Document automation with iManage: generating documents where your matters already live

Watch a fee earner produce a routine letter in a firm running a well-managed DMS. They open iManage, find the matter, note the client and matter reference, switch to Word, browse to a template on a network drive, retype the client name and address, retype the matter reference, draft the substance, save the document to their desktop because that is faster, then drag it back into the workspace and profile it.

Nine steps. Two of them involve retyping information the firm already holds in a system of record, and one of them puts a client document on a local drive. None of this reflects badly on the DMS. It happens because document production and document management were bought as separate problems and never joined up.

Joining them up is what an integration is for. iManage manages the matter, the document and its lifecycle; XpressDox generates the document. Document automation with iManage simply moves the generation step inside the workspace instead of leaving it beside it. This post sets out what that looks like day to day, what changes for the fee earner and for IT, and the mistakes firms make when they first connect an automation platform to a DMS. It is the first of four posts on named integrations.

What document automation with iManage looks like day to day

The starting point is a button. XpressDox appears inside iManage, so a fee earner working in a matter launches the template library from where they already are. They can see the whole library or a subset relevant to the matter type, mark templates as favourites, view the library in a pop-up or full screen, and browse folders as a tree — small things that decide whether a system feels like part of the job or an addition to it.

From there the sequence is short. The XpressDox interview opens already populated with the client and matter identifiers drawn from iManage. Where the firm runs a practice management system such as Aderant, the interview can pull from that too, so party details, dates and matter attributes arrive verified rather than remembered. The fee earner answers only the questions specific to the document in front of them.

The assembled document is then saved back into iManage — to the correct workspace and the folder of your choosing, with a meaningful filename rather than a default one. It arrives already profiled and versioned, which removes the step most firms find is skipped under pressure. There is an option to open the document in Microsoft Word immediately, marked as checked out in iManage, so the drafter continues inside the DMS’s own working model rather than around it.

Nine steps become three, and the two retyping steps disappear. That is the operational case in a sentence.

💡 Insight
When assessing an integration, it is worth timing the whole task rather than the generation step. Firms often find the automation saves four minutes and the filing behaviour saves six, because profiling and naming were where the time and the inconsistency actually sat. Measuring only the drafting step tends to understate the benefit and mislocate it.

The answer file per matter is the quiet win

One design decision deserves more attention than it usually gets. Data captured during an XpressDox interview is saved to a single answer file per matter. The first document on a matter involves answering questions; the second and third start from what has already been captured.

The effect compounds across a matter’s life. An engagement letter, a notice, a set of board minutes and a completion certificate share most of their underlying facts, and in a manual process each one re-enters them — with a fresh opportunity for a transposed digit or an out-of-date address every time. Holding the answers at matter level means later documents inherit verified data, and a correction made once propagates rather than being chased through completed drafts.

This is also the mechanism that makes automation defensible under review. When someone asks where a figure in a document came from, the answer is a data source or a recorded interview response, not a recollection.

Template visibility and permissions

A central template repository sounds like an administrative detail and behaves like an adoption feature. All XpressDox templates are held in one place, which makes maintenance and version control practical: a change to the firm’s standard wording happens once.

Just as importantly, user groups control which templates each group of users sees inside iManage. A property team browsing a library of corporate precedents will conclude the system is not for them, and they will be right. Restricting visibility by practice group reduces both the search time and the error rate, because the wrong template is not offered in the first place.

What IT needs to know

The integration is protected using OAuth 2.0, the authorisation standard iManage requires for applications that integrate with iManage Work. Firms familiar with the application registration process in iManage Control Center will recognise the model: the integration is registered, scoped and governed centrally rather than depending on stored credentials, with token handling following the platform’s own conventions.

Configuration is a one-off task. Once XpressDox is configured against the iManage workspace — including the standard folders that assembled documents should be saved into — the behaviour is consistent for every user and every template. For firms deploying on-premise, in the cloud or in a hybrid model, the wider integration set follows the same pattern, which matters when a shortlist decision has to survive a security review as well as a demonstration.

💡 Insight
It is worth agreeing the folder structure and naming convention before the first template goes live rather than after. Firms often find that automated filing exposes an inconsistency that manual filing had been quietly absorbing — different teams using different conventions for the same document type. That is a useful thing to discover, and a much cheaper one to fix at configuration than at scale.

Where clause governance fits

The integration answers where a document goes and which data it is built from. It does not answer whether the language inside it is the firm’s current position. That is a separate capability, and the three work well together: XpressDox Intelligent Clause Management governs the approved wording, Advanced Document Automation produces the document, and iManage manages it from that point on.

Firms that connect all three stop having the conversation about which version of a clause was used, because there is one approved source and an audit trail showing what was inserted and when. The integration story is only interesting because of what it makes possible at the other end.

Common mistakes when connecting document automation to a DMS

These come up repeatedly when firms set up document automation with iManage, and all five are avoidable.

1. Automating the document and not the filing. If the assembled document still has to be saved and profiled by hand, most of the benefit and nearly all of the consistency gain is lost. Save-back and auto-profiling are the point, not a bonus.
2. Exposing the whole template library to everyone. It looks generous and it depresses use. Scope template visibility to practice groups from the outset.
3. Leaving the interview asking for data the DMS already holds. Every field that could be pre-populated and is not is a field someone will eventually get wrong. Audit the interview against what iManage and the practice management system can supply.
4. Treating it as an IT project with no practice input. The technical configuration is short. The decisions about which documents to automate, what to call them and where they belong are practice decisions, and they determine whether anyone uses the result.
5. Piloting with the simplest document. A conditional-free letter proves the connection works and tells you nothing about whether the firm’s real documents fit. Pilot with something that has variations in it.

Our view: this is a workflow decision, not an integration decision

Integrations are usually evaluated as a technical checklist — does the vendor connect to our DMS, yes or no. Our experience across firms in more than 25 countries is that the checklist answer predicts very little. What predicts adoption is whether the integration removes steps from the way people already work, or adds a system to it.

That is why we put the emphasis on the mundane details: the button being in the workspace, the filename being meaningful, the document arriving profiled, the answers persisting at matter level. None of them demonstrate well. All of them decide whether a fee earner uses the platform in month three.

The broader point is that a firm running iManage has already made a significant investment in getting matter data and documents into one governed place. Document automation with iManage should extend the value of that investment rather than sit alongside it as a second place where documents are born. If a document is created outside the DMS and imported later, the DMS is not the system of record — it is an archive.

Where to start

Take one high-volume document type in one practice group and follow it end to end: where the data comes from, who produces it, where it should be filed and what it is called. Setting up document automation with iManage for that single path tends to be a short piece of work, and it makes the case for the next ten better than any business case document.

If you would find it useful to talk through how this would work against your own workspace structure, book a discovery call — or read more about the XpressDox integration with iManage first.

Frequently asked questions

How does document automation work with iManage?

A fee earner launches XpressDox from a matter inside iManage, the interview opens pre-populated with the client and matter identifiers, and the assembled document is saved back to the correct workspace folder — already profiled, versioned and named. XpressDox generates the document; iManage continues to manage it. The generation step happens inside the DMS rather than beside it.

Are documents automatically profiled and versioned?

Yes. Documents saved to iManage from XpressDox are profiled and versioned on arrival, with a meaningful filename and a configurable target folder. There is also an option to open the document immediately in Microsoft Word, marked as checked out in iManage.

Can the interview pull data from our practice management system as well?

Yes. In addition to the client and matter identifiers from iManage, interviews can draw on other systems — Aderant is a common example — along with SQL and other data sources. The aim is that a fee earner answers only the questions specific to the document, not the questions the firm can already answer.

How is the integration secured?

Through OAuth 2.0, the authorisation standard iManage requires for integrating applications, with the integration registered and scoped centrally. Configuration against your iManage workspace is a one-off task, after which behaviour is consistent across users and templates.

Can we limit which templates each team can see?

Yes. User groups control template visibility, so each practice group sees the templates relevant to its work rather than the whole library. Most firms find this improves both speed and accuracy, because irrelevant templates are never offered.