Document Assembly

Change is facilitated by economies of scale: implementing a document-assembly system for contract drafting becomes more feasible if the aim is to serve many users, not one. That’s why I’ve long thought that it would make sense to have trade groups build document-assembly systems for use by their members. To be more specific, a plausible candidate for automated contract creation … Read More

The construction industry was an early adopter of commoditized contract creation. In this 2006 post I mentioned the AIA Contract Documents, promulgated by the American Institute of Architects. It’s one of the best-known trade-group-sponsored document initiatives. Because the AIA Contract Documents are perceived to be developer- and architect-friendly, it gave rise to a competitor, ConsensusDocs. This post is on Contract-Automation … Read More

A good number of law firms are ContractExpress customers. Goodwin Procter. Latham & Watkins. Perkins Coie. Wilson Sonsini. And so on. But recently I’ve spoken with a few BigLaw partners who have said that they don’t currently use contract automation and have no plans to do so. This post is on Contract-Automation Clearinghouse. To see the rest, go here. Contract-Automation Clearinghouse … Read More

A tidbit to come out this week’s panel discussion at Notre Dame Law School (see this post) was, courtesy of Glenn West, a citation to a poignant Florida case, Espresso Disposition Corp. 1 v. Santana Sales & Mktg. Grp., Inc., 105 So. 3d 592 (Fla. Dist. Ct. App. 2013) (PDF here). This post is on Contract-Automation Clearinghouse. To see the … Read More

The showcase NDA template (here) uses the enumeration scheme recommended in my book A Manual of Style for Contract Drafting. But another feature of the showcase template is how I went about applying the MSCD enumeration scheme. I used the Numbering Assistant, an enumeration tool developed by PayneGroup. In two respects, that has implications for how you work with a … Read More

Recently I had a chat with the general counsel of a technology company. We discussed whether it would make sense for the company to overhaul its templates and automate them. I mentioned my showcase document-assembly template (here), and the GC said, with a note of consternation, that the template asked lots of questions. Since others doubtless have that reaction, I’ll … Read More

A couple of weeks ago I saw this article in City Journal, a U.S. quarterly, by John O. McGinnis, a professor in constitutional law at Northwestern Law School. The title is Machines v. Lawyers. It covers five “key areas,” but given my interests, the following passage, regarding “legal forms,” was what caught my eye: … This post is on Contract-Automation … Read More