Although HotDocs Advance has been out for around five years, I know many organisations have not yet migrated across from HotDocs Classic.

There are many reasons for this, including:

• not understanding HotDocs Advance's full potential to go further than Classic and create more valuable solutions. With the world's most powerful document automation solution, you can do better-quality work much faster. You can support more clients without the cost of adding more staff, and you can charge higher fees for less time.
• Accessing HotDocs Classic via an integration such as ActionStep, where an integration with HotDocs Advance has not, until recently, been easily available.

However, from what I have observed, many more practical issues hold firms back. I summarise these and options for dealing with them below. For firms that are using ActionStep and who would like to integrate with HotDocs Advance, I share an exciting update on that below as well.

1  The original templates are poor quality

In many cases, the actual underlying Word templates are not in good shape. They have inconsistent styles, which results in strange formatting that has nothing to do with the automation.

The templates also contain errors and inconsistencies, which could easily be addressed while updating the automation. This is particularly the case where there are packages of templates, as over time they have diverged with different wording and concepts.

Recommendation:

Before upgrading to HotDocs Advance or looking at alternative automation solutions, take a fresh look at the templates and how they should ideally work in 2024 and beyond before looking at the automation.

2  The automation is not good

I first started working with HotDocs in 2012. As a corporate and finance partner in a law firm with 15 years of experience, I knew the documents inside out, and it wasn't hard to learn the basics of the HotDocs drag-and-drop interface.

The loan agreement I initially automated worked at a basic level, but it was ugly, buggy, and unreliable. I'd automated a single template without thinking about the 19 other documents that should form part of a template package and be assembled simultaneously from a single interview questionnaire, so it wouldn't scale.

When the documents were assembled, there were lots of weird discrepancies where sometimes paragraphs would run together, while in other situations, there were blank paragraphs that shouldn't have been there.

That's about where I see a lot of existing HotDocs classic templates that enthusiastic amateurs have created. Often, the person who did the work has moved on, and nobody left within the firm can – or wants to – pick it up.

It's easy to believe—particularly when competing document automation solutions promote this—that the problem is HotDocs and how "hard" it is to automate. It's not HotDocs; it's how it has been used.

Recommendation:

While you can convert your existing HotDocs Classic automation to HotDocs Author, it's worth considering a fresh start. Expert legal automators like LawHawk have substantial amounts of pre-built HotDocs Advance automation, which is tried and tested already. It can be dropped into your templates for the most common concepts and then tailored to your particular requirements. This can save immense time, while also improving your results.

3  Converting from HotDocs Classic to HotDocs Advance requires some different techniques

While HotDocs Advance has a pre-built converter that does most of the heavy lifting, if you decide to migrate your existing automation, some of the techniques you used (for example, to create lookups or pick lists of names or other repeated details) won't work in the same way.

One firm we recently worked with spent over a year trying to replicate that functionality without success. What an opportunity cost!

We have quickly been able to help them replicate that functionality and get better outcomes by using new HotDocs Advance functionality, such as default answers for workgroups, table components, and some simple computations. It doesn't have to be difficult, and you don't have to figure it all out yourself.

4    Accessing HotDocs Advance via an integration with ActionStep

ActionStep was one of the first practice management systems to see the potential of an integration with HotDocs, and have had a good integration with HotDocs Classic for around 10 years.

The integration within ActionStep has never been upgraded to HotDocs Advance, and is not going to be.  However, all is not lost!  Our partner company ProLegalTech, who we have worked with for several years, have recently developed an integration for a large ActionStep/HotDocs customer to replicate and enhance all the core functionality within the earlier integration, but with HotDocs Advance.  It is really impressive and worth a look. 

If you are an existing HotDocs customer and want to convert your template to HotDocs Advance and achieve the best possible outcomes (or just know what is possible), you can contact us for a free no obligation consultation.

I will review your current setup with you, identify issues and opportunities, and give you options for proceeding at various price points.

If you are an ActionStep customer, and are interested in upgrading to HotDocs Advance with an integration to ActionStep, you can contact me or ProLegalTech for more information.

It is up to you whether you want to work with LawHawk, choose to work with someone else, or do it yourself. Even if there is no next step with LawHawk, knowing your options will help you make the most informed decisions.