HotDocs runs on HotDocs experts. Your leases shouldn't.
Months of developer work to set up. Consultant time to maintain. And HotDocs still wasn't built for the calculation logic inside 80-page commercial leases.
Credit where it's due
HotDocs is a serious document-automation engine with decades of adoption across legal. It assembles documents from conditional logic and user inputs cleanly. For many document types, that model fits.
The question isn't whether HotDocs is a good tool. It's whether building CRE-specific logic from scratch — and depending on a developer forever to maintain it — is the right fit for a team drafting commercial leases.
Where HotDocs Breaks for CRE
Four problems that compound over time
What customers tell us when they describe leaving HotDocs.
Setup takes months of developer work
A HotDocs developer translates your firm's lease knowledge into HotDocs templates. They don't know CRE. Your team doesn't know HotDocs. You're paying a translator who isn't fluent in either language — and the bill grows the longer the project takes.Every change goes back to the developer
New state, new clause, updated defined term, a fix to a conditional — back to the HotDocs developer. Your associates and lease admins can't maintain the templates themselves, so the platform becomes a permanent line item instead of a tool your team owns.It wasn't built for lease complexity
Rent schedules, CAM reconciliations, percentage rent breakpoints, escalations — these are calculations that flow through the document. HotDocs models documents as fields and conditions. CRE leases need a calculation engine, not a smarter mail-merge.Negotiated deals don't carry forward
When a national tenant negotiates a set of clauses — assignment language, exclusivities, indemnity carve-outs — the next lease they sign with you starts from the form, not the deal. HotDocs saves input data, not negotiated language. To reuse what was hammered out, you fork the template or save the Word output and hand-edit it next time.
How LeasePilot Is Different
A platform your team actually owns
Not a blank slate. Not a consultant dependency. Built for the people doing the work.
Built for CRE, not a blank slate
10+ years of commercial-lease logic — escalations, CAM, percentage rent, TI allowances — already encoded. You're configuring how your firm uses it, not building it from scratch.Our team handles onboarding
Six structured weeks. We read your templates, your past leases, and your house style. Inconsistencies you didn't know existed surface as a deliverable, not a problem.Your team owns the templates after go-live
Associates edit clauses. Lease admins update defaults. Per-building defaults configured by the people who actually negotiate the deals. No ticket queue, no developer in the middle.Same support team, for life
The people who set you up are the people who answer when you have a question two years in. No vendor handoff, no "talk to your implementation partner."
HotDocs vs. LeasePilot
The record
| Feature | HotDocs | LeasePilot |
|---|---|---|
| Setup | ||
| Time to first lease | Months | 6 weeks |
| Who builds your templates | HotDocs developer or consultant | LeasePilot team |
| Setup surfaces template inconsistencies | No | Yes |
| Maintenance | ||
| Day-to-day template edits | Consultant ticket | Your associates |
| Adding a new clause or state | Consultant ticket | Your team, in-app |
| Ongoing maintenance cost | Consultant time, indefinitely | Included |
| CRE Logic | ||
| Rent schedule generation | Build it | Built-in |
| Rent escalations (fixed, CPI, FMV) | Build it | Built-in |
| CAM reconciliation logic | Build it | Built-in |
| Percentage rent breakpoints | Build it | Built-in |
| TI allowance provisions | Build it | Built-in |
| Per-building default deal terms | Build it | Built-in |
| Reuse a negotiated deal with the same tenant | Per-tenant template clones | Conformed deals |
| Lease, amendment, SNDA, estoppel sync | Each as a separate template | Single connected deal record |
| Open API for CRE-system data | No | Yes |
Six weeks, not another rebuild
A structured migration handled by our team, not your IT department.
Weeks 1–2 Template intake
We read your existing HotDocs templates and a sample of recent lease drafts. Discrepancies, drift, and unspoken house style come out of hiding.Weeks 3–4 CRE logic encoding
Your firm's defaults, escalations, CAM treatment, and clause library go into LeasePilot's calculation engine. Your input drives the configuration; we do the encoding.Weeks 5–6 Review and go-live
Your team drafts real deals with us alongside. Edge cases get tightened, defaults get tuned, and the system goes live with the people who'll use it daily.
No setup invoice. Start drafting.
Six weeks to live, with our team handling the encoding. Pay per lease — no setup fee, no consultant invoices, no maintenance contract.