DOCUMENT FACTORIES: BUILDING
DOCUMENT AUTOMATION TOOLS
by Anthony Kikuta of Wilson Sonsini
Goodrich & Rosati
DOCUMENT
FACTORIES:
BUILDING DOCUMENT
AUTOMATION
TOOLS
With recent changes in the legal market and
economic conditions, law firms and in-house legal
departments have increasingly sought to provide
legal services more efficiently. One area gaining
traction is document automation. Document
automation tools allow end users to generate
documents automatically based on responses to
online questionnaires.
BACKGROUND
Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati's document
automation initiatives fall under our knowledge
management function and are managed primarily
by individuals who have both legal subjectmatter expertise and experience with document
automation development software.
We initially built a "fill-in-the-blank" tool inhouse using Microsoft Word macros. In response
to increased use of the tool and requests for
additional functionality, we evaluated third-party
document automation software and licensed
the DealBuilder (now Contract Express) software
developed by Business Integrity.
Using Contract Express, we upgraded our existing
tool and automated over 50 forms related to
