Docs After Dark

This month, Jeff, John, and Danielle discuss the advancements made in HotDocs Advance and how to convert templates from HotDocs Classic. John introduces the team to Bigle Legal, a web-based document automation system desgined to support multiple languages. Industry news includes some exciting enhancements to TheFormTool's Aurora and Woodpecker.

Back by popular demand, Alex Melehy and Helen Coyne from Woodpecker join Jeff, John, and Danielle this month. Alex and Helen tell us about some of the wonderful new features they've added to the product, including page breaks and external questionnaires; how they use agile development practices to implement new features quickly; and how they train their clients to become automation wizrds in no time. Customarily, our guests provide our document fact, and Helen did not disappoint. We think it's the best one yet!

This month Jeff, John, and Danielle are joined by Judie Rahman, client solutions manager at BigHand. After covering document assembly news, including John's appearance at ILTACON regarding document assembly and artificial intelligence (see the video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRbn05ZR_uc), we bring Judie "onstage" and discuss BigHand's document production tools and how they've helped customers during COVID-19. Judie talks us through how document production has changed for legal professionals during the pandemic, how BigHand's offerings help employees focus and minimize distractions while working remotely, and how to optimize your document lifecycle from dictation to digital draft to delivery of work product. And, most importantly, how to get staffers up to speed on new technology in a challenging environment.

Ep 026 - Excel at Xpressing Yourself by John Federico, Jeff Schoenberger, & Danielle DavisRoe

A bit delayed, but July is up! This episode, John, Jeff, and Danielle talk about cool new features available from our friends in the web-based document assembly world. For those still firmly in the desktop automation camp, John walks us through how to connect Clio’s web software to HotDocs Classic by means of Faster SQL, JSON, and Microsoft’s SQL Server. A yellow brick road of possibilities! We also take some listener (e)mail on customizing Microsoft Word and building ribbons that have exactly what you what in the place you want it. Finally, find out what the moon landing, Michael Bay, and Dancing with the Stars have to do with July.

Back this month to our core subject, John, Jeff, and Danielle are deep in the document automation woods. When it comes to overhauling a template set, should you start fresh or Band-Aid them? Danielle and Jeff do point and counterpoint. Explore the ancient, for the Internet, article that sparked the debate: https://dsh.re/16bdb. John enlightens us on HotDocs' union statements and we discuss a document fact involving a more perfect union. Happy Summer!

Delayed by a month of coronavirus, we present our "live from the show floor" interviews with key legal tech vendors. Danielle and Jeff talk to Abacus Next about HotDocs Advance, ProCirrus about infrastructure as a service, all the more relevant given our work-from-home situation, and modern, web-centric document automation services Lawyaw and Woodpecker. We also discuss our favorite "Startup Alley" entrants and cool things from the show floor. Finally, see our document fact live and in-person (via the web) at tinyurl.com/abaart.

When Cornwallis surrendered to Washington at Yorktown, the British army band played the comic ditty "The World Turned Upside Down." Boy, hasn't it in the last few weeks! While recording in our triple-filtered, secure, undisclosed locations, John, Jeff, and Danielle talk remotely to each other about working remotely. Learn about three web-centric automation tools. What accommodations and offers have various legal tech vendors presented the community to help the forced-to-be-remote attorney? And we offer our personal tips to help make your work from home experience better.

Jules Verne has nothing on us! In this month's episode, John, Jeff, and Danielle talk about new features afoot in four automation powerhouses. TheFormTool's Aurora adds private-labeling capabilities and reaches out to the legal aid community. Woodpecker adds new PDF options and an enticing pricing model. XpressDox readies a new web-based publishing architecture. And AbacusNext's HotDocs Advance product brings modern interviews and simplified coding to an old favorite. We may not travel by steamship or rail, but buckle up for a good story.

For our 20th episode, Affinity partner Barron Henley joins the show; long-time listener, first-time caller. We discuss master component files in HotDocs, how you should handle rarely-changing, but modifiable text in the template development process, and Barron gives us a rundown on the history of WordPerfect in legal and, of course, why everyone should be using MS Word instead. Look holdouts - he's coming for you!