Today’s Tools
Marc Lauritsen
Capstone Practice Systems
Sinch Precedent Automation Conference
October 2006
1976
The World
Vietnam
Watergate
Legal Tech
ML
Selectrix
Lexis
Wordprocessors
Law school
Critical Legal
Studies
HLAB
1986
The World
Iranian revolution
Legal Tech
The PC
WordPerfect
ML
Legal services
Clinical ed
PERICLES
Doc assembly
“Legal expert systems are so totally dreamy!”
1996
The World
Legal Tech
ML
HLS R&D
Techshow
SubTech
Capstone 1
Fall of Soviet Union
AIDS epidemic
Email
Web
Doc mgt
Case mgt
Practice systems
2006
The World
Legal Tech
Dot-com boom
9/11
Iraq war
Wireless
eDiscovery
eLawyering
Doc Assembly
again
Blogs, podcasts
ML
Capstone II
AmeriCounsel
TIG projects
2016
The World
UN relocated to Beijing
Hunt for bin Laden
continues
Legal Tech
Ubiquitous connectivity
Seamless access to all
imaginable content
Telepresence
Hardware is
inconspicuous
Intelligent systems claim
citizenship; Humans
claim animal rights
ML
Will you still need
me, will you still
feed me?
A Quick History of Legal
Document Assembly
• 1970s and before
– research and experimentation
– early forms (paper systems,
memory typewriters, Wang)
• 1980s
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word-processing macros & merges
early commercial tools
large firms and pioneers
ABA special interest group
• 1990s
–
–
–
–
explosion of ‘platforms’
published form sets
evangelism and islands
niche practices
• 2000s
– moving into the
mainstream
– dominance of HotDocs
– new players
– Web delivery
Commercially offered legal
document assembly engines
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ABF Processor
ActiveDocs
Agility
AmazingDocs
Atlis
BizDocs
Black Letter
Blankity-Blank
Boilerplate
Brentmark Document
Assembler
• CAPS
•
•
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Cetara WordShare
Clause-It
D3
DAS@H
DealBuilder
DocBuilder
DocCon Docdolittle [former
name of Perfectus?]
• Documaker (Docucorp)
• Document Modeler
(LegalWare)
• DocuMENTOR
• Docuscribe
• eDrafter
• Exari (formerly
SpeedPrecedent, from
SpeedLegal)
• Expertext
• FastDraft
• First Draft
• FlexPractice
• Form Bank
• General Counsel
• GhostFill
• Grantha
• HotDocs
• ILS Techniques
• IntelliDox Intelligent
Document Solutions
(Cincom)
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IQDocs
JumpStart
KillerDocs
Masterdraft
Memba Genesis
Millrace
NovaDocs
Oban
Overdrive
Pathagoras
Perfectus
PowerTxt
Precedent
ProDoc
Qshift
Rapidocs
Scrivener
Document Assembly 500 Years After Columbus:
Consumer Expectations in 1992
(Paper for the 1992 American Bar Association Techshow)
“Features now present in most serious
document assembly products”
• Validity checking of user responses.
• Separation of interface logic and
document logic.
• Import and export of text.
• Import and export of data.
• Dynamic interface.
• System-specific reference and explanatory
material.
“Features present in some
document assembly products”
• On-screen, while-you-watch
document assembly.
• Pre-set and "suggested"
answers.
• Menus, dialogues, and other
user interface building blocks.
• Compound and dynamic data
entry screens.
• Navigational freedom: support
for backing up, jumping
around, and retracing one's
steps in the course of a session.
• Interoperability with
WordPerfect, Microsoft Word,
and other word
processors -- in the sense of
good quality conversion of
formatted documents and
automatic launching of
applications.
• Built-in relational databases or
dynamic access to external
data resources.
• User annotation of answers.
• Author annotation of
documents (e.g., via
optionally printed explanatory
footnotes.)
• Support for transaction
management and decision
support in addition to "mere"
document assembly.
• Hypertext-like resource
materials.
• Outlines and tables of
contents that give users and
authors high-level overviews
of system structure.
• Mouse support for picking
choices from menus and
dealing with dialogue boxes.
• Menu-driven approaches to
system building and other
forms of simplified system
building.
• Pop-up lists of variables,
operators, etc. from which
authors can paste.
• Ability to edit answers while in
a document and have it
automatically reassembled.
• Support for user-level edits of
boilerplate text that survive a
particular session or document
draft.
• Ability to permanently edit
both the text and logic of
models while building a
document.
• Utilities that allow authors to
search for components of their
systems in terms of their
names, contents, and
structural role.
• End-user revision of
boilerplate text and variable
insertion.
• Scripted invocation of external
programs.
• Support for simultaneous
multiple users (allowing such
things as interactive
accumulation of a work
group's expertise.)
• Ability to run systems under
development without having
to go through a compilation
step.
• Interactive debuggers
“What no one is doing much with yet”
• Graphical interfaces.
• Robust collaborative environments.
• Full functional integration with other law
office automation components.
• True artificial intelligence.
Some intervening advances
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Graphical forms, PDF
SGML/XML
Web delivery and authoring
Automatic models from marked up
precedents
Two current frontiers
• Post editing reassembly
• Word processor as interface
Beyond Tools
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Knowledge architects
Economics
Vision
Leadership