A recent article by my friend Marc Lauritsen, of Capstone Practice Systems marc@capstonepractice.com, discusses “practice system authoring software.” Some people refer to such software as document assembly software, some as automated drafting software, but Marc covers the basics of whatever its appellation. And whatever you call it, it can be productive for legal departments that handle a stream of similar agreements or documents.
Marc also lists six packages that are on the market. I have referred to all of them in at least one post collected in a metapost: HotDocs, DealBuilder, Exari, QShift, Rapidocs, and D3 (See my post of Feb. 26, 2008: document assembly with 16 references.).
Since I last collected my posts on document assembly several more have appeared and I mention two that Marc did not include: WhichDraft and Baseline Solutions (See my post of Aug. 15, 2008: survey results about useful applications from law firms include “automated drafting”; Dec. 9, 2008: benefits of document assembly according to a general counsel; Oct. 19, 2009: a solution to several contract management challenges; Oct. 22, 2009: WhichDraft.com and its application; Oct. 7, 2009: knowledge management and its four key challenges; Feb. 19, 2009: Latham & Watkins’ Capture program; Jan. 10, 2010: legal department has contract assembly database; March 11, 2010: Baseline Solutions.).