Ask HN: What manual processes would you automate in your company?
I used to work in a big law firm working on startup-related corporate work. A substantial portion of my job looked like this:<p>* Find a form or template for a document. Sometimes the &quot;template&quot; wasn&#x27;t really a template but &quot;we worked on a deal that was pretty similar to this one three months ago -- use that&quot;. Sometimes the template was &quot;use this form except for this one section you should use from that form&quot;.<p>* Tag form &#x2F; template as &quot;version 1&quot; in our document management system.<p>* Fill in all the blanks, remove brackets, etc.<p>* Tag this as &quot;version 2&quot; in our document management system.<p>* Create a diff &#x2F; redline with all my changes.<p>* Send diff to partner for review.<p>* Incorporate changes from partner into document.<p>* Replace (rather than append) &quot;version 2&quot; in our document management system with the new doc.<p>* Email document to opposing counsel for review.<p>* If we&#x27;re sharing docs with opposing counsel via Dropbox, Box, etc., upload there too. But also email them, because they might not remember to check Dropbox.<p>* Bug opposing counsel every 24-48 hours until they respond with an edited copy of our document.<p>* Let partners and clients know that you are bugging opposing counsel so they know it&#x27;s totally not your fault if this deal doesn&#x27;t get done by Friday.<p>* Save opposing counsel&#x27;s edited document as &quot;version 3&quot; in our document management system.<p>* Create a diff of the document they send and ask partner to review.<p>* Bug partner every 24 hours until they respond with more changes.<p>* Save this as &quot;version 4&quot; in our document management system.<p>* Send this, along with a diff, back to opposing counsel.<p>* Somewhere in this process we also pass along to our actual client for review.<p>* Repeat until no one has any more changes. Do this for many more documents that are part of the same deal.<p>* Send out the first set of documents for signature. Some people don&#x27;t want to actually review the things they&#x27;re signing (crazy!), so we create &quot;signature packets&quot; where it&#x27;s just like four signature pages in a row. Also, everyone has a different set of documents to sign so different people get different sets of pages + documents -- and sometimes we need to make sure that person X doesn&#x27;t see some document that only person Y can see because secrets.<p>* Or we use an e-signature service, in which case I spend some time creating little boxes over all the document so the service knows that this is a place where a signature-like image has to go.<p>* Discover some error in document. Fix. Redo all of my little boxes.<p>* Respond to people confused about how e-signatures work. Sometimes if there are four documents, the signatory gets four e-mails and then they&#x27;re confused as to whether they should just sign the last one or all four or whatever (you should sign all four). Also, sometimes people refuse to use e-signatures, so we have to explain to people that because Docusign says the deal is done doesn&#x27;t mean it&#x27;s actually done.<p>* Sometimes this is where we file stuff with the state government.<p>* Send out a second set of documents of signature. We don&#x27;t send these out with the first set (even if the same person is signing stuff in both the first and second set) because it&#x27;s very important that the second set not be signed until <i>after</i> the first set is signed by all the parties (or after we get some sort of confirmation back from the government if there&#x27;s a filing involved). Sometimes we have very important people that hate being interrupted to sign documents, so we let them sign everything in one go but hold some of those signatures &quot;in escrow&quot; so we can &quot;release the signatures&quot; in the right order.<p>* Track all of the outstanding signatures and filings via a spreadsheet and try to update this in as &quot;real time&quot; as possible.<p>* Respond to partner or client asking you about deal status by pointing to spreadsheet.<p>* Respond to partner or client unable to open spreadsheet for whatever reason by summarizing signature status in text form.<p>* Bug people periodically until everything is signed.<p>* If any of the parties to a deal refuses to e-sign stuff, this is where I have to create a &quot;final&quot; signed PDF copy of the documents, wherein I replace blank signature pages in a document with some faxed or scanned signature page.<p>* If signatures were being held &quot;in escrow&quot;, bug the people who are holding the signatures in escrow for confirmation that the signatures are released.<p>* Sometimes these people need to bug other people for confirmation. These people then ask lots of questions like &quot;has other person X signed yet?&quot;. Point to spreadsheet.<p>* Sometimes money gets wired here. Wait until we confirm the money came in.<p>* Signatures are released! The money came in! Tell everyone the deal is done!<p>* Curl into fetal position.