• Transact Login
  • Litigate Login
  • Store Account
  • Customer Center
  • Support
logo
  • Solutions
    • Drafting
      • Litera Desktop
        An integrated experience with everything a lawyer needs to draft documents
      • Create
        Generate new documents and reduce manual entry
      • Check
        Analyze, proofread, and repair documents
      • Collaborate
        Compare complex documents and protect against metadata exposure
      • Publish
        Simplify your most complex PDF workflows and create text searchable PDFs
    • Workflow
      • Transaction Management
        A secure, collaborative deal management platform
      • Due Diligence
        AI/ML based solution to highlight and extract provisions automatically
      • Litigation
        A litigation management platform to connect all elements of your case
    • Firm Intelligence
      • Foundation Firm Intelligence
        Win more business and exceed client expectations
      • Pricing and Scoping
        Improve firmwide profitability and offer increased client transparency
      • Digital Marketing
        Manage and nurture your business relationships more effectively
      • Strategic Planning
        Connects your plans to everyday goals for outstanding results
      • Shipping and Invoice Management
        A single platform to manage a law firms shipping and invoice needs
      • Talent Management
        Streamline recruitment, CLE/continuing education management, performance reviews, and work allocation
      • Business Intelligence
        Retrieve, analyze, and visualize all financial data onto a highly configurable business intelligence dashboard
    • Governance
      • Governance and Collaboration
        Streamline collaboration through organized structures and access management
      • Business Continuity
        Ensure business continuity by always having access to data even during outage
      • Compliance
        Remain compliant with disposition policies by minimizing unnecessary data
      • Cloud Migration
        Kickstart your journey to the Cloud
      • Microsoft Teams Management
        Control data chaos and improve your Microsoft Teams security and governance
  • Customers
    • Who We Work With
    • Enterprise Law Firms
    • Small/Medium Law Firms
    • Corporate Solutions
    • Services
    • Case Studies
  • Company
    • Our Story
    • Management Team
    • Events
    • Partners
    • Press
    • Careers
    • Contact
  • Resources
    • Resource Library
    • The Changing Lawyer
    • LegalTech Matters Podcast
  • Login & Support
      • Transact Login
      • Litigate Login
      • Store Account
      • Customer Center
      • Support
Request a Demo Store

Winning Strategies for Word Wrestling

On Wed 29 Sep 2021
 

In part one of a three-part series on using Styles in Microsoft Word, Bob Blacksberg illustrates how it can help you create polished, professional documents.

Despite two decades of experience with Microsoft Word all too many lawyers and law practices still wrestle with it. Middle of the night improvised exploding formatting is a familiar hazard. Too many hours futzing with the details of basic formatting can be much too frustrating. Lawyers and many staff find even more mysterious or difficult the features designed for polished, professional documents. They may have never mastered the table of contents or even seen how to navigate and edit based on a document's content and substance, reusing, removing, and relocating clauses, articles, and sections.A deeper understanding of Microsoft Word can help overcome these hurdles. Hiding in plain sight, Styles is Word's core feature and fundamental construction tool.Why? Doesn't applying a style make it harder to learn how to format Word documents? Doesn't Word highlight the necessary formatting right on the home ribbon, or some ribbon, somewhere?With understanding, preparation, methods, and tools, applying styles can make formatting much simpler and more accurate and consistent. The formatting tools on Word's ribbons may seem to do these tasks, but can leave documents with hidden traps, mines triggered to explode.In this and the following blog posts, I will explain what Styles can do, where to apply appropriate stylesso legal documents have a logical, substantive structure and a few essential rules for their use, and how lawyers, staff and vendors or consultants can work as a team to make Styles as useful, effective and accurate as can be.We can see what applying appropriate styles does with an agreement that incorporates headings, numbered sections and subsections, and a table of contents. The image below illustrates the agreement.Figure 1 - Agreement Overview.png

Figure 1

The 'Normal' style applied automatically to the content of this document only specifies the font, justification, and paragraph spacing of the document. It has no indication of the document's structure, such as heading levels or paragraph numbers. It can't be used to build a table of contents, or to navigate and edit the document.Word's Navigation Pane can show a document's structure. To make the Navigation Pane visible, check Navigation Pane in the Show section of the View ribbon, as illustrated below.Figure 2 - Turn on Navigation Pane.png

Figure 2

A document lacking specific styles also lacks the substantive structure that makes the Navigation Pane work and a table of contents easy to generate, see example below.Figure 3 - With Only Normal Style, Empty Navigation Pane.png

Figure 3

With appropriate styles applied, the Navigation Pane fills with the structure of the document, and a table of contents has been constructed in a single step, as shown here.Figure 4 - Styles Applied, Navigation Pane Filled.png

Figure 4

Now it is possible, practical, even magical to use the Navigation Pane to edit the agreement. The headings in the Navigation Pane can navigate to, select, move, or delete text consisting of a heading and all of its content.For a lawyer as draftsperson and editor, with this use of Styles and the Navigation Pane, a legal document works the way a lawyer thinks ' each clause an intact whole.Figure 5 illustrates the use of the Navigation Pane to select a section of an agreement. After right clicking on the heading name in the Navigation Pane, the context menu offers the choice to 'Select Heading and Content.' Figure 6 shows the selection of the content for the heading 'Organization and Qualification' and the ability to drag that entire section to a different place in the document. Finally, Figure 7 shows the completion of the move of that section.Figure 5 - Selecting a Heading and Content.png

Figure 5

Figure 6 - Drag and Drop Heading and Content.png

Figure 6

Figure 7 - Move Completed.png

Figure 7

For me, applying appropriate styles turns paragraphs into the LEGO?? blocks of Microsoft Word ' highly standardized blocks that snap together to form the whole of the document. In the next post, we will explore how paragraphs with appropriate styles snap together, and plenty more.

iStock-500740139.jpg

 

Posted in Litera Microsystems,Metadact

Related Articles

Clean and Compare

Blog

Clean and Compare

Why Proofreading Matters for Litigators as Much as Transactional Lawyers

Blog

Why Proofreading Matters for Litigators as Much as Transactional Lawyers

The “Toggle Tax” and Drafting Challenges for Corporate Legal Departments:    A Litera/ACC Drafting Webinar

Blog

The “Toggle Tax” and Drafting Challenges for Corporate Legal Departments: A Litera/ACC Drafting Webinar

Boutique Law Firm Sanders Rehaste Sternshein & Harvey Selects Litera Microsystems Solutions

Client News

Boutique Law Firm Sanders Rehaste Sternshein & Harvey Selects Litera Microsystems Solutions

logo
US: +1 630 598 1100 UK: +44 (0)20 3890 2860
Vision
  • One Vendor
  • Integration
Solutions
  • Litera Desktop
  • Litera Create
  • Litera Check
  • Contract Companion
  • Litigation Companion
  • DocXtools
  • DocXtools Companion
  • Litera Review
  • Litera SecureShare
  • Metadact
  • Litera Compare
  • Litera Transact
  • Kira Systems
  • Litera Litigate
  • Foundation Firm Intelligence
  • Clocktimizer
  • Concep
  • Objective Manager
  • PS/Ship
  • Prosperoware
Customers
  • Who We Work With
  • Enterprise Law Firms
  • Small/Medium Law Firms
  • Corporate Solutions
  • Case Studies
  • Services
Company
  • Our Story
  • Management Team
  • Events
  • Partners
  • Press
  • Careers
  • Contact Us
Resources
  • Resource Library
  • Webinars
  • The Changing Lawyer
  • LegalTech Matters Podcasts
logo
US: +1 630 598 1100 UK: +44 (0)20 3890 2860
  • Licensing Terms
  • Privacy Notice & DPA
  • Preference Center
  • Contact Us
  • Modern Slavery Statement

© 2023 Litera Corp. All rights reserved.