Professional services organizations from Am Law 100 law
firms to leading REITs use Microsystems D3 (Dynamic Document Drafting) to
improve their document creation and content management workflows - replacing
traditional document assembly and template solutions.
D3 is used to streamline document creation workflows
firm-wide, including those for:
How might your firm’s document creation processes benefit
from D3 and the technological advancements in the latest version of Word?
Transaction documents – Compete more effectively
Transactional law has become fiercely competitive. To
improve profitability while managing risk, firms are optimizing deal drafting
workflows for both speed and quality.
Trust agreements
Several firms are using D3 to automate trust and estates
operations:
Reduced number of documents and standardized
precedent clauses – An Am Law 200 law firm had problems keeping its
numerous trust agreements up to date for tax and ERISA changes. Confidence
in the quality of the documents was waning. The firm was using a legacy
document assembly vendor, which required them to manually generate 30
individual documents to meet their clients’ estate planning needs. Also,
because the document creation process was tedious, the firm’s lawyers didn’t
use precedent content – they cut and pasted content from their own
documents. The firm’s management was shocked to learn that, due to this ad
hoc workflow, there were 45 variations of a “standard” clause in use. With
D3, the firm reduced the number of trust agreements to be completed by its
lawyers to eight to improve manageability, and agreement completion was
automated by adding variables and connecting to line of business
applications. Another added benefit – the standardization of precedent
clauses.
Decreased cost and implementation time – A major
law firm that was upgrading from a legacy document assembly system selected
D3 primarily for bottom-line reasons – implementation costs were 80 percent
lower than the competing vendor’s. Their trust agreements contained complex
conditional logic and the time to convert the existing documents or logic
would have been overwhelming using other document assembly solutions. With
D3, the creation of content logic is simple and straightforward, thus
decreasing the cost and time to implement.
Automated document creation workflow and gender
variables – Another firm’s trusts and estates practice is using D3 to
significantly improve their document creation workflow. In the past, lawyers
would write down paragraph numbers for appropriate paragraphs that were
stored in their network share drive. The legal secretary would then go to
the share drive, cut and paste the content into a Word document and edit it
for gender. With D3, the lawyers simply select the appropriate content from
the D3 library within Microsoft Word and the variables ensure that the
gender is correct throughout the document.
Public finance documents
To compete effectively for public finance deals and meet
client demands for tight turnaround times, many firms are turning to faster deal
drafting workflows:
Cut drafting time from 13 hours to 15 minutes – A
large general services firm migrated from a legacy document assembly tool to
D3 for the creation of a series of related public ordinance documents and
reduced the time to create the documents from 13 hours to 15 minutes. As
these documents are created on a fixed-fee basis, this resulted in a large
increase in profits – improving the health of the business. Also, because
the law requires that a specific set of documents be submitted based on the
specific ordinance, newer lawyers were prone to make errors. In order to
avoid the risk associated with not submitting the correct documents, the
managing partner carefully reviewed each and every ordinance. Because D3
advanced conditional logic ensures the correct set of documents are
submitted, the managing partner spends significantly less time reviewing
ordinance documents.
Reduced deal first draft turnaround from two days to
two minutes – An Am Law 50 public finance practice improved their
competitive advantage by greatly reducing their municipal bond deal
turnaround time. In this increasingly competitive field, the time to
turnaround a deal is crucial to the firm’s ability to attract business. The
first draft turnaround time is now two minutes – down from the two-day
turnaround experienced prior to D3. Because D3 gathers information from the
firm’s existing corporate databases, the firm no longer needs to use the
“cut and paste” method of transferring data from client and matter systems
into a deal document. The new D3 workflow simply requires that lawyers enter
a matter number into a Web site – D3 automatically generates the appropriate
financing documents.
Loan agreements
Template maintenance headaches are prompting firms to move
complex loan agreements to more efficient workflows:
Reduced lawyer input time – An international firm
chose D3 to replace its custom built loan agreement template and reduced the
input required by lawyers by 50 percent. The custom templates were just a
small step above “cut and pasting” and had no conditional logic. With the
complex logic available in D3, lawyers need to input significantly less
data. D3 then automatically generates the appropriate clauses.
Lease agreements driven by proposals
While lease agreements are often fairly similar, firms are
moving beyond the ad hoc “save as” lease creation methods that increase risk and
the time it takes to close lease deals:
Decreased time to lease signing – A large real
estate investment trust (REIT) designed a document creation workflow to
improve the complete proposal-to-lease process – providing more responsive
client and broker service and ensuring content and branding consistency. The
REIT has regional offices in several major cities and each office works
independently on local deals with major corporations. The REIT needed a way
to ensure consistency in the layout and content of proposals nationwide. As
a result, it developed a workflow in which D3 is used to generate and brand
the REIT’s best practice content and format. The firm also designed a
workflow to improve the time from proposal acceptance to lease signing. Deal
information was extracted from the proposal and saved to the firm’s CRM
system and then used to generate the lease after proposal acceptance. This
new workflow decreased the risk of inconsistent terms and content and
reduced the time and money needed to generate a lease while improving
responsiveness to clients and their brokers.
Litigation documents – Improve efficiencies
To manage notoriously complex litigation documents such as
pleadings, firms are moving to more modern document creation and content
management workflows:
Eliminated the need for outside content maintenance
help – An Am Law 200 California firm now uses D3 to generate their state
and federal court forms for over 2,800 jurisdictions. Because the firm has
better control over changes to content in D3, the firm has eliminated their
need for outside content maintenance assistance as state and federal
regulations change. D3 only requires a change to its centralized document
database in order for any new regulations to be added to pleading forms.
Accelerated pleading “fill and file” time – A
mid-sized Canadian law firm had difficulty finding the most up to date court
documents and sharing them easily with others in its litigation practice.
The firm replaced over 150 custom developed templates and created all of the
Ontario court documents in D3. This enables them to more quickly fill out
and file pleadings and other litigation documents. The firm no longer needs
to request custom changes to their legacy template package.
Letters, memos and faxes – Keep up with maintenance requests
Many firms are choosing D3 to replace existing template and
macro packages for everyday “letter/memo/fax” and numbering applications because
of the breadth of D3 functionality and the ease of supporting it:
Reduced IT support time by cutting the total number
of templates from 24 to three – A large Midwest firm replaced their
unsupported “letter/memo/fax” software with D3. The firm had eight different
letterhead templates corresponding to each of their offices and needed the
ability to easily generate a letterhead from any office. D3 not only solved
the “letter/memo/fax” support gap but also reduced IT support time by
cutting the total number of templates from 24 to three.
Simplified document creation for multiple offices and
languages – A large international firm with 20 offices in four countries
needed the ability to generate letterhead from each office in four
languages: English, French, Dutch and German. D3 provided the ability to
allow the user to select the specific office and the appropriate language
for the client. D3 automatically generated the letterhead in the correct
language.
Proposals – Win more new business
Several international firms are using D3 to generate
proposals, RFP responses and engagement letters:
Streamlined proposal to engagement letter workflow
– A large Midwest real estate firm used D3 to integrate proposal generation
with engagement letters. The firm used D3 to pull client information and
biographies from its CRM and personnel systems, generate the best firm
content and address specific client needs in the development of proposals.
The relevant content from the proposal is then saved as an answer file and
used to generate the engagement letter.
Reduced engagement letter production time by three
hours – A medium-sized U.S. firm replaced their legacy template package
with D3 and reduced the time to produce an engagement letter by three hours.
Because the legacy package did not automatically interface to the firm’s CRM
and personnel systems, its process to create a document included cutting and
pasting from these systems.
Improved proposal workflow – An IT consulting
firm is rolling out D3 with Word 2007 to generate technical proposals more
efficiently – creating time and cost savings. This firm, a Microsoft Gold
Certified Partner, has four practice areas and utilizes a distinct proposal
for each area. Before D3, the business development managers reviewed nine
different documents and selected verbiage from each of those documents to
cut and paste into their technical proposals. Using D3, the business
development managers now generate their technical proposals by selecting the
appropriate practice content from the D3 clause database.
High-risk HR processes such as offer letter creation are
being streamlined to ensure that document variables match intended outcomes:
Optimized offer workflow – A large corporation’s
human resources department redesigned its employment offer letter creation
workflow with D3. Prior to D3, the hiring manager used the ad hoc “cut and
paste” method from the network share drive to create offer letters. The
problem with this approach was that it did not account for variations in the
offer letter that were needed to accommodate stock options, vacation time,
overtime and other benefits that are associated with the employee’s labor
grade. Because D3 can generate the appropriate benefits clauses based on
labor grade, D3 significantly reduced the number of benefit errors in offer
letters.
