The Form Question: Pre-Printed or Computer-Generated Forms?
When I entered the land industry as a field broker in the mid 90’s, we used pre-printed “Bath” forms for our leasing as a rule. Then some enterprising individual took the time to type several of the forms into word processor templates (Wordperfect for DOS!) and a new era was underway.
From my perspective at the time, I thought it was a wonderful development. It sure made my job easier to crank out leases. I could format things the way I liked and could more easily print a new one if I had to make a change. Everything’s great, right? Well not so fast…
We were about six months into a leasing play with roughly fifteen of us getting as much ink as we could (using the Wordperfect template) when someone discovered that the template was “corrupted”. Apparently, someone along the line had removed the word “not” from a paragraph to accommodate a particular lessor, resulting in a material change to the meaning of that paragraph, and this modification wound up surviving in the template that was passed around at the beginning of the project. All of this was obviously bad news for the client, the brokerage and the field brokers themselves. More importantly, it was an important lesson in the downside to computer-generated forms of any type. Without proper controls, computer-generated forms generally mean reading every word to be certain of the contents.
To state the obvious, the primary value to a pre-printed form is that anyone familiar with the contents of that form knows what it contains without having to read it every time. This is axiomatic across all industries. Attorneys, lease analysts, buyers and sellers of leasehold interests—everyone involved—can proceed with confidence without having to take the time to read every word of every contract.
I created and discarded several leasing database systems over the years before coming up with the current TotaLand design. Consistent throughout that entire period, however, was the specific goal of balancing the competing interests of control and flexibility, ultimately working to employ the best of both worlds—predictable, consistent output with the flexibility to modify content on the fly, but with those modifications easily tracked.
Any worthwhile leasing system should have as a primary goal the ability to accomplish this very thing. At TotaLand, we employ the concept of libraries. Each of our clients has multiple libraries—Forms, Additional Paragraphs and Provisions—to name a few. Our clients send us a form template (OGML, pipeline ROW, seismic permit, etc.), usually in Word format, and our programmers turn it into a form that uses a process very similar to mail merge, taking data from the database record and populating the form, including riders/additional paragraph/exhibit language from the Additional Paragraphs library. More importantly, the completed form is delivered to the user as an encrypted pdf. Depending on authority level, the user can still modify or delete key values and additional paragraphs on the form, but never the body of the form, and all modifications to the default form are tracked for the benefit of the analysts, et al.
The best of both worlds? We certainly think so. If you are not already a TotaLand Landman, start your free, no obligation trial today to see for yourself!
Bill Justice - Founder / President, TotaLand