You might think the question "What is DocAuto?" has an obvious answer—surely everyone knows about document automation, right? Well, from experience, I've learned it means different things to different people (and for some, it means nothing at all).
DocAuto can cover a wide range of tasks throughout the entire lifecycle of a document, from creation and processing to distribution. For example, if you're working at a top-tier UK law firm, you might rely on DocAuto every day, with a dedicated team in your knowledge and innovation department handling all the details for you. On the other hand, if you're part of a smaller firm, with just a handful of lawyers buried under a mountain of work, the idea of DocAuto might feel like a far-off dream - one that tantalisingly promises an escape from those long hours…
For my series, and from Clarilis' perspective, I’m going to focus on DocAuto as it relates to drafting legal documents, and making that more efficient by doing some or all of the following:
Filling in the Blanks:
You need to add party details, lease terms, loan amounts, and other details into your document. DocAuto asks the right questions and inserts your answers where they belong. Think of it as the most basic form of automation, a bit like mail merge.
Grammatical Changes:
Depending on the transaction specifics, the grammar in your document will vary, and DocAuto can make those changes for you. For instance, in a bilateral facility agreement, you might have ‘the lender is’, but in a syndicated facility that would become ‘the lenders are’ and ‘any lender’. It's often much more than just adding the odd 's' here and there.
Logic:
Certain words, clauses, or even entire sections of a document may need to be added or omitted depending on the transaction. For example, if your lease involves an office, there’s no need to mention turnover rent. This is where DocAuto really shines and you can gain the most significant value, creating highly customised documents from broad templates. But be warned: when a single answer can trigger hundreds (or even thousands) of changes across a suite of documents (I’m looking at you, leveraged facilities agreement!), this logic can quickly become mind-bendingly complex and convolutedly nested (logic within logic within logic…).
So, those are the basics of what DocAuto can do, from the very simple to the very valuable. But how do I know which (and how many) of these elements I should implement? What benefits can I expect—should I even bother? Stay tuned to find out in the coming weeks.
P.S. Curious about whether AI can do all this ‘automagically’ for you? Whoa, that’s a whole big topic we’ll dive into soon. Spoiler alert—the answer is “yes a little bit”, but mostly “no”...
