When you need to draft a new contract or legal document, do you open up a template and then manually update all the merge fields with client information? And when you need to collaborate on that document with clients and/or counter parties, are you still emailing it back and forth?
If this sounds like how you work, then it’s likely that your document creation and collaboration process is hurting your firm.
Discover the four ways manual drafting is costing your firm time and money and how you can easily remedy it.
Wasting time manually creating documents from templates
Imagine a client comes to you wanting to start a new business with a partner and they need your help creating all the legal documents the business requires to get set up (partnership agreement, shareholder agreements, etc) and to successfully run (sales contract, employment contracts, etc).
So you look in your template library and notice you have a few of these already and you go and grab one or two more from the local law society.
Next, you then manually go through each document and update the merge fields with client information, frequently entering the same information over and over again into each document.
Not only is this a huge waste of time, but it’s tedious, boring work that is likely making your work life more mundane and difficult.
Accidentally missing template merge fields
If you’re manually going through document templates and adding in client information like company names, addresses, etc. then there’s a chance you may accidentally miss one of those merge fields.
This is because our brain generalizes the simple, component parts of a task (like turning letters into words and words into sentences) so it can focus on the more complex parts of a tasks (like combining sentences to communicate complex ideas). It’s the same reason it’s not recommended to edit your own work and to instead get someone else to look over it.
If you do miss one of these fields and send it over to the client, best case is they find it and you look unprofessional. Worse case is they don’t find it and it becomes part of the signed contract, jeopardizing its integrity.
Either way, it’s bad for your relationship with the client, your brand, and your ability to win subsequent work from them, or for them to recommend you to others.
Not being able to work simultaneously
When you’re collaborating on a Word document with someone via email or a shared drive, it’s very difficult for two or more people to work simultaneously.
Imagine you’re collaborating with your colleagues James and Joel on a contract and you’re up to version 5 of the document. Both James and Joel open it up at the same time, make changes, save it as version 6 and email it back to you. You suddenly have two copies of version 6, one with James’ changes but without Joel’s, and the other with Joel’s changes but without James’.
Best case scenario, you realize this issue has arisen and you have to manually compare the two copies of version 6, find out who changed what, and manually merge them together. This takes a huge amount of time, usually requires input from all three collaborators and is painful, boring work.
Worst case scenario, you don’t realize this issue has arisen, continue working on James’ copy of Version 6 and then changes Joel made are lost. If Joel’s changes were critical to the contract or document, you could find yourself in a position whereby you’ve created (and potentially even signed) a legal document that is missing or has incorrect clauses.
Not being able to see the full history of a document
When collaborating on a legal document, it’s not uncommon to need to go back and see the full history of the document, including what changed, who changed it and when.
However, if you’re using email and crazy filenames like ‘Contract V10_DAVEEDITS’ for version control, then this can be very difficult to do.
You’d literally have to open up every version to see what was inside it and you’d have to manually compare each version to see what changed, particularly if Track Changes weren’t turned on, or if they had already been accepted or rejected (Track Changes are gone from your document once accepted or rejected).
Not only is this a huge waste of time, but if someone accidentally clicked ‘Save’ (instead of clicking ‘Save As’ and then incrementing the version number) then that will have overwritten the previous version and it’s gone forever.
How to improve your document creation & collaboration process
Fortunately, these days, there are software tools like Woodpecker & Simul Docs to help you overcome these challenges.
Woodpecker can help you automate the document creation part of the workflow, whereas Simul Docs can help you with the version and collaboration.
Rather than opening up a template and manually going through and replacing all the merge fields with client information such as their name, address, etc., Woodpecker presents a simple interface where you can enter information once and populate the whole document. You can also automate changing pronouns and subject verb agreement for syntax consistency, insertion or deletion of alternative clauses, or revisions of formatted text.
You can even populate multiple documents at the same time: you enter the client information into a template using the Woodpecker side panel or questionnaire and Woodpecker will automatically populate the data in a partnership agreement, shareholder agreement, sales contract, and employment contract all at once.
Simuldocs then helps automate the collaboration part of the workflow.
Instead of emailing documents back and forth and using crazy filenames like ‘Contact v10_JamesEdits_FINAL’ for version control, you simply upload the document to Simul and invite collaborators in.
Each collaborator can open the latest version of the document in Microsoft Word with just one click, and when they’re finished editing their changes are automatically saved as a new version and their changes are highlighted so that all collaborators can see what they changed (even if they didn’t have Track Changes turned on).
By using software tools like Woodpecker and Simul Docs, you can automate a lot of the tedious work associated with your old, manual document creation & collaboration process, ensure there are no mistakes in the document you create for clients, and make sure you have a full version history of every document.
Check out the free guide on how to automate your document creation & collaboration process to learn more about how software tools like Woodpecker and Simul can help.
In summary
If you’re still manually updating merge fields in your templates, or emailing documents back and forth between yourself, the client and the counter party, then you’re likely experiencing one of the problems of that approach outlined above.
Fortunately, legal technology like Woodpecker and Simul Docs can help alleviate that pain. Check them out today!