This month's feature spotlight is written by Sageness

Feature Spotlight: Actionstep's 'Document Automation'

Supercharge Your Efficiency

Increasing efficiency is a continual goal. Actionstep’s Document Templates and Automation features provide a canvas for you to create, store and access the documents and emails you use every day based on your unique processes.

Why We Love Document Automation

The robust return on investment. These features help reduce errors and drafting time, reduce redundancies by continually using the information you have collected throughout your matters and allows you to create automation unique to how you work. It ensures consistency and streamlined processes for your entire team to communicate with clients and other parties involved in the process.

It reduces the time necessary to manage document storage, record time and save relevant documents to the applicable matter.

What it Does

Document templates allow you to generate documents out of Actionstep with auto-populated fields based on a specific matter or contact. There are pre-configured matter types available in the Actionstep Marketplace that have built-in document templates ready for you to use, or you can upload as many of your own Microsoft Word document templates as you would like.

Those document templates need to be coded with merge fields to populate information unique to a specific matter or participant, such as case numbers, names and addresses.

Your contact records and custom data collections within Actionstep can be customized so that users can enter the data required to generate the documents you use regularly. You can load document templates without coding for pre-populated fields - we recommend you take the time to set up at least the basic fields in your document templates and work your way to more over time.

When you have your document templates loaded, they can be used throughout your system and workflows to create automation for sending documents and correspondence, billing, and communicating based on your specific processes for each of your matter types. This feature provides a huge efficiency boost to your workflows, as your users can have access to the exact templates they need as the matters go through the workflow.

It can also assist users in taking the next set of actions based on available documents or communications in the system.

How It Makes a Difference to Law Firms

The sad reality is that many technology projects fail to live up to their expectations.

A common problem that Actionstep has solved is providing a solution customized to your processes, from the first inquiry a client makes, through the time their matter is concluded. This solution allows you to design a system where your users can collect relevant information, at relevant times, and reuse that information as the matter continues through the workflow. Law firms can leverage this feature without ongoing expenses and maintenance. Once you invest the time and resources into developing your document templates and processes, these features will provide continued value from the one-time investment.

Read more about Document Automation here.