First step...make sure it IS document assembly you wish to invest in...This is a long article that covers many points.

Similar "document" & "process" investment profits

There are several avenues for your firm to invest in your documents and processes from day to day. Vendors make this a very grey area, as document assembly, case management, workflow, time costing and billing are all bundled into a generic "practice management system".

Document assembly is a valid means of increasing profit, no matter which method you select, as the drafting and creation of your documents is a separate thing to recording client/matter data, billing or time costing.   Document management reduces the amount of time staff spend looking for documents. So, for example, if they spend an average of 15 minutes a day searching for documents, a document management system may reduce that search time to 5 minutes. Over the course of the week, that is 50 minutes per staff member that is freed for billable work (and irritation alleviated).

Workflow and case management solutions reduce the amount of staff time spent tracking critical dates and ensure that files are acted upon in a timely matter. This type of software can be priceless - you cannot put a price on not missing a critical date. Integrating these three types of system can generate huge efficiency benefits for any law firm, provided you have enough work coming through your firm.

Document management is all about finding documents, searching for phrases and storing documents by matter or project. If you are not finding documents quickly enough, are losing documents, or cannot find a handy precedent you remember from "years ago", then document management is possibly a good option.  Document management usually integrates with your word processor so that you don't have to "save" documents anymore - you click a button and profile them into your Document Management System ("DMS").

Don't Be Oversold

Do not be misled by software vendors preaching the massive profit margins of expensive systems. Do you need a document management system for your firm when you are producing on average 100 documents a day? It may be nice to have, if it didn't cost you around $400.00 per seat per annum, plus 15-20% on top for support. The real answer is "probably not" - an automatic saving macro in your chosen word processor will achieve most if not all of what you need when coupled with an archiving procedure for your electronic files, much along the lines of what most firms do with their paper files.  Quite often, there are more affordable and "scaled down" document management systems available.  Don't buy a Porsche to drive to the local shops once a week.

Do you need a case management system to control your firm's workflow? Again, it will no doubt have benefits and may be "nice" to have. As with all investment benefits these must be measured against the ROI. If you are not managing large numbers of files per day across multiple distinct sections within your practice, perhaps the return isn't as large as it may first appear. After having seen Time Matters and Amicus Attorney in action, I can definitely say that these two products will increase productivity, and the amount of time you bill.

Lastly, do you need a document assembly system to produce your documents quicker? Most firms would cheer if they could slash 20% of the production time off each document they produce. But the question is always: how much do I need to invest to achieve this outcome?

Smart Investing

Any software investment should be measured against the needs of your firm . Law firms are "oversold" every day on their needs versus their expenditure. Firstly, what are you buying here - not just "what product" but what is the content of what you are buying, and how does it effect you in the long run? The (non-business related) questions that need to be asked prior to any tech investment for a law firm are:

• what software product(s) are being used in the solution or service?
• what other entities support the software or solution being offered (a product owned and marketed by a single entity may bind you to them)?
• if it is a sole provider, can we realistically put ourselves in a position to self-support?
• what language(s) your solution or service will involve? Are they 'common' languages, or are they proprietary languages?
• are the langauges used 'current' and still widely used?
• is the design extensible - can we add to it, extend it, modify it?
  
• do we need to have someone in-house with a specific skill set to make customisations and routine maintenance?
  
• is the software or solution compatible with other products/languages and can the solution or service integrate with other programs you run or plan to run?
• does the software include an Application Programming Interface ("API") and is that API documented?
  
• are there are any public (and free) resources that can assist you in maintaining your own systems?

A perfect example of this is the Microsoft Office Suite. You know that when you purchase it, you are getting database applications handled by Access, spreadsheets handled by Excel, word processing by MS Word and Outlook will be your email & scheduling client. With a bit of research, you learn that the programming language used in all of these products is generally Visual Basic for Applications (VBA), C++ or the ".net" platform. You will also quickly learn that there are hundreds of entities who support these products and there are vast amounts of free resources on the internet to help you with support and getting the most out of your product.

This is the process of an intelligent investor: they are researching not only what the product allegedly can do for them, but also the ongoing costs of software investment of any type. Remember one critical thing: vendors do not make the majority of their income from resale of products (although this can be substantial), they make the majority of their income from supporting clients. Your initial purchase price is the smallest cost, not the primary cost.

With this approach, you can quickly find out whether you will be able to support the solution you purchase, or whether you will be bound "hand and foot" because the only entity that supports your product is the entity that sold it to you. You will be aware of how far you can "expand" your purchase, because you will know what other products you can integrate with it. The old saying is "a stitch in time saves nine" and this is most certainly the case with any software investment you intend to make.

For many software purchases, these up front questions will alleviate a lot of headaches. However, document assembly is not "off the shelf". Law firm A's experience may be totally opposite to Law firm B's experience. Why? Because the purchased software isn't what forms the solution. The purchased software is a programming language that allows a developer to form the solution.

Short Answer

Understand what your general goals are before you buy something that may not satisfy the requirements you haven't firmed up on yet!