Hong+Shen+Assignment+-2-

Part 1:

Five Benefits:

1. Effectiveness. 2. Consistancy. 3. Time and cost saving. 4. Accuracy. 5. Completeness.

Five pitfalls:

1. Security since most of these will be done in cloud computing. 2. Ethical problems as an attorney may cross a line of competency. 3. Unauthorized practice of law since any person can generate legal documents now. 4. Lack of specifics since the document is mostly generalized and lack details. 5. Attorney has to be computer savvy. 6. For a novice attorney it would take years to build a database such that such a system could work to its potential.

Part 2:

I went to both wsgr.com and goodwinfoundersworkbench.com to generate a bylaw in the first try and a security issuance document on the second. It is impressive that within minutes I could have a bylaw written, whereas if started from scratch it would hours of work, if not days. Goodwin does not have too much a decision making in the generation, which makes me concerned that the document lacks details, although I did not bother to read through the documents generated. Wsgr has decision trees built in everywhere but in both cases, including goodwin, there is no explaination or very little explanation. Do not know if they were written to specific personnel or to the general public, although seems very user friendly to me. The concern I have is that for a generalized document such as bylaws, which includes a lot of boilerplate language, this may be effective. What about writing a motion? My overall impression is that autodoc may save time and cost and may be suitable for a clerk, but basic requirements of an attorney, such as legal research, writing motions, etc, will still be dominant in the years to come.

For example, our group has a data bank on listserv which could be shared by any other attorneys in the group. However, even with the template, to write an effetive motion, the attorney still has to check and make sure the points and authorities cited are still good law. Specific facts must be included. Special tone has to be used, depends on a specific court. These cannot be done with autodoc, at least not now.