Nizam Bashir
User
Junior Forumer
| Posts: 53 |   |
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Re:Conveyancing software - 2008/06/11 00:41
Dear Sdr. Chan,
I am not a conveyancer as such, so I was actually hoping you would have got better response with your question from those more conversant with that particular field.
But given the silence, I can only surmise that most firms are still relying on their trusty ol' word processor and utilizing the same in a traditional manner where previously drafted documents serve as a template for whatever new instructions.
Which is not to say that technology has stagnated on this front. Broadly speaking, these are your options:
a. Use MS-Word but use it more efficiently;
b. Use macros/Visual Basic ("macros"); and
c. Use document assembly programs.
To be honest paragraph (b) and (c) is a subset of paragraph (a). But perhaps that is getting a little too technical. Let's focus on the meat of the matter. 
(a) Become More Efficient MS-Word User
Make sure you are more conversant with Styles. Advantages would be speedier formatting, more legible document and ease of creating a Table of Contents.
More than that, learn to use AutoCorrect not in the way that MS-Word intended but rather in the way a conveyancer would. E.g.add "fm" as a word to be "AutoCorrected" in MS-Word and whenever you want a boilerplate clause for force majeure, just type fm.
Other essentials would be footnoting (if you are writing an article) and indexing (if you are writing a book).
(b) Using macros
It gets a bit geeky here. But let me try and simplify what is involved with this.
Speaking very, very broadly - when you prepare a letter or a fax memo, you generally have a set of information that you need to key in. E.g. recipient, address, file number etc.
Using macros, you can design a form containing "set of information" and make it much, much easier to churn out a document containing that information.
Coming back to your practice, I am sure you can see how using such "forms" may impact in the preparation of a standard Sale and Purchase Agreement i.e. that your staff deals with inputting the information into a form as opposed to navigating the whole contract.
Just as an aside, please note that Visual Basic extends those possibilities further and you can even leverage on information stored in an Acess/SQL database. Yawp ... no need to even input the same information once its already there. 
My apologies if this is getting a little technical but I am just trying to illustrate the possibilities for the respective options.
(c) Document Assembly
I don't intend to reinvent the wheel. There is a good article on this here - http://www.lacba.org/lalawyer/tech/comp11-98.html. Bear in mind its written a long time ago but most of what it says still rings true.
There are a number of programs you can use. Consider your budget and see if you truly need to purchase such software.
Frankly, I truly believe that you can get away with a lot of things if you REALLY know how to use MS-Word. Anyway, hope this helps.
P.S. Most of what I was mentioning is also applicable for Open Office.
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