project Archives

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.

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:  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.

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: Avvoka