Robert Ambrogi Blog
Last November, the document management company NetDocuments announced that it had acquired Closing Room, a deal-management application developed by the Am Law 200 financial services law firm Chapman and Cutler.
Today, NetDocuments unveiled the fruit of that acquisition, SetBuilder, a new application within the NetDocuments infrastructure that allows legal professionals to easily combine and organize sets of documents.
Whereas the original Closing Room was designed to be used only for transactional closings, SetBuilder can also be used in litigation, knowledge management and other scenarios, NetDocuments says.
In litigation, for example, legal teams can use it to assemble litigation briefs, witness deposition binders, trial notebooks and electronic briefs. In KM, it can be used to create precedent banks, compliance checklists, HR onboarding packets, know-your-client bundles, and policy collections. It could also be used for personal outlining.
Functionally, what SetBuilder does is provide the ability to gather and create sets of documents organized in hyperlinked, outline form that can then be exported into a single PDF for digital distribution.
The application gives users a variety of options for creating the outline structure, headings and numbering. Users can add existing documents or create placeholders for documents yet to be created but required for the final set.
The completed set can be exported as a single, hyperlinked PDF.
Once a set is created, it can be cloned for use in another matter, such as similar transaction that may require many of the same documents.
The advantages this offers, NetDocuments says, include:
- Users can collaboratively build lists of documents for a matter or project.
- The sets are built within NetDocuments, so the documents are securely stored.
- It is customizable for different practices and users.
- It saves time, encourages consistency and reduces risk.
“SetBuilder enables a clear identification of the final set of documents for a specific matter, setting them not only apart from the rest of the work-in-process files, but also setting them as primary search targets and for potential publication into the knowledge management system.” said Alvin Tedjamulia, NetDocuments’ cofounder and CTO.
NetDocuments says that SetBuilder will be generally available to its customers in June.
(To hear more from Tedjamulia about the history and development of NetDocuments, listen to my interview with him for my LawNext podcast.)