document in the first place? Other tools also include contract analytics, general document analytics, or negotiation on their platforms. It is essential to understand which features your business would get the most out of, and how it would help you achieve a more efficient workstream. Take Avvoka for example, we are an end to end tool and we offer solutions for automation, collaboration, negotiation and analytics.

What about your actual automation project’s aims, and why do you need to implement automation in the first place? Identifying what you hope to see as a result of your implementing a document automation solution from the outset will help you identify and meet identifiable goals.

Think of the following benefits as a baseline for the aims of any tool you want to implement – this is just a starter for ten – we are sure you will have your own as you start to ask your colleagues about their pain points:

Reduce drafting errors for the first draft to complete your different documents. Anything from small typos, to inconsistent naming conventions.
Using multiple data points to speed up drafting across entire suites of documents
Integrate your document automation solution with other systems such as CRMs and document management systems for greater transparency and visibility over the entire document drafting lifecycle
Track data to spot areas of push back in your standard documents. If you know that tracking negotiation trends and outcomes is important to you, such knowledge can also help you narrow your search for an automation tool. It can also help you identify documents as ‘low hanging fruit’ – to harvest their data first!

Identifying your aims from the beginning of planning your automation journey will help you prioritise the implementation and testing of the tool and even pick a tool. These are excellent things to bring up with your automation vendor essential too, to ensure that all of your aims will be addressed and met throughout the project.

Automation Project Aims — First: define your aims.

Timelines

Next, the timeline – one of the most crucial parts of any project, and the most difficult one to answer accurately. Automation projects can last anywhere between two months to two years. The length of your project depends on a whole range of factors, including:

Number of documents to be automated
Automation complexity
How ‘ready’ are the documents to be automated (have we checked them for formatting? ‘playbooked’ which clauses need to be included or excluded based on selection?)

At Avvoka, we like to break the project down into a few different parts. A ‘pilot’ period is likely to be the first stage of your project, where you will test the project’s implementation on a select group of pilot users. Document automation projects have the following steps:

Planning: Picking your documents, users, and confirming your basic requirements
Document consolidation: Here’s where you move beyond the small set of documents you worked with and begin to consolidate the documents into different groups, making it easier to generate typical templates
Automation: The exciting stuff – when your documents actually get automated. Either you or a third-party will work on turning your documents into automated document templates
Testing: Perform User Acceptance Testing, where a small user group can test the automated documents. Here you can also try the platform and any potential integrations of your new document automation tool with your existing tools
Training: Begin preparing for a management change, from your third-party partner to your internal team. At least one team member should become familiar with the document automation software, to ensure they can train other employees internally
Optional – ‘phased’ approach: How long the pilot period lasts is between you and the software provider – but it’s essential to ensure your pilot users have enough time to get comfortable with the software and provide valuable feedback so you can ensure that it is the right software for you
Launch: You have an official handover from the software company to yourself. Now the product is officially ready to use! You can choose how you launch the tool, whether by business unit or through document grouping

Project Timeline — Timeline – one of the most crucial parts of any project.

Documents

Which documents should you automate first?

While the vast majority of documents are ripe for automation, not all documents are made equal. Therefore, it is essential to identify the right contract types before starting your automation project. There are three main areas you should consider when selecting your contracts – try scoring each of your document candidates in these three areas:

Volume
- The contracts that are created most often typically benefit most from automation. Any saving that can be made per individual agreement can be multiplied across a large number leading to a great ROI. Contracts that fit into such a category are usually great places to start with any project
Complexity
- The degree of complexity can be both a plus and a minus when assessing a candidate for automation. On the one hand, complex documents will take longer to break down into automation instructions and longer to automate. However, the amount of work that goes into the automation of a contract is also typically linked to the amount of time the given document would take to draft in your existing process. Therefore, these documents can be the showpiece of an automation project – taking a 4-hour drafting process down to just 5 minutes
‘Readiness’
- All projects, automation or otherwise, need early success stories to build engagement levels. Suppose you have contracts that have already been rationalised, and instructions exist or could easily be created. In that case, these contracts should warrant serious consideration. The ability to quickly deliver a handful of automated templates at the beginning of the process will buy time and confidence to work through the larger documents

When selecting documents to automate, the key point is to avoid those that only apply to limited, and particular circumstances. Documents with limited uses are not ideal for automation. On the other hand, if you have multiple types of documents that vary in small sections, then automation may be the perfect solution to consolidate these documents and work on them as one. You must evaluate where your colleagues are spending the most time and which documents are best suited for automation to realise your document automation tool’s full benefits.

The biggest tip we can give is not to go overboard initially – start with small, prioritise ‘better’ over ‘perfect’ and don’t worry about covering every potential document type from the beginning!

Read more from Avvoka:

By: Krishna Swaminathan

Sales growth concept vector illustration.

23 March 2021

Why should you automate?

eliotbenzecrit Automation, Avvoka, Legal Tech, Software Updates, Technology Article, Document automation, ROI

(2 minute read)

Automation is about doing tasks quicker and better. Automated documents allow you to generate draft documents more rapidly and in a way that ensures perfection, every time.

In document automation systems, you create what are known as ‘template’ documents. These templates documents are then embedded with rules that govern the inclusion, transformation, or deletion of text, based on particular information the user provides (such as survey responses).

Document automation has a huge range of both practical and business benefits.

In this article we will review:

Practical benefits

Automation brings adoptees a number of super practical benefits:

Pace! This is what first comes to mind when we think about document automation. Automation accelerates drafting both individual documents or several documents at once:
1. Creating a single document from an automated template is made faster because those provisions that may, or may not, need to be included in a particular are handpicked for you ahead of time. No more square bracket tinkering!
2. Generating multiple documents using document automation is quicker because automation tools can generate mass batches of similar documents. Some tools can even mass create many different types of documents at once – invaluable for mammoth transactions.
Accuracy. In document automation, you can restrict users’ edits to predefined fields (which can also contain validation). Software-generated documents have far fewer errors than human-drafted ones. Fewer mistakes mean less time checking through your documents!
No repeatedly re-entering the same information. Most business documents are drafting using data stored within other places like term sheets, excel files or other software. An automated document can even automatically import such information from these other locations. Automated data importation means less double-entry of data, greater accuracy and optimum efficiency.
Data-driven insights. Document automation helps you to keep your documents well organised and their commercial variables structured. The result is a living, breathing due diligence report! Run reports on your documents anytime and see summaries of their commercial terms they contain and what’s becoming market.
Integrated approval processes. Your automated documents can be configured to incorporate (and speed up) your internal approval processes. Suppose someone tried to input a particularly aggressive interest rate into your automated loan document. In that case, you could set up your document to automatically send a warning notification to finance. Automation paves the way for safe, compliant and auditable documents.

Business benefits

Many of the functional benefits come down to doing things faster while ensuring documents are still created in a safe, audited manner.

The business-centric reasons to automate your documents are:

More time for higher-value tasks. Teams with more time can spend more of their time doing their most complicated and beneficial tasks. More high-impact work empowers employees to add more value to clients and to enjoy their roles more. You’ll increase your organisation’s operational efficiency, and your teams won’t be stuck doing the work that no one loves doing.
User self-service. Members of your commercial teams can generate automated documents themselves quickly, safely and auditable. Involvement of Legal could be reserved for only where drafts go ‘off-piste’, and where their input is most sorely needed. Self-service limits internal back-and-forth and leads to quicker deal negotiations and less stressful lawyering!
Even stronger client relationships and positive experiences. Clients expect work to be completed fast and with no errors, which is a hard balance to strike when you are manually creating documents from scratch or copying and pasting in reusable drafting. Automation provides a very cost-effective method of rapidly delivering bespoke yet perfect documents.
Meet prospective clients’ expectations: Legal Tech and document automation software has developed rapidly recently. Many clients are beginning to expect a smooth user experience as a result of tech advances; they’ve often used Legal Tech themselves. Having an easy-to-use online platform that your clients can leverage to generate their documents will ensure you’ll remain their favourite advisor.

Read more from Avvoka:

By: Macarena Valenzuela

15 March 2021

What is document automation?

eliotbenzecrit Automation, Avvoka, Legal Tech, Software Updates, Technology Article, Automation, blog, Document automation, Legal innovation, Legal Tech, LegalTech, questionnaire, ROI, workflow

(3 minute read)

In this blog post we will discuss :

In general, automation means leveraging technology to achieve a certain task or process with little to no human assistance. In the context of document automation, the task happens to be the drafting of a document (including a contract) from a template. Once a document has been templated, the first draft of that document can be generated by answering a questionnaire or by pulling data from another system.

In document automation systems, users build what are known as ‘template’ documents. These templates include rules that dictate the inclusion, transformation, or deletion of text, based on particular inputs (like questionnaire responses).

To put it simply, document automation simplifies the manual process of creating the first draft of a document. No more square bracketed fields! You only have to answer a questionnaire, which pulls the data and populates the document as desired. This not only saves time but also reduces errors and improves the consistency of the documents you create.

document automation templating questions answers document

Diving Deeper

There are 3 key elements to most automation tools:

Questionnaire: this is the cornerstone of automation. All the information from the questionnaire will be populated across the document.

Placeholders: They replace the square brackets in the document, that contains all the interchangeable information that is needed in a contract (for example the names of the parties that will be entering into a contract). This saves a lot of time! Instead of manually deleting every square bracketed field, you’re typing the answer once and the answer is populated wherever it is required in the document.

Conditionality: This is where words, phrases, sentences, or entire clauses or paragraphs drop in and out of the contract depending upon if they are required or not. They operate on “if this, then that” logic. For example, if a bullet payment is required, then a bullet repayment clause will be required in the contract. It works like a flow chart or “decision-tree”, and it can get very complex.

More sophisticated forms of document automation can include workflow management. With workflows, the document assembly logic can also result in certain approvals being needed or even for another follow-on task to occur in another system. For example, users can configure documents, so approval requests or follow-on tasks are triggered where specific document terms or properties are included. Imagine that your manager automatically receives a notification to approve your work once you’ve finished.

Avvoka has a unique approach to document automation. Unlike legacy tools, our tool is truly no-code and intuitive. There’s no complex Word coding needed and no need to engage external consultants, keeping costs down. This makes the whole templating process hassle-free!

Where Does Document Automation Fit in the Legal Tech Landscape?

Legal Technology is continuously evolving and advancing. You are probably wondering where do document automation and other technologies fit in the Legal Tech landscape:

Don’t worry, automation is not here to replace lawyers! Automation and similar technologies are here to help lawyers and to supercharge what they can achieve.

These technologies can be a great tool to do away with routine, repetitive and mechanical tasks. They allow lawyers to concentrate on more creative work and do what they should do best: debating legal problems and commercial considerations and then providing quality legal advice to clients. Legal innovation is there to make our lives simpler, improve speed, reduce risks and minimise errors. Many law firms, in-house legal teams and business teams are already benefiting from document automation on a daily basis.

If you want to find out how you can get started with document automation, check out The Ultimate Guide: Document Automation 2022 – Our very own e-book where we provide expert legal tech advice about everything you will need to know and learn.

Read more from Avvoka:

By: Macarena Valenzuela