I normally don't get excited about software and rarely do I recommend any software.  But when it comes to HotDocs, which I've used for years, I can't say enough good things about it.

If you're a reader of my blog, have attended any of my training, or have communicated with me in some way, you know there's one thing I strongly and continually advocate: Use your own contract templates!  I'm not going to go down that path (again) here, but I would like to point out that you can take my "use your own contract template" mantra a few light-years forward by automating your contract templates.

While using contract templates is already an efficiency, it still takes time to tailor a contract template to a specific procurement.  For example, if I'm dealing with a "friendly" or sophisticated vendor, I'm probably not going to include a unilateral limitation of liability provision.  Similarly, there are always a number of tweaks that I need to make to a contract template before it gets sent out to a vendor or gets included in an RFx.  I've estimated that it takes me or my staff about 2 hours to properly a tailor a contract template via clause cutting and pasting, inputting addresses and signatory names, etc.

I'm always seeking to improve my contract templates, adding or refreshing language.  But it's a pain to do that across 20 some contract templates.  That pain discourages me from wanting to make improvements.  I still do make changes, but it's tedious, not a good use of my time, and introduces errors.

Speaking of errors, there always seems to be a problem with the versioning of contract templates.  Which one is the right one to use?  I've had more than one situation where my staff have sent out the wrong version of a contract template.  That translates into risk and lost value.

HotDocs, which is licensed by LexisNexis, solves all of the problems I've described above and more.  LexisNexis calls HotDocs "document automation software," and they're spot-on.  I'm over-simplifying, but HotDocs can be setup to ask the user questions ("Select the Appropriate LOL Provision"), which pulls contract language from a central clause library into a Word document.  After answering a few quick questions and filling in some data via an interview format, out pops a perfectly tailored contract template.

What makes HotDocs so great?  It has rich functionality that's easy to use, it has exceeded my high expectations, and it is reasonably priced (around $3K for 5 seats).  Plus, it has cut down my staff's contract template tailoring time from 2 hours to about 10 minutes.

With that said, building contract templates and a clause library from scratch takes some time.  You basically have to reverse-engineer your Word contract templates, pulling out contract language clause by clause and putting those clauses into the HotDocs clause library.  It's a lot easier to start implementing your automated contract templates by building on someone else's database.  The crux is getting someone else's databse...  Well, good news!  You can download the contract templates and clause library that I use nearly daily by simply clicking here.  The zipped file contains HotDocs libraries that won't make much sense unless you have HotDocs installed and you're trained in the use of HotDocs.  Assuming those two things, you shouldn't have any problem using the zipped file to build your own automated contract template library.