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Overview of existing automation methods
Static coding
In principle, every company is of course also free to code the entire document as a fixed work. This would mean that each contract would be its own software, which could be adapted to the needs and requirements of the company or law firm, but would therefore not benefit from the best practices from experience with many customers. Sound like a lot of work? It is — we speak from experience. Basically, for most companies, this means hiring internal or external experts to get the job done. Such stand-alone solutions often remain unloved children who are not really used by anyone because functionality and user experience often do not meet the current standard that users of other software are used to.
Pre-produced decision trees
A logical development of static contract automation is the consideration of flexible decision trees. The model is still quite popular on the market. In contrast to static coding, this allows different contracts to be displayed in the same software. First, you define the logics using an expert system, and then the decision tree is firmly linked to various text passages in the document. For each additional contract, all decision logics and text passages of the contract must continue to be combined, which is usually only possible through further development work. If the logics or sections in the contract change, this must usually also be adjusted in the source code each time. In this way, you will finally achieve the same result as with top.legal, but this also requires a large amount of development work.
Square brackets or other tags
This methodology is very reminiscent of Microsoft Word's mail merge methodology. You must first completely cover your contract with square brackets and footnotes to include placeholders and optional texts. A very time-consuming exercise that turns the original document into a mess of inserts and footnotes. The document revised in this way can then be used to incorporate inputs from other documents or CRM systems into the template using automation software. This usually also requires a separate software solution, which must be laboriously developed by expensive IT experts.
Most of the above methods involve various stages of issuing the finished document: you need to build the logic of the document at another stage and test it in a second phase, during which both stages involve a lot of clicking and verifying the result of your work. Expert help, either from internal or external experts, is almost always required to complete the automations, and we all know that this drives up costs.
How is it easier?
With visual automation, everything on the document happens in real time and reflects any change or automation you create. You can add automated questions and answers to the document, drag and drop and remove automated questions and answers anywhere in the document, all in the same view in your browser.
Since you're most likely familiar with the document you're automating, you can start working on the automations right away without having to go through another phase of setting up the automation first. There is also no further programming required if parts of a document should change or simply shift or change logic.
You simply upload the document to top.legal and start going through the document, adding the required automations to the right place, and seeing the result in the same view, all in real time. In the first step, our AI suggests useful placeholders for the document, which you can of course remove again at any time.
How important is it to revise your contract once automation is complete?
With one click, you can preview the document and test it as any end user would. In other words, the document can be reviewed at any time, and it reflects changes and answers to the automated questions accordingly. All in real time and without development effort.
In short, that's what automating visual documents is all about: ease of use, speed, and performance.
