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Looking for the best legal document automation software in 2024? Our guide highlights top legal technology software solutions that save time, reduce human error, and enhance document creation efficiency for law firms.
Document automation is the process of using software to streamline and standardize the document creation, modification, and replication process. Also known as document generation and document assembly, document automation significantly reduces the time spent preparing documents, as it requires much less time and manual human input to populate and create documents and automate workflows.
As we put together this list, we prioritized highlighting the best cloud-based document automation software, ranking them by ease of use, user interface, client intake, document templates, document management, and the number of practice areas each tool caters to.
In this post, we’ll share where legal document automation software shines, as well as top choices for attorneys and law firms across numerous practice areas. Any industry that deals with repetitive document drafting, like the legal industry, is a prime candidate for document automation software. Finding the right document automation software is integral to free up your brain power to focus on more important matters and improve profitability in your practice.
While case management and legal practice management software are increasingly popular, a document automation platform can be absolutely transformative for law firms of all sizes to seamlessly use their law practice data in the document creation process.
For Lawyers:
Lawyers are prime candidates and beneficiaries of document automation software, also known as legal workflow software. It’s an impactful value-add to their business for a few key reasons.
Greater consistency and fewer errors: Standardized templates and automated documents ensure that correct contract language, provisions, and references are baked into the document, creating consistency across client deliverables and reducing errors, as well as time spent reviewing prepared documents. Standardized templates also prevent the need for lawyers to create and recreate piecemeal documents from a number of different sources.
Time savings: Manual document drafting using control F to find and replace is cumbersome and time-consuming. Document automation software eliminates the complicated process of manually scanning documents and replacing sensitive client information.
Empower attorneys to assist in document drafting: Document automation systems empower junior attorneys and staff with the necessary language and tools to prepare complex legal documents. More senior attorneys can then spend time quickly reviewing document inputs and more time on other high level, strategic tasks.
Knowledge Repository: Institutional knowledge and expertise can be baked into templates, removing the need to rely on the specific knowledge and know-how of a select few individuals Data in documents is collected by and retained within the system to allow firms to leverage their collective expertise and experience to share trends or advise clients on best strategies or timing.
Improve client experience: With the ability to more quickly and efficiently prepare documents, document automation software can drastically improve the client experience. Once automated templates are created, self-service portals allow clients to generate and use documents in just minutes.
Manage complex workflows: Document automation tools allow lawyers to automate complex workflows, from creating and populating documents, to sending for review and approval and collecting signatures, often all within one platform.
Gavel has afforded these and many more benefits to its users through its software. For example:
Gavel is the premier document automation tool for the legal industry. Where Gavel excels is that it’s easy to set up, but contains all of the powerful logic you’ll need to set up the most complex documents. As one user would say, “Love the simplicity of setup and the complexity of opportunities.” With Gavel, users can automate their own templates and forms or use the Gavel Marketplace to find relevant applications (created and backed by attorneys) to automate parts of their own practice or service.
When creating your own templates, Gavel’s simple UI makes it easy to navigate the platform. Powerful automation features, including conditional logic, complex branching, lists and nested repeating items, and advanced calculations allow you to build complex legal documents and workflows. To guide the newer automator, Gavel also provides a robust Learning Center and unlimited live customer support. Both Word and PDF documents (including court and judicial forms) can be automated and generated through Gavel via their cloud-based portal and Microsoft Word add-in. Gavel also allows for collecting e-signatures and centralized data and document storage.
Clients can access the automated document workflows through a client portal created for specific clients, or these workflows can be integrated into websites. Each instance of Gavel can also be white labeled. In other words, once a product is created on Gavel, it can be further customized to reflect the law firm’s logo and brand instead of Gavel’s–creating a bespoke solution for the firm.
For the user who prefers to leave workflow and document building to the experts, Gavel also has a team of vetted freelancers (available for hire by the hour). Gavel also has Clio, Docusign, Stripe, and Zapier Integrations and a Public API. Generating new documents from a pre-built workflow is seamless with Gavel’s No-Setup Automated Forms for estate planning, probate law, and family law attorneys. Gavel is recognized as one of the leading document assembly software players in the legal industry, and it’s built by lawyers, for lawyers. In fact, everyone on the customer team at Gavel is either a former lawyer or legal professional.
Gavel’s clients agree that Gavel’s software leads the industry here: “This is the most innovative and comprehensive form automation tool that I am aware of on the market today! To create documents and apps with little to no coding experience is a game changer!!”, and, “[it] changed the way I run my practice”.
Here are some sample use cases where Gavel’s software shines:
Pros
Cons
Gavel offers a free 7-day trial - click to get started. Prefer to speak to someone? Schedule a demo here.
P.S. Gavel was formerly known as Documate. Whenever you see references to Documate, they are referring to Gavel, which is founded by Dorna Moini, who is Gavel’s CEO and an attorney herself.
Clio Draft (formerly LawYaw) is a straightforward to use automation tool, largely geared towards lawyers who want a simple document automation solution. While feature-light, the easy to use interface and short learning curve allows lawyers to easily start building key templates right in Microsoft Word. It can also convert Microsoft Word documents into templates to be used for the future. Clio Draft allows for reuse of cards, fields, and logic chains of prior templates to quickly create new templates. Once ready to generate, users can create sets of documents through a single process.
Clio Draft's key feature is its up-to-date libraries of official jurisdiction-specific court forms, which can be populated with client specific information, making it a win for litigation-focused attorneys. E-signature integration allows users to send documents for electronic signatures right from within the tool. Notably lacking are client-facing features, such as guided workflows, client intake questionnaires, or client portals for clients to share and manage their data.
Clio’s specialty is law practice management software and legal document management software, not document automation.
Pros
Cons
HotDocs is one of the oldest and most well known document automation solutions, offering services for a number of industries, including legal.
For attorneys focused on complex legal document generation, HotDocs offers: conditional and nested logic, ability to generate multiple documents, dynamic questionnaire to populate templates, and the ability to gather and process lists. Still many of these features require coding expertise to create and a detailed understanding of the HotDocs “syntax”. Customer support assistance requires an extra fee. The program is really best suited for folks who have been using and are familiar with the HotDocs interface and syntax.
HotDocs integrates with key law firm software, including its CRM, timekeeping, and accounting softwares, but is notably lacking an e-signature integration. They also are no longer updating their desktop document automation software.
Pros
Cons
Bryter is a no-code / low-code platform that allows users to build digital applications and is stronger in workflow automation than document automation.
While the interface is simple and generally easy to learn, pre-built document automation features are limited, and more complex functionalities require additional coding or don’t exist. Bryter’s workflow automation tools, like trigger emails and approvals, and integrations with Kira, Microsoft Suite, iManage, Docusign etc. allow you to leverage firm data and expertise to collect and share key information and create end-to-end process solutions.
Bryter’s automation platform also allows for the creation of client-facing applications to be built, such as applications that can review documents for compliance, tax guides, and fifty state regulation trackers. This can be done by using its workflow tools to collect data and share insights and information with clients.
Pros
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Rally aims to focus on the entire client experience. The tool facilitates everything from intake to document creation, custom branding, document storage, client collaboration, and payments. Notably, Rally allows users to integrate a menu of services into their website to sell legal services online.
In doing so, Rally serves as both a contract automation and contract lifecycle management tool, with emphasis on the latter. As a document automation tool, Rally provides a number of pre-created and easy to edit templates, which can be filled in using information from CRMs and other sources. Unlike many other document automation tools, clients are also able to access the platform to collaborate on documents or use as a self-service platform. In terms of document automation, Rally is lacking in more robust automation capabilities, such as certain field types and logic capabilities.
Rally has also launched an AI-powered contract drafting tool, Spellbook. With the explosion of generative AI tools, it’s clear that their resources will likely be spent on continuing to build and grow Spellbook’s functionalities (as opposed to document automation).
In terms of document creation, the features are fairly comparable to a number of other providers on the market, but at a much higher price point, given some of the additional functionality.
Pros
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Unfortunately there’s no one-size-fits-all “best” option that works for each law firm or legal practice. While the solutions shared above are some of the best in the market, it’s best to evaluate each tool with your specific needs in mind. Consider:
If you’re a lawyer, we can help you figure this out - just sign up for a demo of Gavel and learn if it suits your needs. In 2024, Gavel was awarded Disruptive Technology of the Year and the best legal document automation software by ALM.
We’re biased, but Gavel is our winning option for best legal document automation software. While initially built by and for lawyers, Gavel can be used across a number of different industries.
Powerful document automation features, robust resources for customers, legal form software, and a marketplace to purchase pre-built applications makes Gavel a great option for many organizations.
As our clients say, “This is the best software ever. I think every law firm in America should use it."
If you’re ready to start automating, get started with a free trial of Gavel today.
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