Meet Motionize, a new cloud-based doc automation system that uses proprietary machine learning tech to read existing legal documents and automatically turns them into reusable templates. It can also provide ‘one click data population’ of generated documents.
Or as they explain it:
- ‘Choose an existing formatted document. Motionize’s technology reads and analyses as you upload and automatically assigns template fields for specific data.
- Once your template is ready for action, connect it to your specific case to prepare for a quick turnaround.
- Fill the fields you just created with relevant data, click a button and let Motionize do the rest.’
Working like this will ‘save firms up to 80% of non-billable time’ spent on doc creation tasks, the company said.
Motionize has been developed by AiLanthus Corp, a Washington DC-based company set up to build ‘the next generation’ of technology tools for lawyers. Its founders are Joshua Schoen and Luke Waltman. Schoen most recently worked at legal AI doc review company Evisort and is now the CEO of Motionize.
Schoen said: ‘The biggest pain I felt working in the legal industry was not only how much time I had to spend drafting routine legal documents, but also how little true editing was required.
‘Sometimes, it was even hard to find the right starting document. I knew there had to be a better way to store previous work product and make it reusable. That’s why I created Motionize.’
Artificial Lawyer spoke to San Francisco-based Simon Boehme, who is acting as advisor to Motionize and is also currently Vice President of Partnerships at Legaler and President of Legaler Aid.
‘I joined Motionize as an advisor because, unlike any other doc automation platform, it solves the pain in managing a document’s formatting requirements and in programming documents. I’m also confident in Josh’s leadership and ability to scale the company.
‘Built within Motionize’s cloud platform is a document editor that can exactly replicate the Microsoft Word experience, meaning that users can be assured their documents are rendered according to their firm’s styling requirements. Second, the platform uses machine learning to find the most common variables and automatically programs documents for the user.’
If it can operate in the way described then it does indeed appear to be a significant improvement on how doc automation is often done at present.
Moreover, this could make significant time savings, a point the company stresses. They even have an ROI calculator on their website to help you. Below is an example Artificial Lawyer tried out.
But there is one last question this site had to ask of Boehme: does the world need another doc automation system, even one that appears to be as useful as this one?
Boehme was happy to explain why: ‘[The answer is] yes, because lawyers are still spending way too much time on drafting legal documents. Most of the legal platforms were built in the on-prem world and very difficult to set up. It’s also a pain to edit a document once it’s been generated.
‘Motionize has the singular mission to make it easy to re-use an attorney’s previous work product. Motionize is focused on how the attorney works with the platform allowing them to express their full creativity, while automating the most mundane aspects of document drafting such as formatting and making sure areas of the document are correct. Motionize’s strength is that it empowers lawyers and other legal professionals to maximise productivity in a symbiotic relationship between human and machine.’
So, there you go. Law firms can subscribe to Motionize for $60 a month per user for up to five users, or $80 a month per user for up to 10 users with two document-builder seats. Custom enterprise-level licensing options are also available, the company added.
Just shows that even when you think a market segment is already overpopulated someone comes along and makes a significant improvement to how things work, thereby creating new value.