The Benefits of Customized Styles and Templates for the Small Law Office

Looking back, as I reflect on my former days as a legal secretary, legal word processing operator, and technical support specialist, I find one thing is universal throughout every top-tier law firm: customized styles and templates.

Standardized documentation is critical to the law office. Just imagine hundreds, even thousands of attorneys working for one firm, all of them positioned in different offices working without a standard means of formatting their documents? Customized styles and templates reduce the cost of formatting a single document by thousands of dollars. This astronomical savings does not take into account the additional savings that stem from reduced document corruption, of which poor formatting is a high contributor.

An analysis of a firms documents is the first step in creating customized styles and templates. The process is simple. The analyst reviews each documents' formatting, noting document spacing, margins, font(s), font size(s), etc. Once the analysis is complete, in a matter of days, a small law office can be creating and formatting standardized, corruption protected documents in minutes instead of hours.

Customized styles and templates do not need fancy interfaces and execution buttons. The simplest of templates work behind the scene without notice. Still, its power to support standardized document production while delivering corruption-reducing support is enormous.

If you have gone from working in an international law firm to a small law office and you've grown weary of the tedious means of formatting documents without the benefits of customized styles and templates, let me make a suggestion. Take the bull by the horns. Find someone with decision making authority (or influence) and talk about the time-saving capabilities of customized styles and templates. Keep it short and simple. Speak their language. You may find yourself with new responsibilities which often leads to better opportunities.

If you're looking for the skills necessary to develop customized styles and templates, KAS (Knowledge Ability Skill) Training is here to help you acquire and redevelop the universal skill of legal word processing.