Comment by rubyfan
2 days ago
I’ve been dreaming of a better contract writing tool for a while now.
I’m not a lawyer but I draft insurance contracts and work with reviewing lawyers closely. As a former software developer I miss version control, partial includes, conditional logic, etc. I am shocked at how poorly supported the business world is by the ubiquity of MS Word.
I’ve been experimenting with Typst now for some time and it has a lot of what I want in creating and versioning documents but I believe may be too technical to become integrated with existing workflows and the non-technical users engaged in the development process. Basically my experience is normal users tune out once you get outside of even basic MS Word.
I really want a great tool to exist but I’m afraid I’m an outlier and unique in my technical ability in this space. Nice to see others interested in such a tool.
I’m part of the team behind Zoho Contracts, focused on simplifying how businesses manage contracts across their lifecycle — from authoring, approvals, negotiation, and signing to renewals, amendments, compliance, with comprehensive analytics built in.
Our document editor is powered by Zoho Writer, offering all the capabilities of a word processor along with versioning, document assembly, and automation features. On top of this, we’ve built structured version control, clause-level change tracking, and workflow-integrated collaboration. This enables legal and business teams to work together seamlessly without relying on external editors or juggling redlined Word files over email.
Just sharing in case anyone else here is tackling similar problems or interested in the space.
Ah, a kindred spirit. I have been drafting part time for a local firm, and I feel like i’m on the cusp of a brilliant concept for pulling documents together, presenting case status to the lead lawyer … but I don’t have the time to coalesce my inklings into a tool.
I think we technical folk need to build technical tools for us to use while we explore the space and iterate on something that the normies will accept.
If you find anyone willing to invest money so a team can spend time on this, please let me know! :-)