Nice Package

Why produce just one document when you could produce a whole package? Whether you're producing lending documents, a request for proposal, or an insurance package of certificate, schedules, wording and endorsements, sometimes you need to create a suite of documents from one consistent set of data. Done manually, document packages multiply the risk of re-keying errors and non-compliance.



With Exari groups, you can rest easy knowing that the data is captured once, then applied consistently across all documents. Even better, you can mix and match letters, contracts and PDF forms, with just the right package of documents ready to go at the end of the process.

No Vision, No Idea

Since last month, Richard Susskind has continued his quest to provoke the legal profession into serious reflection on their future. In a series of articles published in The Times, he suggests that:

1. As non-lawyer investors enter the legal market, they will down-size the lawyers and ramp up the systems in order to get a better return on their investment.

2. Almost no-one seems to be worried about, or have any vision for, the long term future of the legal profession.

3. The "foolhardy" lawyers who try to brush off the applicability of disruptive legal technologies are only dimly aware of those technologies and what they can do.

Like the tallow chandlers and cordwainers of old, he wonders whether, 100 years from now, people will be asking "What's a solicitor and what exactly did they do?"

High Performers Take IT Risks

If you have any growth aspirations at all, you need to make some high risk "change the rules" IT investments. This seems to be the conclusion of a recent McKinsey study. The high risks should be calculated risks, of course. But if you don't take them, and others do, they will out-grow and out-perform you in the long run. In fact, when you compare high performance companies with high growth aspirations against low performance companies with low growth aspirations, the high performers invest four times as much in "change the rules" IT projects as the low performers.



Even companies with low growth aspirations do better with a high proportion of medium-high risk IT investments. Although the high and low performers spent the same on high risk investments, the high performers spent twice as much on medium risk "win the race" investments (60% of all projects).

What does this all mean, and how might it apply to document assembly?

Stay in the race investments are low risk. These are projects to maintain basic IT services, like email and word-processing. If your plan for 2008 is to upgrade Word (and maybe tweak a few macros), your best hope is to stay in the race. You are unlikely to outperform your peers.

Win the race investments are medium risk. These are investments that lower the costs and boost the productivity of your current activities. For example, a law firm rolling out document assembly to its internal staff. Or a bank rolling out an automated approval and document production solution to its business lending team. Applied to your existing business, document assembly is a medium risk, win-the-race investment. In the right context, those who do it should outperform those who don't.

Change the rules investments are high risk. These are innovations that transform existing markets or open up new ones. Rather than using document assembly to make an existing process more efficient (clear the bottleneck), change the game with a self-service document assembly solution that eliminates as many redundant steps as possible (throw away the whole bottle). For example, a law firm offers an automated online solution that lets clients create and manage their own contracts (eg, employment contracts, real estate leases, technology licenses, or franchise agreements), using fixed pricing to transform and dominate a niche. Or a bank locks in small business banking customers with value-added online services such as company incorporation, insurance, and a package of tailored legal documents. Why go to a law firm when your bank can supply terms of service, NDAs, employment contracts, distribution agreements, etc, all tailored to the needs of your business? Apparently 60% of consumers would prefer to get legal services from a bank or supermarket than a law firm. Are small (or mid-sized) businesses really any different?

The secret to high performance, according to McKinsey, is to evaluate each project using a method that suits the risk. Net present value is fine for low risk projects. But for high risk ideas, you're better off with a venture capital approach, placing calculated bets on promising technologies, with regular evaluation to see what's working and what's not.