Following its acquisition of document automation toolkit AfterPattern in 2021, NetDocuments today (18 August) announces the release of PatternBuilder, a no-code document and workflow automation tool that is built directly in the NetDocuments platform.
It is envisaged that legal departments will use PatternBuilder to build apps to automate the NDA process, sales contracts, and other agreements. While PatternBuilder can integrate with a corporate’s other core systems as well as DocuSign, according to CEO Josh Baxter, NetDocuments is intentionally not trying to compete in the corporate lifecycle management space.
Law firms can potentially use PatternBuilder to streamline business operations such as engagement letters, as well as build apps to generate substantive client work ranging from corporate formation to real estate closings.
Speaking to Legal IT Insider, Baxter said: “Today we’re really focusing on automating the steps across the document lifecycle. Imagine a law firm where they do the same work over and over again, and they have a paralegal who is manually putting together that content all the time. They can take that paralegal, who knows what it’s like to put that content together, and they can use PatternBuilder to build out the pattern to create an application that sits in NetDocuments.”
He adds: “Say you just called and want us to do all your estate documents. You get a form and put in all the information that’s relevant and then all the documents, whether trust or will, are created. The thing that is unique is that a lot of no-code or low-code tools don’t have the ability to do multiple iterations of a thing. Maybe you have two kids and there are documents relevant to each of them. With PatternBuilder, you get to go through that loop just one time.”
Users can build online forms to execute calculations for on-the-fly number-crunching and automate the completion of third-party PDFs for government and corporate forms.
With regard to which corporate legal teams may be drawn to PatternBuilder, Baxter said: “Where we are focused is on identifying those organisations that behave like a law firm and have a significant amount of regulation, so they need our level of security and compliance standards.”
Law firms that are already using PatternBuilder include US immigration firm Siskind Susser, where chief information officer Josh Waddell said: “The underlying PatternBuilder technology enables us to build automated workflows to support our immigration practice. From an automation perspective, our firm has seen major efficiencies, including cutting down the time it takes to prepare some documents by as much as 90%. These efficiencies free up our staff to serve more clients and do higher-level work.”
PatternBuilder is available now in the US and will be rolled out to all other global service regions in the next month. NetDocuments is hosting a product briefing on August 31s. ILTACON 2022 attendees can also RSVP here to look at the product in person.