3 Step Automation is 1 Step Too Many

Building an automated document takes three important steps. First, you must define a series of questions and business rules that are relevant to the document at hand. Second, you must apply those rules to the text and content of the document, so that the system knows which clauses to include in response to which answers. And third, you must build a series of "interview" pages that will present end users with relevant questions in a clear and logical way.


3 step automation: hours of debugging pleasure...

The problem with many document assembly tools is that they force a human to complete all three steps. And it's the third step that creates all the trouble. You have to figure out which questions to ask, in what order, and with what dependencies. The more complex the document and its rules, the more time and effort it takes to manually build the interview pages (or "dialogs" as some people call them), and the more time and effort you waste testing, debugging and re-testing your solution. It's loads of fun.

To avoid this problem, Exari works differently. With complex documents, the machine is much better at figuring out which questions are relevant, and which questions can be skipped. So we make the machine do the third step for you. It simply looks inside the template to see which clauses are optional, or which variables are nested inside optional clauses, and automatically builds each interview page based on what it finds. Some people call this an "inferencing engine" (or some other fancy name like that). We just call it two-step automation.


2 step automation: it just works...

You still have control over the layout and look of the interview, and you can still tweak the order in which each page appears. But you don't waste hours testing and debugging every new template, and you won't end up with a broken system every time you make a change.

Microsoft Stacks and Stumbles with OOXML

Guess what? There's a standards war going on. Not quite as scary as the war on terror. But a war that will decide which format we all use for "office" documents, and how much choice we have over the tools used to write those documents. What a novel idea. Choice in the office tools market. You mean there's something other than Word?

In the absence of real standards, we've been living in a world of de facto standards, which for most of us means Microsoft Word. But when ISO approved the XML-based Open Document Format (ODF) as a standard, the world started to look a little different, and people started to ask questions. Like, why don't we store all our documents in this nice, new, open, standards-based format, and tell all the vendors (including Microsoft) to bring their software into line with the standard?

This is very scary if you're Microsoft.

So they did what any self-respecting monopolist would do in the circumstances: they started a standards war. And Office Open XML (OOXML) was born. If there must be a standard, let's make it our standard.

On one side of the war you have Microsoft, pushing a standard very tightly aligned with its existing Office suite: OOXML. And on the other side of the war you have IBM, Sun, and others, pushing ODF, which already has the ISO seal of approval.

The latest skirmish relates to Microsoft's efforts to "fast track" OOXML towards ISO approval. On July 13th, an important technical committee failed to reach any consensus on OOXML. Some are calling this a major setback. But according to INCITS spokesperson, Jennifer Garner (no relation to the actress that I'm aware of), the committee has "not yet determined" it's position.

One of the more scandalous claims about this process is that Microsoft is trying to buy itself a standard, by stacking relevant committees with Microsoft business partners. I'm sure the surge in pro-Redmond members is pure coincidence.

Missing Clause Costs Firm $35M

This is all happening because I didn't write, "I'll charge you 1.5 percent" - John O'Quinn

What's the value of a clause? About $35 million if your name is John O'Quinn. His firm failed to include a clause authorizing the deduction of "general expenses" from settlement payouts in a breast implant class action. And this month, an aribtration panel ordered the firm to pay $35.7M in damages to the clients who were overcharged. Expensive mistake.

Surprising mistake, too. If there's one thing you'd think law firms are good at it would be drafting a tight costs agreement with their clients. But unlike most other agreements a firm drafts, costs agreements are unbillable. The time you spend drafting one is time down the drain. So the incentive is to get it done fast, and get onto to real work that makes the firm money.

Which is what makes costs agreements and engagement letters such perfect candidates for automation. You build in all the right clauses for the matter at hand. You make it easy to draft an agreement that's relevant and tight. And your lawyers can get the job done quickly and without mistakes.

Of course, there is one thing worse than a bad costs agreement: no agreement at all. That's a mistake Glenn Judge won't make again. The Pennsylvania lawyer claimed a deal for $175,000 worth of fees for referring a client to another firm. But it wasn't in writing, and it wasn't disclosed to the client, and the U.S. District Court decided he wasn't entitled to a penny.