How To Goodlegal

Create a new folder

Folders in Goodlegal platform can store files (documents and templates) and subfolders. The split between documents and templates was created to facilitate access and faster identify templates while enabling users to create a subset of templates dedicated to a specific matter.

To create a new Folder, one main prerequisite is to have at least one workspace created where the folder will be located. Folder creation is initiated from a workspace.

Further in a similar fashion to Workspaces, a mandatory requirement for folder creation is the folder name, while the folder description is an optional input. Upon creation, the folders can be deleted or renamed.

The process to create a Folder is the same in Personal and Company workspaces.

Upload a file

Goodlegal allows users to upload documents and templates in personal and company folders.

To achieve this, you need to navigate to the folder where you would like to upload the file, access the ‘Document’ or ‘Templates’ tab and press the ‘New Document’ button.

Upon following the instructions above a pop-up window will be displayed where you can drag &drop or select the file that you wish to upload.

To complete the upload click anywhere outside of the pop-up modal.

Import a template from library

Templates are those guiding standard documents which need to be used across the organisation as a starting point for any new document and the Templates section is *the place where your approved templates of various corporate policies or contracts reside)*Users can leverage personal, organisation or marketplace templates to generate business-related documents.

To do this the templates need to be imported to a personal folder. Before deciding on the final template to use you can preview the contents to make sure that the template contains the expected data.

Upon importing, the template will be easily accessed from the folder destination selected at import.

Create documents using templates

Documents are the actual working ‘paper’ which can take multiple states, such as Draft, Review, Signed, Published etc. The options available to generate a document are either to upload one, start one from scratch or edit an existing template.

Templates can always be a fast path to generating compliant and comprehensive documents.

As we have seen above it is very easy to access a template - either from your own organisation or the marketplace - and import it into your personal drafting folder. But how should you create documents based on templates?

For best practices, the recommendation is to edit and customise the template and use the ‘Duplicate as a document’ every time a new document is required.

Create documents with Document Builder

The options available to generate a document are either to upload one, start one from scratch or edit an existing template.

Document Builder is Goodlegal’s fully-integrated editor allowing users to build, edit and configure templates and documents. It comes with all the common features of an editor: comments, track changes, font types font sizes, table support, page numbers, header&footer, etc.

Through Document Builder users can save their work, publish it or share it with other collaborators.

Use clauses in Document Builder

Manually drafting a document is always a time-consuming and error-prone activity. For users, it adds additional challenges to make sure that the right clauses are formulated in a way that is compliant and follows the company’s standards.

Clauses created in Clause Library can now be used in Document Builder to create or enhance existing templates or documents automatically, using drag&drop. To use a clause from the Library, you need to navigate to the Clauses tab select a clause and drag it into the text wherever you like.

Create a custom information field

Every document created comes with a set of predefined information, such as document name, language, jurisdiction etc.

However, we know that all out of box information might not be enough for business, therefore users can create their own relevant fields for every document. In this way, any document can be uniquely configured to be found using a simple metadata search.

Creating a custom metadata field is very simple. Open a document or template, in a state of Draft, and use the ‘Add a Custome Property’ button, located under the Document Properties section. Upon creating the field assign it a field name and a value and the field will be created against the document.

Any custom-created metadata field can be removed or adjusted.

Initiate review

The document review phase is a very important milestone in the document lifecycle journey. Most of the documents and templates need to be reviewed, either to arrive at a commercial agreement (negotiation) or for internal business approval or legal confirmation. Regardless of the reason, using traditional ways for the review process add additional inefficiencies and overheads due to the need for multiple technologies used to achieve the goal.

In Goodlegal, any document, template or clause can be reviewed by another tenant user. To initiate a review, users will have to open the document/template, navigate to the ‘Review’ tab in Document Builder and select the reviewer.

While waiting for a document to be reviewed, the document contents cannot be edited by the initiator. In case the document requires some additional editing, it can be recalled.

Review

Upon receiving a review request, reviewers are notified - in the platform and through e-mail - about a task waiting for their action.To access all the documents which are pending review, you can either use the ‘To Do’ dashboard or you can select the ‘Review’ option in the menu.

Upon starting a review, the user has the option to accept or refuse the review request. In case the request is refused, the document returns intact to the initiator with a notification. In case the review request is accepted, users can approve or send feedback to the initiator.

A document review can only be accepted when there are no changes carried out to the document content. For any changes carried out, the reviewer will have to send feedback to the initiator to accept and validate the changes.

Review Feedback

Upon completing the review, the initiator will receive a platform notification and will have access to the document again. At this point, if the review was returned with feedback, the document will increase its version number and the initiator will have access to all the changes - which can be accepted or rejected.

If the document was approved, its state will change to ‘Approve’ and until further editing it will stay like that.

Sign - Define Signees

Every document to become legally binding requires at least one signature. You can prepare documents for signature through the Goodlegal platform, by simply navigating to the ‘Sign’ tab in the document builder view and starting the signing process.

The first step in the signing process is defining the signees. You can define any signee - internal or external- by typing their name and e-mail address in the signature column.

Upon defining the signees, you can drag and drop their ‘cards’ onto the document in the places where the signatures need to be placed. Further, when all the signing placeholders are placed the document can be sent for signing.

Sign - Sign document

When a user is defined as a signee for a document they will receive an e-mail with a signing notification.

All the documents pending a signature are stored in the ‘Sign’ section of the platform. Here you can access all the documents that are still in signing progress and the ones that have already been executed.

To sign a document, you have to open it, navigate to the signature placeholder using the signing summary labels on the left-hand side panel, and click the placeholders. Every signed placeholder will be highlighted in green.

You can confirm the completion by pressing the ‘Sign’ button.

Publish - Initiate

Publish is the process of posting a document, template or clause from a personal location to a company one. By publishing a document to a company space you make it available to a wider audience. Any company-wide documents such as policies, contracts, and generic templates are recommended to be published in a company workspace to enable other user access - roles based- to the information.

Any template, document (draft or executed) or clause can be published. To initiate the publishing process you have to either open the document in the document builder and select the publish button, or from the quick actions menu select the ‘Publish’ option. After selecting the publish location the process has been completed.

Publish - Approve

Depending on the user’s permissions, published documents will require approval before being displayed in company workspaces. Therefore, for every workspace, there will be a gatekeeper approver to validate the published documents, templates or clauses.

All the documents submitted for publishing can be accessed from every folder’s ‘Pending’ tab.

Retire

Everything that is published can be retired. In case a company-wide document requires an update, or is obsolete, users with the right permissions will be able to retire the documents, import them in personal folders, update them and initiate the publish process.

Add/Remove users

Admins and users with user management permissions are able to add or remove users in the tenant.

For this, you have to navigate to Settings→ Manage Tenant. Here using ‘Invite User’ you can send invitations for new tenant users. Upon inviting a user, they will receive an invitation e-mail with a link to the tenant.

Next to every user entry, there will be an option to remove it from the tenant. If a user is removed, their access to any tenant.

Create a new tenant

Goodlegal supports multi-tenancy, however, at the moment one user can create a single tenant.

Although this limitation will change in the short term, for organizations that require multiple tenants, the solution is to create new accounts with different e-mail addresses (different users)- in this way multiple tenants will be created.

Afterwards, taking advantage of the ‘Add User’ functionality users can be added to the new tenants, which will enable them multi-tenant access.