Sponsored content: This article is provided by Easysoft, a NJSBA sponsor.
By Jeanette Knight
Managing Director of Easysoft
For those who are not technologically savvy, automation can be a scary word. However, if used correctly, automation will make your work-life much simpler. Automation is not a new-age idea;there are plenty of automation options that operate much simpler than life-like robots or driverless cars. Instead, think of closing automation software as an extra employee that can complete your most mundane tasks quickly and accurately.
Manual data entry is inefficient, time-consuming and labor-intensive for your team. You can probably think of five routine tasks that rob you of precious time and money you could use to focus on other parts of your business. Imagine a program that auto-fills information into the mountain of forms needed for a closing after just a single data entry. Automation can help you be sure that your small firm will never accidentally miss filling out a field on a form. Automation can also generate regular reports needed for the office at a scheduled time and disburse them to the necessary parties, so your team has them when needed. Automation will seamlessly become a part of your closing process and you will wonder how you did closings and other clerical tasks without it for so long.
As a real estate attorney, a lot of your time is devoted to documentation which is a part of being in this industry. However, a lot of the information on many of the required documents in a real estate transaction is repeated and standard. Therefore, one of the easiest tasks to automate is their generation. Data generation is often done by merging common document templates with a database of live information. Since documents are created from a common dataset, changes are made quickly and uniformly implemented. Every closing has multiple documents, but much of the information is duplicated. It would be much easier if after entering that information a single time, it was populated in the proper spaces on the other forms automatically. That’s exactly how automation can help your law firm.
While a similar effort has taken place by creating and using custom forms, templates, macros, or document mergers with word-processing programs such as Microsoft Word, those stalwart methods fall short today. First, there's the investment of time and money required to create them, and second, the data remains captive to that program and must be re-entered in another software program to perform other related tasks. That means even though some of that information is copied from an original location, it must be manually checked. which takes time and leaves room for errors. A better automation program is both the closing agent’s present and future. Everyone is looking for the program or innovation that will give them a competitive advantage. That’s why you’re here researching your options. You know your old methods could be improved; it’s just a matter of finding the right fit. To learn more about how you can innovate with automation, click here.