What is Contract Express?
Contract Express is an advanced document automation software designed to streamline the processes involved in contract management and document drafting. Launched in 2002, this cloud-based platform quickly gained traction amongst the legal community as a result of its industry-agnostic applicability, providing a comprehensive solution to document generation woes without the tediously long set-up times of traditional enterprise software.
For attorneys and firms operating in fast-paced, competitive environments, Contract Express serves as a powerful tool to eliminate a high volume of manual work typically required when negotiating and generating contracts. Not only does the software minimize the risk of costly mistakes through its intelligent template-building features, but it also gives critical time back to attorneys by automating the repetitive and monotonous parts of the document drafting process, accelerating the passage of contracts and an organization’s ability to close faster, smarter and at scale.
Contract Express is suited for a wide range of use cases across any industry, from a variety of business entities. However, its deep-rooted history within the legal sector means that, unsurprisingly, it stands out as a powerful tool for law firms of all sizes , from boutique niche firms to legal departments at Fortune 500 companies.
The most common use cases we have seen across the legal sector relate to closing gaps in standardization requirements, providing better response time to stakeholders, increasing efficiency rates, managing workflow queues for both attorneys and clients, facilitating renegotiation on a case-by-case basis or (at the other end of the spectrum) building out new internal applications aimed at solving a specific legal need.
At the core of Contract Express are a series of templating features customizable to meet most legal needs.
Contract Express encourages a document-first way of working, where users can not only begin by building a document template, but also generate an entire application around it. Using Dynamic Application Builder, users are guided through a simplified visual interface for creating sophisticated applications for contract management and automating complex workflows where the application will create an errorless contract.
One in three large businesses are already using Contract Express and thousands more batch-ad hoc documents at over 20 of the top 100 law firms rely on the software for their daily operations. In the UK, 80% of top ten law firms use Contract Express.
Features of Contract Express
There are various features at play in Contract Express that make it a leading tool for document automation. Contract Express employs a streamlined, user-friendly interface that allows attorneys and their support staff to spend less time on tedious tasks and more time focusing on the needs of the client. Some of the most significant features of Contract Express include:
The Contract Express interface plays a significant role in its ease of use. The software does not require any deep knowledge of coding language that lawyers have to relearn each time they want to make a change within a document. Instead, the designer – who can be an attorney or support staff member – can simply upload a document to Contract Express, and the templating tools built into the software will help guide the designer through how to make the document intelligent. From there, multiple logic conditions can exist within the document. Even non-designers can work within templates and change a few keywords to quickly produce an updated document. Rather than configuring forms and templates from scratch, Contract Express makes it easier to accomplish the same task within a file by building off of whatever is already available.
Once a user is familiar with the design interface, it automatically loads when the user logs into the software, allowing easy, intuitive navigation that incorporates a typical word processing setup. The designer has access to a document tree that allows them to bang out changes quickly. Contract Express still welcomes document designers who are highly specialized or those who work with a number of different software platforms. Keys and other design language can be created and saved directly into Contract Express, which will mark on the document just like any other field would.
Another factor that sets Contract Express apart is its template management abilities. Templates can be tailored for specific cases or clients, depending on how general or specific the firm needs the templates to be for their operations. This level of customization is often vital for firms that are seeking to build off of the foundation of existing documents and processes (such as one Ohio law firm, which prefers to build contracts based on existing vendor forms that have been accepted over time). Not only can these templates be created in Contract Express, but Contract Express goes a step further to make it easy to manage templates. The consolidated style editor allows users to maintain any number of forms all in one place. Plus, templates can be set up for multiple document types, procedures, and languages (which can be voiced out or translated).
Contract Express also has the ability to integrate with other software, simplifying communication between departments, streamlining the document management process by allowing templates to be stored in a shared library, and providing a seamless experience for legal project management. It can be integrated with the following providers and programs:
Contract Express gives law firms the ability to automate input from various other software. Legal teams that already use existing cloud-based software (like Clio or Salesforce?) don’t have to switch platforms just to be able to leverage Contract Express. Firms interested in being able to cache client data or transfer the data to other applications are able to.
Advantages of Contract Express
Contract Express is capable of providing benefits for both legal professionals and their organizations. For legal professionals, it is a solution that enables them to do what they do best while software handles the menial tasks that consume so much of their time. So where is the software making its impact felt?
For the legal professional, Contract Express helps to gain confidence in the drafting process, where time is freed up from unnecessary elements in the process. Contract Express takes previously created templates and makes them searchable. This takes away the hounding around looking for specific language in templates in the firm’s library. It adds much needed efficiencies and accuracy to contract drafting — which ultimately translates to increased billable hours.
For organizations, Contract Express clears the bottlenecks in the document production and contract process. It does this by creating highly accurate documents in a short amount of time. Eliminate the need for hours and hours spent drafting contracts and preparing them for signatures.
Contract Express enhances the organization’s compliance requirements in two important ways. First, compliance is more visible, meaning that you’re less likely to miss a step in the process that could have put the company at risk. For example, you will not forget to require a particular contract clause or signing authority. Secondly, the benefit of Contract Express’ workflow feature means that you gain a consistent compliance process as you produce the legal documents.
Contract Express Compared to Conventional Contract Creation
Comparing the two methods will give you a better understanding of the key differences. First, Contract Express gives you the ability to self-serve with easy-to-use templates that lead you through an interview process. In the past in many firms, clients had to contact an attorney to get guidance on what they needed. Then, the attorney would draft the agreement from scratch without self-service templates. This standard process often led to inefficiency.
Additionally, it’s common for errors to occur in traditional contract drafting. For example, in traditional contracting, one provider found that contracts were sent with the wrong governing law on them 40% of the time. When you are relying on people to draft legal agreements, your chances of errors occurring are much higher. Finally, because Contract Express provides a more consistent workflow in the drafting of contracts, each agreement issued is done in the same way.
How to Incorporate Contract Express in Your Organization
The key to successfully implementing Contract Express within a law firm or corporate legal department is taking a little time to plan and understand how the interface works before actually setting up contracts in the system. Looking at Contract Express from the user’s point of view can save a lot of headaches when you are ready to set up your contracts in the system. Contract Express provides a nice dynamic interface that allows complete control of contract creation. Once you know how you want to organize and design the templates (think legal practice/department specific), then you can begin designing your templates in the editor . The key to a successful contract template is to keep it simple and straightforward; try to avoid complicated rule sets and be as logical as possible.
Contract Express is an incredibly easy-to-use system once you get the hang of it and provide a big benefit to law firms and corporate legal departments looking to automate repetitive tasks. Once your templates are up and running, they truly make the life of the firm simplify and the time savings can be quite significant.
Contract Express Success Stories
The integration of Contract Express in the workplace has not only proven efficient, but also impactful to the improvement of leveraging technology to exceed client expectations. The application of Contract Express is wide-spanning and adaptable to the needs of a variety of business types.
One exemplary firm is participating in the industry-leading legal technology incubator programme hosted by ZAI Lab in London, supports the most ambitious legal-tech start-ups in the UK. They are currently implementing Contract Express as an integral part of their workflow, for "large scale construction projects [that] require a large number of specialist commercial and contract managers." The firm reports that the time savings of automating their contracts with Contract Express in comparison to hand drafting will give each manager "30-35 more billable hours per year." Each contract automated with Contract Express equates to between £40,000 – £60,000 in direct savings to the firm and a "huge" time savings for their client. Additionally, the operational efficiencies gained from this automation will allow their industry-focused practice groups to continue to grow with less overhead. The client feedback highlights how this legal tech solution has allowed them to effectively leverage external expertise, while delivering significant business benefits and improving client service.
A leading UK-based law firm automates the majority of its client’s publishing agreements. Contract Express allows this firm and its client to customize the agreement based on specific parameters that are contained in the Client’s Playbook of Industry Standards, which includes certain terms it will accept in its dealings with suppliers and other publishers. This software "allows the client to minimize the changes;" and even though there is no formal agreement between the firm and its client for this service, the software saves the client more than £100,000 each year.
The Future of Contract Express
Looking towards the future and what we can expect from Contract Express in terms of new features and enhancements, there is plenty of scope for further development. Having been acquired by Thomson Reuters in 2016, Contract Express had to change its name to DocExpress to avoid any issues stemming from its new owner. New features will be released under the DocExpress name. Future plans include enhancements aimed at improving customer experience both for clients and users, with an ambition to continuously improve visibility and accessibility to enable lawyers to do more for less.
There will be enhancements to search functionality, interface and usability. Client development services will help customers take advantage of wider features within Contract Express.
In addition to the roadmap for existing Contract Express features, Thomson Reuters has also committed to improving DocExpress and taking advantage of integration with other products , such as Practical Law and Westlaw, to create a best of breed solution that will continue to take advantage of the increasing sophistication being brought to the market by Thomson Reuters.
As with all legal technology, there is always competition and as such innovation and differentiation. There are a number of automated template products across the legal technology sector, all promising a way to increase efficiencies in document production. Some of the solutions tend to be niche products, whereas others are attempting to be more integrated or industry agnostic. Whatever the approach, there is a recognition that for some types of documents the efficiencies can be substantial.
Contract Express has plans to continue developing the capabilities of the software, improve customer retention and satisfaction, but also acquire additional best of breed features necessary to keep up with the pace of change the legal sector is experiencing.