HotDocs at One of the Largest U.S. Insurance Companies

A leading national auto, property, and casualty insurer has more than 50,000 employees and a network of law offices located in almost every jurisdiction in the United States. These offices (referred to as in-house or “captive” counsel) function as regular independent law firms; however, their clients are limited to those insured by the head company. Law office sizes range from a handful of attorneys and support staff in the small offices to over 150 employees in the largest office.

In early 2010, the insurance company began searching for a new method to replace their legacy document assembly, automation, and generation system. This system, which was custom-built by internal IT staff, was relied upon by those in the law offices to create professional, accurate, custom documents for litigation practice. Virtually all documents needed—including pleadings, motions, answers, and cross-claims—were automated to reduce the time and effort required of staff and increase the quality, consistency, and accuracy of the documentation. The company’s decision to move off the legacy system was predicated, in part, on a desire to move away from the custom-built Visual Basic (VB) programming. They desired a more standardized approach, which would reduce the amount of internal programming, development, and troubleshooting required to maintain the program. The company recognized there were options available to address document assembly and automation that would replace all the functionality of the old program, but at a fraction of the internal resources. Of those available options, HotDocs was determined to be the best one.

Once a decision was made to use HotDocs, the company’s law office central support staff contracted with HotDocs Technical Services to provide support in replacing the legacy document automation system. HotDocs assisted the company’s staff in setting up the back-end servers and training a select group of support personnel in the template creation process.

When a law office staff member wants to generate a new document, he or she goes to the HotDocs Document Portal and selects the appropriate document. In the background, HotDocs pulls data from the company’s case management system, which pre-populates the document with some of the information needed. The staff member then answers questions in a HotDocs interview. When finished, he or she simply clicks a button to generate the finished document in Microsoft Word.

All of the insurance company’s law offices have now been fully deployed with HotDocs. This implementation of HotDocs is one of the largest in the United States, consisting of more than 20,000 templates and a user population dispersed all across the country.