Digital White Papers

43 WWW.ILTANET.ORG | ILTA WHITE PAPER KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT Developing a Document Assembly Platform That Works The final step is programming the interview, which is the interface used to enter the data populating the variables that will drive the assembly process. This would be fairly simple with only one template, but, when 40 or so templates are driven by a single interview, an additional layer of logic must be wrien so the interview asks only questions relevant to the documents being prepared. It sounds simple enough, but building dialog windows that deliver a satisfactory experience under all circumstances can be challenging. Rigorous testing helps ensure a great end-user experience. Rollout In 2013, we released the platform's beta version with some simple templates and a few of the more commonly used forms. We received positive feedback from our aorneys, who welcomed the ability to dra documents nearly instantly that had previously taken hours. With the backbone of the component collection and interview in place, we moved on to programming the remaining templates and completing the platform in phases over three years. This approach allowed us to respond quickly to user feedback and improve the platform over several iterations. The final foundational templates were added to the platform in the summer of 2016. Promotion Since the templates' initial 2013 release, we have continuously promoted the system. A short basic training video sits on our intranet for any new user needing quick training. For deeper learning, we deliver longer live training annually. Recordings of these sessions are available any time as a video stream. We also periodically circulate emails to the practice group reminding the aorneys that using the platform is an essential component of the firm's strategic plan. Maintenance The 40 foundational forms of SRZ's HotDocs implementation are continually updated. We average about one edit per week and anticipate adding other forms soon. Given the value of our forms' annotations (our subscription agreement forms alone feature more than 650 draing notes and annotations) and audit trail (revealing a complete history of edits made to any form), we maintain the forms separately in our iManage document management system while the associated templates are stored and maintained on a different administrative server. We periodically monitor HotDocs usage and contact aorneys to ensure that they follow best practices when creating answer files and proofreading assembled documents, giving our users the opportunity to provide feedback on system design. Measuring Success Using our goals of faster, beer, more cost-effective, smarter and happier as a framework for measuring success, we have found that this project has been a driving force behind our firm's success. Faster: Not surprisingly, a recent survey of our users revealed that 94 percent believe the platform helps them dra documents faster. The platform can generate up to 16,000 edits to its suite of 40 documents, although this potential is realized only when all team members use it to dra all documents for a maer. Beer: We prepare higher-quality documents when using the document assembly platform because the system generates beer The platform consistently generated documents with fewer typographical errors, cross- reference mismatches and formatting issues.

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