Key concepts in Contract Express
What is Contract Express?
Contract Express®
enables law firms and corporations to create standardized legal documents from templates. There are two main products:- Contract Express: The flagship web-based document assembly solution that provides law firms with a single platform to allow users within the firm to create documents from automated Contract Express templates, and to enable law firms to share Contract Express templates with clients via client microsites or publicly available templates. Small corporate legal departments can also use Contract Express for self-service contract creation, approvals and e-signature.
- HighQ Document Automation: Powered by Contract Express, this module provides document assembly capabilities within the HighQ Collaborate platform. It enables automated documents to be created and worked on alongside flat documents and other tasks, supported by project management tools, automated workflows, and data visualization. Law firms can collaborate and share templates with clients via client sites or publicly available templates. Corporate legal departments can provide self-service contract creation to their business partners and utilize the full set of HighQ capabilities for contract lifecycle management.
Common to both products is the unique and patented Contract Express document generation engine, meaning that templates created for one can be used by the other.
Contract Express Author
Contract Express Author is the tool that template owners use to create templates for these two Contract Express products. Contract Express Author is an add-in for Microsoft Word 2013 and above and provides template authors with all of the capabilities for converting a regular Microsoft Word document into a Contract Express template through the addition of mark-up and the creation of dictionary items.
Once a template is created in Microsoft Word with Contract Express Author, it is uploaded to one of the Contract Express products above where end-users can start to create documents from that template. Contract Express contains a unique and patented questionnaire generation engine which automatically creates the questionnaire forms directly from the information contained within the template. This is one of the major advantages of Contract Express over other document assembly systems.
Contract Express templates
Contract Express templates
are regular Microsoft Word documents with mark-up denoting:- Fields: where names, dates, amounts (“variables”) and other values will appear in the generated document;
- Spans: optional text (characters, words, paragraphs, clauses, sections) controlled by business rules.
The field and span mark-up is regular Word text and can be typed directly into a Contract Express template using Word in the same way as any other text. The Contract Express Author ribbon in Microsoft Word makes it quick to:
- define variables and business rules in the template’sdictionary;
- rapidly insert fields and spans into the template;
- organise questions intogroupsandpages;
- definewarningsandlook-up tables;
- uploadtemplates to Contract Express.
Inserting values into a generated document
A
field
determines where values such as a date, a person's name, or an amount will appear in the generated document. Fields are usually denoted using curly brackets { } and can either contain variables like dates, names or amounts or can contain calculations, cross references and even references to text in other templates.For example, if a template is based on an earlier contract which contains text stating "This agreement pertains to Bob Smith born September 18th, 1972" then in the template the name and date of birth are replaced by fields such as: "This document pertains to {ApplicantName} born {ApplicantDoB}."
When a user subsequently answers the questionnaire {ApplicantlName} and {ApplicantDoB} will be replaced in the generated document by the user’s answers.
Fields are often re-used many times in the template. For example, each occurrence of {ApplicantName} will be replaced throughout the generated document by the user's answer (eg Bob Smith).
For more about adding fields to a Contract Express template see the section in “Getting Started” called Creating a new variable and inserting it into a template.
Controlling optional text in a generated document
A
span
denotes optional text in the template which will be included in the generated document if the span’s business rule is satisfied. Spans are usually denoted by square brackets around the optional text, with the business rule as regular superscripted text immediately following the opening bracket. Eg:[
Rule
optional text].A
business rule
:- determines whether or not the optional text is included in the generated document,
- may determine how many times the span will be repeated, and
- may also include a statement that controls how the text within the span will be punctuated.
As an example, if you are authoring a template with a sentence that only applies in California, you would enclose that sentence in square brackets and apply a rule such as: State is “California”. The optional text would look like:
[
State is “California”
Some text that only applies in California.] Similarly for Delaware: [State is “Delaware”
Alternative text for Delaware.]For more about adding optional spans to a Contract Express template see the section in “Getting Started” called Marking and controlling optional text in the template.
Contract Express dictionary
The template’s
dictionary
contains definitions of the variables and business rules used in the mark-up of fields and optional spans.For example, the dictionary may contain a variable called ApplicantAddress, which is defined in the dictionary to ask the question "Please enter the applicant's address" with the answer as a multi-line text box.
Similarly, the dictionary may contain a variable called State, which is defined to ask the question “Which state’s laws will govern this agreement?” with the answer in the form of three mutually exclusive radio buttons labeled “California”, “Delaware”, and “Texas”.
The dictionary may optionally also define:
- howquestionsare organised into groups and pages on the questionnaire;
- howquestionnaire warningsare set up to alert users for specific combinations of answers;
- alternative values for variables inlookup tables
For more about defining variables in the dictionary see the section in “Essential reading for new users” called Using the Dictionary Editor.