The Next Step In Legal Document Automation

In just about any practice area, the need to draft multiple documents for a given matter will frequently arise.

If you’re a trusts and estates lawyer, you may need to create a will, a power of attorney, and a health care directive simultaneously, for example. 

In-house counsel may need to revise work arrangements and new hire agreements at the same time. 

Real estate lawyers will need multiple documents for — pretty much everything. 

But even with the top document automation tools, the need to create each document individually can introduce errors and hinder efficiency. 

Luckily, LexisNexis’ new “multi-doc” feature for Automated Templates is here to help. 

Released in late 2024, this new feature expands the capabilities of Lexis’ Automated Templates to further streamline your creation of legal documents. 

Automated Templates is integrated with Lexis+ and Practical Guidance, providing a seamless experience for document automation. 

Notably, Automated Templates includes an intelligent Q&A interface, where users answer a series of questions, and then this information is used to populate a document that is personalized to the user’s scenario. 

The new multi-doc feature further streamlines this process. It does so by assembling multiple documents from the same interview answers, saving time and ensuring consistency across outputs. 

Feel free to try out this new feature here — and read on for a detailed overview of how this innovation could reshape your work. 

Getting Started

When you first open the Automated Templates tool, you are directed to a screen showing you more than 11,000 templates. 

The templates span more than 30 jurisdictions, and are concentrated in eight practice areas: trusts and estates, family law, real estate, labor and employment, criminal law, business entities, commercial transactions, and civil litigation.

The first step to assembling your documents is to find the right template. 

To ease this process, the search functionality includes a “Source Collection” option, which includes curated sets of templates unique to a particular jurisdiction and practice area, like “New York Family Law.” 

(You have the option of subscribing only to certain Source Collections, depending on your practice’s specific needs.)

Other filters allow you to narrow down by practice area and jurisdiction, respectively. 

Templates can be previewed prior to selection, and, for a closer look, they can be opened directly in Practical Guidance. 

The Work Items

Once you have determined the template is a fit, you click “Add to Work item.” A single work item may include one or multiple templates. The multi-doc feature allows you to select up to 50 templates to include in a work item.

Once you have selected the templates you need, click “Start Work Item” and a “Start Work Item” popup appears. 

At this point, you have the option of starting a new work item or adding to an existing one. 

There are many use cases for the latter option. Maybe, for example, you have started drafting documents for a particular client, and then realized that circumstances have changed.

With “Add to Existing Work Item,” you can create whatever additional documents may be needed while incorporating all of the data you have already entered on the client’s behalf. 

The Interview

To assemble the documents within a work item, you fill out fields in a process structured as an interview.

As each field is completed, the information entered populates all of the documents in the work item. 

This means that every piece of data will be included automatically in creating up to 50 documents, saving substantial time, particularly for documents that require repeated and complicated information. 

The process also reduces the risk of errors that may arise from entering the same information inconsistently. 

Getting Your Documents

Once you have finished the questionnaire, you simply click a button labeled “Finish” to assemble your documents. 

That button takes you to a page where you can access all of your documents, including prior versions. 

You can download the documents or delete them to minimize the data stored on the cloud. 

Notably, you can also duplicate the work item here. 

This means that the entire work item and all of the documents it contains can automatically be adjusted and repurposed for a new client involved in a similar matter. 

See for Yourself

An article like this can only scratch the surface of the capabilities of a program like Automated Templates and its multi-docs feature. 

If you’re curious about this product and would like to try it out, you can do so here.

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