Pathagoras: The Answer To Fast And Easy Document Assembly

Lawyers have long run into the problem of finding the best way to avoid reinventing the wheel. Quality document automation and management tools that do the heavy lifting for you are essential when efficiency is so crucial to your bottom line.

While many programs on the market claim to offer efficient document assembly, most of them are far more complex than they need to be. Nobody wants to waste time downloading new software or endlessly switching back and forth between different applications or programs. It’s common sense that for a document assembly tool to truly be useful, it needs to exist where you’re actually assembling your documents.

Enter Pathagoras. Pathagoras is a plain text-based document assembly system that exists as an add-in to Microsoft Word. And because nearly every lawyer on the planet still does the majority of document creation in Word, it’s hard to imagine a better tool for getting the job done.

Simplicity Is the Name of the Game

Pathagoras works on the principles you learned the first time you sat down in front of a computer. Because Pathagoras is a plain text system, there’s no complex coding you need to learn or hidden fields and tables you have to work around. Everything you need is right in Word where you’re already working. Using it is as simple as a few points and clicks.

Variables

Anyone who’s ever worked with similar contracts over and over again knows the pains that come with tailoring the specifics to each new client and worrying that you missed something with your Find and Replace approach.

Pathagoras simplifies the process through the concept of variables. A variable is any aspect of your document that you customize each time you create a new version for a new client or matter, such as your client’s name. What people have traditionally done is pull up a similar past contract, search for all instances of the name Smith, change it to Jones, and then proofread incessantly in the hopes that you don’t refer to your client by the wrong name at any point.

You’ll never have that fear with Pathagoras. Rather than starting with an old contract, you start with a form contract that treats your client’s name as a variable simply by putting it in brackets — [Client Name]. The same is true of other variables like dates, addresses, or literally anything you want to tailor.

When it’s time to customize everything, you simply press alt-D and Word will scan for all your variables, automatically creating a database record that you can use for this future documents.

When your list of designated variables comes up, you just fill in the proper values for them. Pathagoras does the rest, automatically making all the replacements and saving your values in your database. The more documents you create for a particular client, the more your database will grow over time until eventually all your possible variables will be saved and ready to input when you create a new document.

Another cool part of the variable feature of Pathagoras is that you can use multiple choice variables. For example, if your client’s role in a particular kind of contract varies from deal to deal, you can have a [buyer/seller] variable. Just by using a slash, Pathagoras will prompt you to choose the appropriate variable from a dropdown list for this specific document when you run your alt-D scan.

It really is that simple. No coding or fields or fancy workarounds, just brackets and alt-D and you’re done.

Document Assembly and Disassembly

Say you need to build a contract from the ground up. With the Pathagoras document assembly tool, you can create an entire document from existing clauses through a straightforward exercise that involves nothing more than pointing and clicking.

Pathagoras gives you an unlimited number of libraries, for example wills or discovery requests, where you can amass the standard clauses that you use when you create your legal documents. Each of the clauses or paragraphs exists as an independent Word document, allowing it to seamlessly be inserted into the new document you’re creating.

So, imagine you’re drafting a will. You open your will library and a list of sample clauses like a preamble, individual distribution provisions, and a signature block appear in the left column. Just click on the ones you want and they move to the right column. When you’ve picked everything you want, you say you’re done and Pathagoras puts them all in together in a new Word document, in order and numbered.

 

Once assembled, you can customize your variables. In a fraction of the time it normally takes to build a document from scratch, Pathagoras gives you customized, perfectly formatted documents, all without ever having to leave Word. If you forget something, you can always go back and add provisions one at a time.

Even better, Pathagoras lets you disassemble documents just as easily. We’ve all encountered new documents that we want to use as templates for future cases, and in the past that typically involved, at best, tedious copying, pasting, and correcting a bunch of formatting errors, if not entirely retyping provisions.

With Pathagoras, disassembling a document is as easy a assembling a new one. It will break down an existing document into paragraphs that it adds to your existing libraries so you can have them at your fingertips the next time you want them. Both assembly and disassembly are essentially a building block approach, meaning that you work with only the clauses you want at a particular time.

Working On the Go

While Pathagoras was designed to operate within Word on your PC, you’re not out of luck if you find yourself in a non-PC environment. Whether because you’re working remotely from your mobile device or you prefer to use a Mac, you can still take advantage of many of the program’s most useful features with Pathagoras On Cloud.

The cloud-based version of the program is a platform-free tool that offers the same plain text functionality that you have when you’re working from your PC at the office. As long as you have an Internet connection, you can take advantage of all the variable and customization features that make Pathagoras so useful.

While Pathagoras On Cloud might not offer every single feature you get with the traditional version, it comes pretty darn close. The ability to handle tasks remotely is essential for any busy attorney in today’s demanding legal market, and Pathagoras On Cloud is a great alternative for accomplishing the same tasks even when you don’t have Word at your disposal. If you’re a Mac user who’s been looking for this level of functionality in a cloud-based program, chances are you haven’t found it. Pathagoras On Cloud finally gives you options that come close to what’s available for your PC-using colleagues.

Also, say you prefer to work in Google Docs or OneDrive when you’re at home. Regardless of your word processing system of choice, you can access Pathagoras On Cloud, take advantage of its features, and then download your document to Word for Mac when you’re done. Essentially, you can operate how you want while still creating an end product that’s compatible with the systems you need to use at the office.

All That and Much More

Honestly, we’ve just scratched the surface of what Pathagoras can do. Want it to scan for consistency in gender or number agreement in your pronoun variables? It will do that. Have tentative text that you’re not sure you want to include in your document? Just put it in curly brackets, and Pathagoras will ask you if you want to keep it when it comes time to customize your document.

At the core of what makes Pathagoras so useful is that it’s intuitive. They’ve spent years gathering feedback on what customers want, and the result is a product that actually does everything you need it to do. If there’s something you always wanted Word to do while you’re creating your documents, Pathagoras probably does it.

Automation and efficiency are no longer luxuries when it comes to practicing law, and Pathagoras delivers on both fronts. Let technology do the heavy lifting of document assembly for you, so you can focus on serving your clients and improving your bottom line.