Company history BackDraft Systems has been formed to build on more than 20 years of experience of founder, Douglas Simpson, in the legal technology field. Mr. Simpson has practiced law and as a result of his computer science background became a pioneer in the field of document assembly technology, having written one of the early document assembly engines called ExperText. ExperText Systems Ltd. was one of the first companies that was successful in producing commercial legal document assembly and practice systems in the late 1980's and early 1990's in the Province of Ontario. LandLaw, a real estate conveyancing system and WillDraft, a will preparation system were market leaders in Ontario and were both authored by Mr. Simpson. He also wrote or contributed to several other practice systems in the area of litigation, corporate secretarial, subdivision and condominium conveyancing, family law and other practice areas. ExperText was also successful in developing case management software that was employed in several large US corporations. After leaving ExperText, Mr. Simpson was a founder and CIO of Debt Recovery Network (see http://www.drncommerce.com) a legal extranet supporting collaboration of law firms and several of Canada's largest financial institutions. Mr. Simpson designed and helped develop the web-based CollectLink (case management) software that is used by thousands of legal personnel, collection agencies, property managers and financial institutions. He integrated document assembly technology at Debt Recovery Network, first with HotDocs and then with GhostFill. | He is also co-author of a book with Mark Tamminga called the Lawyers' Guide to Extranets, 2003, ABA Publishing, which relates the authors' experience in developing legal extranets and documents the efforts by other law firms and companies to build extranets. For the past 5 years Mr. Simpson was the CEO and General Counsel of GhostFill Technologies Inc., the North American subsidiary of Korbitec, a South African software development company that produced the GhostFill document assembly engine. Mr. Simpson helped grow the user base to almost 50,000 users and created strategic partnerships with other software companies and associations. While there, he was involved in the development and implementation of systems in several practice areas, including estate planning, litigation, probate, Small Claims, contract drafting and worked closely with other software publishers to help them create commercial practice systems. Mr. Simpson's computer science experience includes proficiency in Visual Basic for Applications, Visual Studio .NET, MS Office development, database development in Microsoft SQL Server and Microsoft Access and development and customization using several document assembly platforms. |