Can you imagine there was a time when businesses would debate whether to buy computers or carry on using a typewriter? As ridiculous as that may sound, debating whether to adopt document automation software might not be so different from thinking your office can do without computers.
Law firms are constantly dealing with documents and it would obviously be beneficial if they can do their work faster and better. If you need justification for embracing the modern approach to handling documents, here are the benefits of document automation for legal firms.
How long does it currently take you to create a document? Now imagine cutting that time by 80 percent. Automation frees up time for lawyers to concentrate on practicing law instead of drafting and editing documents. When you think of all the things you need to do to prepare a contract manually and compare it to simply answering a few questions and letting the machine do the rest in just minutes, there should be no doubt that document automation is a win for a legal firm.
For most legal firms, pricing is determined by the time spent on the job, this is usually an unpleasant option for clients who would rather pay a fixed rate. When you automate your documents, you spend less time drafting the documents so you cannot charge by the hour. If for example, a client wants a contract written, they would have it ready in an hour or less so it makes sense to charge a fixed fee. The fixed fee can even be lower for the benefit of the client but the firm will still make a profit because they can serve more clients and make more money.
Errors can be costly to a law firm and that is why they have to be meticulous when they peruse documents for errors. This however takes a lot of time and yet sometimes some errors still manage to escape detection. With automation, however, the error check is done during the creation of templates which is usually a one-off activity. This guarantees the documents that are generated will always maintain a certain level of perfection even if no one proofreads them. This saves the firm money and embarrassment.
The process of designing templates usually involves input from the best legal brains in the firm or at times you can outsource the knowledge. For example, if a firm chooses to automate partnership agreements, they would find the lawyer with the most experience in that field to help design that template. In the end, everyone can use that template to create partnership agreements and the document will always be as excellent as one drafted by a professional. Even if that individual left the firm, their knowledge will be available to everyone within that firm.
Document automation equips the law firm with added capabilities. The firm can take on new requests from clients for specialized services. For instance, a firm may be able to engage in real estate business even though they originally handled only insurance cases. This is made possible by the fact that they can generate any kind of document using the new software as well as the knowledge that can be preserved and shared through the use of templates. Many legal firms have been able to expand their business after adopting this technology.
Everyone within the firm must be on the same page. While you may instruct individuals about how to create documents on behalf of the organization, you cannot be sure that they will always follow the guidelines. With automation, however, the firm will be controlled by the templates. Aspects like font style, spacing, and use of numbering will be predetermined. This means even someone new to the firm will not have trouble catching on and following guidelines since they have little input when it comes to creating documents.
The legal industry like any other business needs to remain profitable and efficient. Finding faster ways to do work and still maintain quality is essential. Document automation offers that solution and no one should be left behind. At the same time, it is important that the software chosen is intended for use by legal professionals.
If you've just discovered us, we're excited. Try Windward with our 14-day free trial and start creating documents in quick time with our low/no code solutions.
Adds various capabilities such as inequalities,descending sort, joins, and other functions.
If you've just discovered us, we're excited. Learn more about Windward document automation software now.
Try Windward with our 30-day free trial and start creating documents in quick time with our low/no code solutions.
SQL Select Debugger
If you've just discovered us, we're excited. Learn more about Windward document automation software now.
Try Windward with our 30-day free trial and start creating documents in quick time with our low/no code solutions.
Added a Query tab as a field for typing or pasting in a select statement
If you've just discovered us, we're excited. Learn more about Windward document automation software now.
Try Windward with our 30-day free trial and start creating documents in quick time with our low/no code solutions.
All tags using that Data source will be automatically updated with that name.
If you've just discovered us, we're excited. Learn more about Windward document automation software now.
Try Windward with our 30-day free trial and start creating documents in quick time with our low/no code solutions.
New single interface to replace 2 separate dialog boxes
If you've just discovered us, we're excited. Learn more about Windward document automation software now.
Try Windward with our 30-day free trial and start creating documents in quick time with our low/no code solutions.
Displays of all the tags in the template, structured as they are placed in the template. This provides a simple & intuitive way to see the structure of your template. Also provides the capability to go to any tag and/or see the properties of any tag.
If you've just discovered us, we're excited. Learn more about Windward document automation software now.
Try Windward with our 30-day free trial and start creating documents in quick time with our low/no code solutions.
The ability to integrate the Windward Engine into Google’s cloud computing platform for developing and hosting web applications dubbed Google Applications Engine (GAE).
If you've just discovered us, we're excited. Learn more about Windward document automation software now.
Try Windward with our 30-day free trial and start creating documents in quick time with our low/no code solutions.
If you've just discovered us, we're excited. Learn more about Windward document automation software now.
Try Windward with our 30-day free trial and start creating documents in quick time with our low/no code solutions.
This new integration will allow for processing of complex scripts and bi-directional text such as Arabic. Your PDF output will be much tighter and more closely match your template, and we’ll be able to respond rapidly to PDF requests and fixes.
If you've just discovered us, we're excited. Learn more about Windward document automation software now.
Try Windward with our 30-day free trial and start creating documents in quick time with our low/no code solutions.
Includes support for new ForEach and slide break handling, table header row repeat across slide breaks, and native Microsoft support for charts and images.
If you've just discovered us, we're excited. Learn more about Windward document automation software now.
Try Windward with our 30-day free trial and start creating documents in quick time with our low/no code solutions.
Tags are color coded in the template by type, making it easy to visually identify them.
If you've just discovered us, we're excited. Learn more about Windward document automation software now.
Try Windward with our 30-day free trial and start creating documents in quick time with our low/no code solutions.
Version 13’s core code has been reworked and optimized to offer a reduced memory footprint, faster PDF generation and full documentation of supported features and limitations in the specifications for DOCX, XLSX and PPTX.
If you've just discovered us, we're excited. Learn more about Windward document automation software now.
Try Windward with our 30-day free trial and start creating documents in quick time with our low/no code solutions.
Documents can include advanced Word image properties such as shadows, borders, and styles.
If you've just discovered us, we're excited. Learn more about Windward document automation software now.
Try Windward with our 30-day free trial and start creating documents in quick time with our low/no code solutions.
Windward has updated HTML output to reflect changing HTML standards.
If you've just discovered us, we're excited. Learn more about Windward document automation software now.
Try Windward with our 30-day free trial and start creating documents in quick time with our low/no code solutions.
Windward now works with a slew of new datasources: MongoDB, JSON, Cassandra, OData, Salesforce.com
If you've just discovered us, we're excited. Learn more about Windward document automation software now.
Try Windward with our 30-day free trial and start creating documents in quick time with our low/no code solutions.
The Generate Code tool in the designer allows you to open an existing template and, with a click of a button, automatically create a window with the code needed to run your current template with all data sources and variables. Simply copy this code and paste into your application's code in the appropriate place. You now have Windward integrated into your application.
You only need to do this once. You do not do this for each template. Instead, where it has explicit files for the template and output, change that to parameters you pass to this code. Same for the parameters passed to Windward. This example uses explicit values to show you what to substitute in where.
Any pivot tables in an XLSX template are carried over to the XLSX output. The ranges in the pivot ranges are adjusted to match the generated output. So your final XLSX will have pivot tables set as expected in the generated file.
This makes creating an XLSX workbook with pivot tables trivial.
In an imported sub-template, if its properties for a style (ex. Normal) differ from the parent template's properties for the style, the use in the sub-template can be set to either use the properties in the sub-template, or the properties in the parent.
You set to retain when you don't want the child template's styling to change when imported. You set to use the parent when you want the styling of the imported template to match the styling in the parent.
Any explicit styling is always retained. This only impacts styling set by styles.
Tags can be placed in text boxes. Including linked text boxes. This gives you the ability to set the text in a textbox from your data.
Tags can be placed in shapes & smart art. This gives you the ability to set the text in a shape from your data.
When generating HTML output, the engine can either write bitmaps as distinct files the generate HTML references, or it can embed the images in the HTML providing a single file for the output.
You can place tags in pretty much any part of a template, including in footnotes & endnotes.
Any parts of a DOCX or XLSX (PowerPoint does not support this) file that are locked in the template, will be locked the same in the output.
If a font used in the template does not exist on the server generating a report, the font to substitute can be specified.
In addition, if a glyph to be rendered does not exist in the font specified, you can specify the replacement font. This can be set distinctly for European, Bi-Directional, and Far East fonts.
If you need this - it's essential. And if you don't need it, it's irrelevant.
Windward enables you to build a document by applying multiple datasources to the template simultaneously. When Windward is merging the data into a template, it processes the template by handling each tag in order, and each tag pulls from different datasources. (As opposed to processing all of one datasource, then processing the next.)
This allows the select tag to use data from another datasource in its select. For example, if you are pulling customer information from one data source, you can then pull data from the sales datasource using the customer ID of the customer presently processing to pull the sales information for that customer. If you're interested in patching together your data from multiple datasources, read this post on our blog.
