Easing 7 Pain Points With Document Automation By Contract Express

Where does advanced enterprise software reside in your large law firm? Is every practice group and attorney invested in the merits of document automation to make your workflow faster, more efficient, more productive, and less costly?

Many law firms are slow to adopt technology, and playing catch-up becomes the daily grind. For the law firms that wisely invest in document automation solutions, like Thomson Reuters Contract Express, they notice a visible easing of pain points in document drafting alongside significant benefits. Customers indicate that Contract Express brings value throughout the firm from partners to junior associates and the knowledge management team.

Get to Know Contract Express

Contract Express is a Thomson Reuters enterprise, web-based solution that automates legal document assembly. Trusted by the world’s leading law firms and corporations, Contract Express allows users the ability to automate creation of their preferred legal documents, reduce and eliminate delays, costs, bottlenecks, and the risks inherent with manual drafting. The result is faster, more efficient and compliant legal services and products.

Easing Pain Points of Manual Document Drafting

If your law firm is still manually drafting lengthy, repetitive, or complex documents, there is likely a high level of pain and waste associated with that. Let’s look at some of those pain points and see whether document automation with Contract Express may mitigate that discomfort.

1. Too much time spent drafting documents. It’s true. Attorneys spend an exorbitant amount of time making complex and repetitive changes to documents. Is that time well spent? Document drafting aided by automation is where the legal industry is heading. When a law firm adopts Contract Express, it can significantly shave document drafting time. In an August 2017 online survey of legal professionals by ALM about document automation, 33 percent of survey respondents said Contract Express cut their time by 51 percent or more.
2. Lack of creative AFAs. General counselors are always seeking alternative fee arrangements (AFAs) from the law firms they hire. Your law firm may be stumped on new, creative AFAs to implement. With Contract Express, there’s a self-service model that document automation provides. Law firms can set up a self-serve client portal and add the questionnaires and forms clients need so they can contribute to their own legal work. Attorneys are freed up to work on other aspects of the matter and negotiations — where their expertise is needed most. What’s more, risk for error is reduced at the onset of a matter, while the partnership between firm and client is strengthened.
3. Less billable time for attorneys. Time spent drafting is often unbilled time. Therefore, when attorneys “waste” time drafting documents manually, they lose hours they could bill back. Contract Express helps attorneys find more time for billable work because less time is needed to draft documents. What also occurs is a transition from plain vanilla client documents to higher quality presentations that create positive reactions. The discussion soon centers less around billable time and more around quality work products that streamline productivity and efficiency while creating satisfied clients.
4. Single-sided solutions. Many software solutions serve a single purpose which begs the question, why invest in low-value software? Thomson Reuters solutions integrate nicely, and that goes the same for Contract Express with Thomson Reuters Practical Law and Drafting Assistant. Attorneys using Practical Law can access up to 300 automated templates in Contract Express and get even more functionality using Drafting Assistant to enhance document creation and the finished product.
5. Unidentifiable forms When your knowledge management team develops forms to disperse throughout the firm, each form often takes on a life of its own becoming unrecognizable. Contract Express eliminates that by enabling authorship in tandem with knowledge management, standardizing forms, and templates.
6. Contextual learning confusion. Those who develop and write forms know the context and word choice they’re using. However, junior associates do not have that context, making it cumbersome for them to understand.  Contract Express provides guidance, preview and note options that provide excellent training resources for associates and other attorneys not as familiar with the legal documents in question. The Thomson Reuters solution enables authors to develop forms at whatever level is most comfortable regardless of the context of the wording.
7. Gap in technology innovation. There are many law firms that still have a way to go in filling the technology gap. That also means core support teams may not have the opportunity to learn new skills that help position the firm competitively. Document automation is part of the legal framework now, and Contract Express is an intuitive automation tool with many ways for attorneys and the administrative team to learn the basics of document automation.

To get further acquainted, set up a Contract Express demo with a Thomson Reuters account executive or install a free 28-day trial in your law firm. To learn more, speak with our support team by email at contractexpress-support@tr.com to identify your account representative.