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The Future of Legal Documents
2007 and Beyond
Strategy Brief
Microsystems | 3025 Highland Parkway, Suite 450 | Downers Grove, IL 60515 | 630‐598‐1100 | microsystems.com
The Future of Legal Documents
Executive summary Twenty years in the making, legal document production enters a brand new era. Unlike the previous two decades, this next 10 years focuses less on the task of producing a document and more on supporting the business needs of the lawyers serving their clients. As one IT director proclaimed, “We don’t do documents here. We do deals.”
“We don’t do documents here. We do deals.”
While client demands have accelerated the pace of legal business, legal document production technology has done little more than digitize and automate the functions of the typewriter – of course with the oft‐exercised additions of “copy/cut and paste.” The result? A business‐technology gap that compromises the service firms deliver to their clients.
To close this gap, law firms must reorient the production of document deliverables to help each and every practice area realize its unique business aspirations. With this strategy paper, Microsystems lays out a vision for the future of legal documents and how to bridge the widening business‐technology gap. The Future of Legal Business The future of legal business exposes this gap most clearly. Today’s clients have challenged their law firms in many ways – from mandating fixed fees to faster deal turnaround times, to “no‐time, no‐distance” global capabilities – placing stresses on human capital, technologies and existing document workflows alike. These recent business demands illustrate the breadth of the challenge: •
The large franchisee client of a Midwest firm wants to enable its field agents to generate just‐in‐time electronic editions of property leases.
•
A UK‐based global organization submits an RFP to an AmLaw 100 firm that all legal work product be issued by the firm in an open standard XML format.
•
The executive director of a regional law firm hopes to realize greater profitability from its trust and estates practice area. To do so, the practice must eliminate the inefficiencies created by their four offices each using different document production workflows.
•
Facing the compliance requirements of Sarbanes‐Oxley, a global client calls upon its law firm to aid its risk management team. Not only must the firm draft and validate new risk procedures and policies, but it must also help facilitate the implementation of the policies across three continents and 15,000 employees.
With both human and technology resources organized in silos, these business demands and deliverables require the full capabilities of a law firm to be organized around meeting client needs. Forward‐thinking CIOs know they must turn the enterprise‐wide production of legal documents into a firm competency. Simply put, the future of legal documents requires a relentless dedication to understanding the needs of every practice area and meeting those needs with agile document production
Microsystems Strategy Brief
Page 1
The Future of Legal Documents capabilities. Only by achieving both of these objectives does a firm bridge the business‐technology gap. 2007 & Beyond Documents In the post‐typewriter era, legal technology boomed with investments in vital systems – from technologies to manage cases, documents, knowledge and customer relationships to infrastructure that provides networking and remote connectivity. However, because they may be disconnected from the everyday workflows for producing legal work product, this legal technology delivers limited value. While undoubtedly the organizational design of a law firm hampers the ability to properly bridge the business‐technology gap, it is the barriers of the technology that have kept us from going the distance. Consider this, how much have we really changed the way we deliver documents since moving from the typewriter to PCs? Three transformative technologies – discussed for nearly 10 years – have recently matured to enable us to close this gap once and for all. And not at the end of the technology deployment process – but from the very beginning. The future of legal documents is defined by: •
Fluent interface design – A software design philosophy which reorients user interfaces such that desired results adeptly guide the user to meet the business objective at hand.
•
XML – Open file formats permit content and formatting to reorient based on the current context. They also make document content more stable, manageable, dynamic and reusable.
•
Connectivity – With such open standards, this now means we can move rapidly from the black hole of most enterprise data stores to platforms seamlessly promoting safe and secure electronic collaboration arenas. Such connections not only enable document collaboration, but global human collaboration as well.
Visionary firms must capitalize on these technologies in order to span the business‐ technology gap.
Interface Reorients Consider a “simple” authoring technology like Word – installed on 450 million desktops worldwide. It takes 297 clicks (33 clicks for each of 9 levels) to properly modify Microsoft’s distributed numbering default into an outline usable in a typical legal agreement. Fluent interface – The pivotal tabula rasa moment Utilizing data collected from 1.3 billion user sessions, we now have quantitative proof that most Office features designed to promote viable electronic work product have gone underutilized. Hidden beneath a myriad of dialogs, drop‐downs and click‐points, basic legal document functionality is challenging to train – and to retain. The tabula rasa moment – beginning from a blank slate – is upon us. Utilizing fluent interface design technologies and techniques, a results‐oriented focus is now within reach
Microsystems Strategy Brief
Page 2
The Future of Legal Documents of the business user, minimizing the number of clicks required to complete document production tasks. With an ability to “train” the interface more than we do the user, our resources must reorient as well. Mind the gap – Map business requirements to opportunities This rapidly developing best practice increasingly rests in one role – that of the legal business analyst. Acting as a liaison between practice areas and IT, the business analyst ensures that document production technology supports the business objectives of each practice.
The tabula rasa moment – beginning from a blank slate – is upon us.
Throughout the US and the UK, legal IT visionaries are putting business analysts in place to align technology with the business. A regional firm in Seattle retitled and refocused its entire senior technology training team as senior business analysts. In New York, a capital markets firm dispatched a business analyst to aid its administrative staff in the adoption of a challenging matter‐centric system deployment. In Chicago, a mid‐size firm began the design of its next desktop not by migrating software, but rather by sending its lead technical trainers to an extensive business analyst training course. And, at a global UK firm, adept interviewing of business users on document production challenges surfaced critical requirements now being implemented into the design of a “globalized and localized” Office 2007 desktop. This mirrors a trend in the wider IT community. A Network World article, Five Cool Future IT Positions, lists the "technology‐business relationship manager" among its five top IT role formations. Reporting directly to the CIO, technology‐business relationship managers may have desks both in IT and in the business unit as well, thus embedding this technology‐ and human‐savvy consultant within the business unit first to ensure progress, but more importantly to bring about true business innovations.
XML Works What if you could generate not one document, but an entire deal’s worth from a wireless device that fits in the palm of your hand? Imagine your practice area’s business development capabilities when you not only advise your potential client of this ability, but also complete the effort while in its first face‐to‐face meeting? Why not generate a free first draft as an illustration of the depth of commitment your firm has made to the delivery of accurate, secure and managed legal content to meet their demands. XML opens documents Less than a decade after its original definition, XML has come of age to transform everything from the Web to the corporate intranets and client portals now administered directly by a lawyer’s support staff. Microsoft created the Office Open XML format to both bring documents up to speed with Internet era open standards and provide critical backward compatibility with legacy Office documents. Unlike the proprietary binary‐based file formats of past Microsoft Office releases, Office XML documents are more open, compact and robust – making document content more manageable than ever before. Office XML formats also enable new levels of data integration between documents and back‐end
Microsystems Strategy Brief
Page 3
The Future of Legal Documents systems. By using XML to open the Office file format, Microsoft has made it possible for firms to maximize interoperability within their document production environment. And the componentized nature of Office XML files means that document issue resolution is also greatly improved. Closed, proprietary formats fade away Since law firms began moving from typewriters to proprietary electronic word processing systems in the early 1970s, Baby Boomer professionals have experienced the bane of the proprietary file format – ceaseless conversions and corruption. For nearly 30 years, this recurring cycle spun one binary file type into another, wreaking havoc on content, formatting and humans alike. The cycle remained unquestioned until the promise of the World Wide Web and prevalence of electronic email systems brought the futility into focus: why should Office file formats be proprietary? Shouldn’t they too be as accessible, structured and open as content readable on the Web? An open file format roots itself in a common language agreed upon by international standards organizations with a charter that upholds the interests of more than a single company. At the global level, this promotes worldwide adoption of the format and interoperability. At the technology level, we can use widely available tools to read, write and correct issues. But what does this mean for the business user? As the future of documents unfolds, it means innovative approaches place complex document automation within the reach of business users. It removes the programmers‐only technology barrier – introducing true application agility to meet the business demands ahead.
Connectivity Extends While most document production systems are designed around isolated applications, the legal world is now fully‐networked. Leading law firms and upstarts alike are now empowered to apply previously limited technology concepts to compete for any client’s business. Boundaries blur, collaboration occurs Consider a simple search, conducted from a browser page, now delivers data formerly trapped in disparate enterprise business systems – from managed documents to billing systems to vetted legal clause libraries. As technologies improve the internal research and productivity of the lawyer, time and distance remains the illusive “last mile” to closing the business‐technology gap. Some law firms are exploring new, more competitive business models to provide clients with lower cost, self service capabilities for creating document first drafts via the Web. Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Office Groove 2007 help to enable new online client collaboration models – such as automating client first drafting via a SharePoint portal and collaborative completion via Groove. This new model of delivering legal services is especially important for price sensitive or fixed fee legal services and for practice areas serving emerging ventures.
Microsystems Strategy Brief
Page 4
The Future of Legal Documents Connect & flatten your world All of this “world is flat” global connectivity talk is sure to make CIOs, IT staff, general counsels and risk managers nervous – for they know that increased connectivity equals increased exposure to risk. The single most important best practice for connecting and flattening your firm’s universe is for business analysts to add risk managers as key members of their team. As business analysts map out business requirements and opportunities for making key data from systems such as case management available at lawyer’s fingertips, risk managers will ensure that both firm and client risk requirements are met. Most CIOs are probably already well aware of rising risk management requirements. For example, the content in engagement letters must be managed for consistency with the latest Sarbanes‐Oxley and IRS disclosure language. “Save as” document creation simply exposes firms to too much risk. Centralizing and controlling required content ensure compliance in a verifiable way.
Reorient Document Production Now The future of legal documents defined here is clearly just the tip of the iceberg that will emerge over the next decade. Business analysts will help each practice area in their firm start reorienting their document production today, while other firms perform business as usual. Business analysts should work with the most strategic practices to: •
Map business requirements to technology opportunities – Bridge the critical business‐technology gap by mapping business requirements to the opportunities presented by fluent interface design, XML and wider connectivity. Brief IT leadership on the requirements for increasing practice area competitiveness and the resources needed to close this gap, such as knowledge management associates and risk managers.
•
Manage live, modular document content – Recruit knowledge management associates as part of your team for each practice area. Use XML to capture the best practice content of your senior partners, and share this priceless knowledge firm‐wide with new associates.
•
Connect and flatten your world with connections – Work with risk managers to map connections to business‐critical data and connect lawyers with clients using collaboration technology in compliance with client risk management requirements.
About Microsystems Microsystems is the leader in providing complete, "first draft to final delivery" document lifecycle solutions to the legal and life sciences markets and other document‐intensive businesses. The company provides more than 500 client firms and companies with an innovative combination of software products, consulting services and training designed to improve the total document creation, quality control and delivery processes.
Microsystems Strategy Brief
Page 5
2007 and Beyond
Strategy Brief
Microsystems | 3025 Highland Parkway, Suite 450 | Downers Grove, IL 60515 | 630‐598‐1100 | microsystems.com
The Future of Legal Documents
Executive summary Twenty years in the making, legal document production enters a brand new era. Unlike the previous two decades, this next 10 years focuses less on the task of producing a document and more on supporting the business needs of the lawyers serving their clients. As one IT director proclaimed, “We don’t do documents here. We do deals.”
“We don’t do documents here. We do deals.”
While client demands have accelerated the pace of legal business, legal document production technology has done little more than digitize and automate the functions of the typewriter – of course with the oft‐exercised additions of “copy/cut and paste.” The result? A business‐technology gap that compromises the service firms deliver to their clients.
To close this gap, law firms must reorient the production of document deliverables to help each and every practice area realize its unique business aspirations. With this strategy paper, Microsystems lays out a vision for the future of legal documents and how to bridge the widening business‐technology gap. The Future of Legal Business The future of legal business exposes this gap most clearly. Today’s clients have challenged their law firms in many ways – from mandating fixed fees to faster deal turnaround times, to “no‐time, no‐distance” global capabilities – placing stresses on human capital, technologies and existing document workflows alike. These recent business demands illustrate the breadth of the challenge: •
The large franchisee client of a Midwest firm wants to enable its field agents to generate just‐in‐time electronic editions of property leases.
•
A UK‐based global organization submits an RFP to an AmLaw 100 firm that all legal work product be issued by the firm in an open standard XML format.
•
The executive director of a regional law firm hopes to realize greater profitability from its trust and estates practice area. To do so, the practice must eliminate the inefficiencies created by their four offices each using different document production workflows.
•
Facing the compliance requirements of Sarbanes‐Oxley, a global client calls upon its law firm to aid its risk management team. Not only must the firm draft and validate new risk procedures and policies, but it must also help facilitate the implementation of the policies across three continents and 15,000 employees.
With both human and technology resources organized in silos, these business demands and deliverables require the full capabilities of a law firm to be organized around meeting client needs. Forward‐thinking CIOs know they must turn the enterprise‐wide production of legal documents into a firm competency. Simply put, the future of legal documents requires a relentless dedication to understanding the needs of every practice area and meeting those needs with agile document production
Microsystems Strategy Brief
Page 1
The Future of Legal Documents capabilities. Only by achieving both of these objectives does a firm bridge the business‐technology gap. 2007 & Beyond Documents In the post‐typewriter era, legal technology boomed with investments in vital systems – from technologies to manage cases, documents, knowledge and customer relationships to infrastructure that provides networking and remote connectivity. However, because they may be disconnected from the everyday workflows for producing legal work product, this legal technology delivers limited value. While undoubtedly the organizational design of a law firm hampers the ability to properly bridge the business‐technology gap, it is the barriers of the technology that have kept us from going the distance. Consider this, how much have we really changed the way we deliver documents since moving from the typewriter to PCs? Three transformative technologies – discussed for nearly 10 years – have recently matured to enable us to close this gap once and for all. And not at the end of the technology deployment process – but from the very beginning. The future of legal documents is defined by: •
Fluent interface design – A software design philosophy which reorients user interfaces such that desired results adeptly guide the user to meet the business objective at hand.
•
XML – Open file formats permit content and formatting to reorient based on the current context. They also make document content more stable, manageable, dynamic and reusable.
•
Connectivity – With such open standards, this now means we can move rapidly from the black hole of most enterprise data stores to platforms seamlessly promoting safe and secure electronic collaboration arenas. Such connections not only enable document collaboration, but global human collaboration as well.
Visionary firms must capitalize on these technologies in order to span the business‐ technology gap.
Interface Reorients Consider a “simple” authoring technology like Word – installed on 450 million desktops worldwide. It takes 297 clicks (33 clicks for each of 9 levels) to properly modify Microsoft’s distributed numbering default into an outline usable in a typical legal agreement. Fluent interface – The pivotal tabula rasa moment Utilizing data collected from 1.3 billion user sessions, we now have quantitative proof that most Office features designed to promote viable electronic work product have gone underutilized. Hidden beneath a myriad of dialogs, drop‐downs and click‐points, basic legal document functionality is challenging to train – and to retain. The tabula rasa moment – beginning from a blank slate – is upon us. Utilizing fluent interface design technologies and techniques, a results‐oriented focus is now within reach
Microsystems Strategy Brief
Page 2
The Future of Legal Documents of the business user, minimizing the number of clicks required to complete document production tasks. With an ability to “train” the interface more than we do the user, our resources must reorient as well. Mind the gap – Map business requirements to opportunities This rapidly developing best practice increasingly rests in one role – that of the legal business analyst. Acting as a liaison between practice areas and IT, the business analyst ensures that document production technology supports the business objectives of each practice.
The tabula rasa moment – beginning from a blank slate – is upon us.
Throughout the US and the UK, legal IT visionaries are putting business analysts in place to align technology with the business. A regional firm in Seattle retitled and refocused its entire senior technology training team as senior business analysts. In New York, a capital markets firm dispatched a business analyst to aid its administrative staff in the adoption of a challenging matter‐centric system deployment. In Chicago, a mid‐size firm began the design of its next desktop not by migrating software, but rather by sending its lead technical trainers to an extensive business analyst training course. And, at a global UK firm, adept interviewing of business users on document production challenges surfaced critical requirements now being implemented into the design of a “globalized and localized” Office 2007 desktop. This mirrors a trend in the wider IT community. A Network World article, Five Cool Future IT Positions, lists the "technology‐business relationship manager" among its five top IT role formations. Reporting directly to the CIO, technology‐business relationship managers may have desks both in IT and in the business unit as well, thus embedding this technology‐ and human‐savvy consultant within the business unit first to ensure progress, but more importantly to bring about true business innovations.
XML Works What if you could generate not one document, but an entire deal’s worth from a wireless device that fits in the palm of your hand? Imagine your practice area’s business development capabilities when you not only advise your potential client of this ability, but also complete the effort while in its first face‐to‐face meeting? Why not generate a free first draft as an illustration of the depth of commitment your firm has made to the delivery of accurate, secure and managed legal content to meet their demands. XML opens documents Less than a decade after its original definition, XML has come of age to transform everything from the Web to the corporate intranets and client portals now administered directly by a lawyer’s support staff. Microsoft created the Office Open XML format to both bring documents up to speed with Internet era open standards and provide critical backward compatibility with legacy Office documents. Unlike the proprietary binary‐based file formats of past Microsoft Office releases, Office XML documents are more open, compact and robust – making document content more manageable than ever before. Office XML formats also enable new levels of data integration between documents and back‐end
Microsystems Strategy Brief
Page 3
The Future of Legal Documents systems. By using XML to open the Office file format, Microsoft has made it possible for firms to maximize interoperability within their document production environment. And the componentized nature of Office XML files means that document issue resolution is also greatly improved. Closed, proprietary formats fade away Since law firms began moving from typewriters to proprietary electronic word processing systems in the early 1970s, Baby Boomer professionals have experienced the bane of the proprietary file format – ceaseless conversions and corruption. For nearly 30 years, this recurring cycle spun one binary file type into another, wreaking havoc on content, formatting and humans alike. The cycle remained unquestioned until the promise of the World Wide Web and prevalence of electronic email systems brought the futility into focus: why should Office file formats be proprietary? Shouldn’t they too be as accessible, structured and open as content readable on the Web? An open file format roots itself in a common language agreed upon by international standards organizations with a charter that upholds the interests of more than a single company. At the global level, this promotes worldwide adoption of the format and interoperability. At the technology level, we can use widely available tools to read, write and correct issues. But what does this mean for the business user? As the future of documents unfolds, it means innovative approaches place complex document automation within the reach of business users. It removes the programmers‐only technology barrier – introducing true application agility to meet the business demands ahead.
Connectivity Extends While most document production systems are designed around isolated applications, the legal world is now fully‐networked. Leading law firms and upstarts alike are now empowered to apply previously limited technology concepts to compete for any client’s business. Boundaries blur, collaboration occurs Consider a simple search, conducted from a browser page, now delivers data formerly trapped in disparate enterprise business systems – from managed documents to billing systems to vetted legal clause libraries. As technologies improve the internal research and productivity of the lawyer, time and distance remains the illusive “last mile” to closing the business‐technology gap. Some law firms are exploring new, more competitive business models to provide clients with lower cost, self service capabilities for creating document first drafts via the Web. Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Office Groove 2007 help to enable new online client collaboration models – such as automating client first drafting via a SharePoint portal and collaborative completion via Groove. This new model of delivering legal services is especially important for price sensitive or fixed fee legal services and for practice areas serving emerging ventures.
Microsystems Strategy Brief
Page 4
The Future of Legal Documents Connect & flatten your world All of this “world is flat” global connectivity talk is sure to make CIOs, IT staff, general counsels and risk managers nervous – for they know that increased connectivity equals increased exposure to risk. The single most important best practice for connecting and flattening your firm’s universe is for business analysts to add risk managers as key members of their team. As business analysts map out business requirements and opportunities for making key data from systems such as case management available at lawyer’s fingertips, risk managers will ensure that both firm and client risk requirements are met. Most CIOs are probably already well aware of rising risk management requirements. For example, the content in engagement letters must be managed for consistency with the latest Sarbanes‐Oxley and IRS disclosure language. “Save as” document creation simply exposes firms to too much risk. Centralizing and controlling required content ensure compliance in a verifiable way.
Reorient Document Production Now The future of legal documents defined here is clearly just the tip of the iceberg that will emerge over the next decade. Business analysts will help each practice area in their firm start reorienting their document production today, while other firms perform business as usual. Business analysts should work with the most strategic practices to: •
Map business requirements to technology opportunities – Bridge the critical business‐technology gap by mapping business requirements to the opportunities presented by fluent interface design, XML and wider connectivity. Brief IT leadership on the requirements for increasing practice area competitiveness and the resources needed to close this gap, such as knowledge management associates and risk managers.
•
Manage live, modular document content – Recruit knowledge management associates as part of your team for each practice area. Use XML to capture the best practice content of your senior partners, and share this priceless knowledge firm‐wide with new associates.
•
Connect and flatten your world with connections – Work with risk managers to map connections to business‐critical data and connect lawyers with clients using collaboration technology in compliance with client risk management requirements.
About Microsystems Microsystems is the leader in providing complete, "first draft to final delivery" document lifecycle solutions to the legal and life sciences markets and other document‐intensive businesses. The company provides more than 500 client firms and companies with an innovative combination of software products, consulting services and training designed to improve the total document creation, quality control and delivery processes.
Microsystems Strategy Brief
Page 5
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