Document Automation - Document Assembly

Document Assembly

Document assembly was pioneered in the late 1970s in Utah by the company that would later become known as HotDocs. The basic functions are to replace the cumbersome manual filling in of repetitive documents with template-based systems where the user answers software-driven interview questions or data entry screen. The information collected then populates the document to form a good first draft'. Today's more advanced document automation systems allow users to create their own data and rules (logic) without the need for programming.

While document automation software is used primarily in the legal, financial services, and risk management industries, it can be used in any industry that creates transaction-based documents. Popular document automation solutions on the market today include HotDocs, Business Integrity, Inforama, Exari, Intelledox, Rapidocs, TheFormTool, Xpertdoc, XpressDox, ActiveDocs and dox42. A good example of how document automation software can be used is with commercial mortgage documents. A typical commercial mortgage transaction can include several documents including:

• promissory note
• environmental indemnity
• trust deed
• mortgage
• guaranty

Some of these documents can contain as many as 80 to 100 pages, with hundreds of optional paragraphs and data elements. Document automation software has the ability to automatically fill in the correct document variables based on the transaction data. In addition, some document automation software has the ability to create a document suite where all related documents are encapsulated into one file, making updates and collaboration easy and fast.

Simpler software applications that are easier to learn can also be used to automate the preparation of documents, without undue complexity. Clipboard managers such as textBEAST allow the user to save frequently-used text fragments, organize them into logical groups, and then quickly access them to paste into final documents.