This approach is most easily described by case study. One Fortune 100 company has several hundred lawyers in its legal departments, but a group of six lawyers and three legal assistants has sole responsibility for documenting particular loans it makes to its distributors. The group completes more than 1,000 transactions each year. Each loan requires a dozen or so documents, averaging 10 pages each. Like many corporate legal departments, administrative assistance is limited and the legal professionals are responsible for their own drafting.
Technology is their professional leverage.
While all the documents are generated centrally, each has to meet state requirements where the loan is being made. In most cases, the documents are reviewed by local counsel, whose substantive comments are reflected back in the system for the next transaction in that state. Stylistic comments from counsel generally are ignored, since the objective is to maintain consistency in the documents, except where variation is legally necessary. All the resulting documents ultimately are created in a word processor. They are reviewed and edited to reflect negotiated terms.