Document Assembly & Case Management Blog

I have never been more optimistic about the future of document assembly than today. After years of retrenchment and stagnation, the market is full of new energy and ferment.  HotDocs is under new management, but it is not clear what direction it will be taking.  On the desktop, XpressDox has been launched by key developers formerly of Korbitec, developers of GhostFill. At $150/user, a free full-functioning trial downloads, a full powered syntax markup that requires NO component file and automatically determines relevance, there is some real new energy on the desktop level. 

On the server level, it is even more exciting.  Most document assembly server systems started at $25,000 and then went up into the statosphere.  At those prices, document assembly servers were the exclusive domain of large corporations and large firms, or used as publishing platforms.  The software, from Exari, Business-Integrity, and LexisNexis was very powerful, but often required, in addition to cost extensive domain knowledge in configuring and hardening a web-server, beefy hardware requirement, and large bandwidth.  Changes in management at HotDocs and Exari, as well as changes in direction at Business-Integrity could soon change that equation. 

The first out of the gate with a solution for the “uncommon attorney” and little guy is Business Integrity.  It has taken its powerful DealBuilder document assembly and relevance engine and rebranded, repackaged, and re-engineered it to function in the CLOUD on a hosted SAAS basis.  With the release of ContractExpress this week, Business Integrity, has thrown down the gauntlet.  For $195/month per user, you can now have world-class document assembly on the web.  And, if you have never seen ContractExpress in action, it redefines document assembly in power and ease of use.

D3 from Microsystems has flown under the radar for years.  I mentioned it in a Technolawyer review of document assembly products several years ago.  It was a powerful “clause-based” system that enabled and integrated well with advanced Microsoft products, included Exchange Server and SQL Server.  It was sold by Microsystems out of Chicago and was popular with large firms looking to extend the power of macro-suite products without leaving the Microsoft environment.  The product was in fact embedded in a task panel in Microsoft Word.  Well, as you can see in the release below, copied from the Microsystems web-site, a recent change in MS Word has rendered the product inoperable, and Microsystems is withdrawing D3 from the market.  The reason, custom XML tags that a recent Microsoft product change (required by an anti-trust settlement with the European Union regulators) removed from the product, on which D3 depends.  This is not the first time that changed by a word-processing vendor caused document assembly products to “die”.  WordPerfect was notorious in earlier versions from regularly updating its macro language, rending macro-based suites based on one version inoperable on upgrade.

What is the role of the “independent consultant”?  And should the “independent consultant” be allowed to benefit from a “sale” based on his/her independent recommendation?  Software vendors with “reseller” programs have always wanted a “free sales force” of consultants who offer their software “exclusively”; no salary, no benefits, no costs. These consultants are “paid” by the vendor in the form of commissions on sales (often narrowly defined) or referral fees and access to NFR copies of the software.  And yet, the questions arises, when one vendor demands exclusivity, what is the “price” for independence.  This article looks at the price and the benefits of an in independent non-exclusive consulting program to clients.  Some of the arguments are obvious, but they bear restating.

Imagine a world where the “digital world” merged with the “physical world”.  Combine a mini-lcd projector, a ccd camera, a cell phone, and a micro-processor in a device the size of an iTouch.  And then add software that support “multi-touch gestures”.  What you get is the vision of Pranav Mistry (a MIT professor) for what he calls a “sixth sense” device.  Check out the video presentation on TED.com (or click on the link below in the article). 

If you use OUTLOOK or EXCHANGE, you must get XOBNI.  That is inbox backwards.  And it works that way.  It turns your inbox upside down.  From a morass of emails and other crap, XOBNI brings order.  And it does this without you providing any organizing principle.  No need for folders and rules etc.  Rather, there is a simple search box.  It indexes your inbox.  It creates profiles of all your senders and recipients.  It pulls their data automatically from LinkedIn, Twitter, Hoovers, Facebook and other social networking services.  It shows the relationships between that person and ALL your other contacts.  It takes your emails and threads them together in conversations (remember GMAIL).  And it exposes and makes searchable ALL attached documents.

After several years in Beta, Google Scholar has been launched.  For years, “web-based” services have been nipping at the heels of Lexis Legal Research and Westlaw Legal Research.  Several states have put their case law and statutes on line; so have the federal government.  Some ventures have tried to harness the “free databases” and build usable front end search module.  The result has been a patchwork of “data”, sufficient for the “common man” but lacking in depth, scope and comprehensiveness to be used by attorneys.  There was always the risk of missing the latest slip opinion, amendment, or missing the back information about the statutory and regulatory enactments.

With the release of Google Scholar, a new and very well funded player has entered the arena:  Google.  Armed with billions of dollars and a mission to “do good” while also making money, Google has brought its vaunted search engine to the area of law and statutes.  Read the quoted release below and check it out. The search engine options are still fairly limited, but the scope of the database is enormous. 

This week LexisNexis divested itself of the HotDocs software group.  It sold the assets the group to Capsoft UK.  In a post on LinkedIn, titled “Capsoft Buys HotDocs Software Business from LexisNexis,” Loretta Rupert, Senior Director of Community Management wrote:

LexisNexis is divesting HotDocs to its leading global distributor Capsoft. This divestiture is in keeping with the LexisNexis strategy to provide a family of complementary products in the legal market. HotDocs is a very popular product with many satisfied customers but no longer fits with the Practice Management product line. The sale to Capsoft allows HotDocs customers to benefit from continued support and product development to meet their evolving needs.

Capsoft is the largest distributor of HotDocs software globally and has over 13 years experience with the technology. As LexisNexis continues to transform its lineup of offerings to focus on the company’s core competencies, Capsoft is singularly equipped to maintain and enhance HotDocs software and support for you.

LexisNexis is retaining its Hot Docs Automated Forms business that utilizes HotDocs Player and unique LexisNexis content. To do this, LexisNexis is licensing HotDocs software to support Automated Forms and to resell the HotDocs software in certain markets.

In our last home, we had a postage stamp sized back yard.  With a wooden pike fence on one side, a hedge on the other, and a wire mesh fence on the third, as well as a gated driveway, we had the dog contained. Chloe, a border collie/pointer cross, weighing in at 70 pounds could do 3 full circuits of the backyard before you could count to 60.  And so, each morning, each afternoon and each night, she bolted out the back door at mach speed to reign terror on any wooded creature that dared to cross our threshold.  It is all different now.

It’s day two in the new office.  You have seen the layout in a previous post. What you may not realize it has windows from desk level to the ceiling on three sides; that’s a lot of window and a lot of heat.  We put in new electricity line to handle all the equipment, and put in new baseboard heating on a separate zone.  The view out the window is nothing short of stupendous.

As Published in TechnoLawyer on October 6, 2009: You’ve heard of document assembly, and you’ve heard of cloud computing (Software as a Service). And maybe you’ve even heard about Web-based document assembly tools. But what about document assembly in your own private cloud? That’s what Exari offers law firms that want an on-site solution with minimal software setup. How well does Exari work? Read document assembly expert Seth Rowland’s exhaustive review in this TechnoFeature to find out. Seth doesn’t just review Exari, but he also explains how to calculate the return on investment for your firm. This article contains 2,149 words.