The Oklahoma Bar Journal January 2024

possibility someone will acci dentally edit the form document because you are not using a form. Microsoft provides good instructions on creating templates. 2 Editing a simple template is easy. The instructions are at the same link as the above. These simple templates will speed up starting a new document. But before you can use them in automated document assembly, each item of your data needs to be tagged ( e.g., , ), and a field for each type of data needs to be created in your template. Keeping track of all these labels is important. It is poor practice to use a simple term like Name because there will be many different types of names in the system. Somewhere, the firm must maintain a list of every one of these names. Otherwise, two people will use the same variable for different items, and no one will know until a generated document has incorrect information. I wouldn’t want to mislead any one. Creating powerful templates to be used in automated document assembly can be challenging. It is more like coding than word pro cessing. You need to know about using styles, auto paragraph num bering and spacing, and using para graph glue coding like “keep with next” and “keep lines together.” It requires good planning and a fair amount of time investment.

THIRD-PARTY APPS AND TOOLS Because template design can be challenging, many firms opt to invest in third-party software to assist them. These programs com bine the powerful tools in Word that are sometimes challenging to access with some more friendly menus and other assistance. At the 2023 Solo & Small Firm Conference, Kenton Brice, direc tor of the Law Library at the OU College of Law, did a very impres sive demonstration of Doxserá from TheFormTool. 3 It builds a table at the bottom of each document with two columns, one for the name of the variables and the other column blank for your data. And once you use it to prepare one document for a client, you can save that data so you can reuse it the next time you need to prepare a document for that client. TheFormTool is afford able with a free limited license or a 30-day trial of Doxserá for $1. 4 A lifetime license for TheFormTool PRO is $89, and Doxserá is $149 per user for an annual subscription. TheFormTool’s CEO spoke at the 2023 Access to Justice Summit and has been consult ing with the Oklahoma Access to Justice Foundation on some automation ideas. Other well-regarded document automation programs include Woodpecker, 5 which was acquired by MyCase in 2021, and Lawyaw, 6 which was acquired by Clio in 2021. While these services will be designed to work well with the parent company’s service, they are also available for subscription for those who do not use the PMS. Woodpecker’s starter subscription is $39 per month, and it offers a free trial. Lawyaw is $67 per month for its Word automation packages and also offers various state court forms to be auto-com pleted in an additional package. They also offer template design services at $150 per hour.

Creating a Custom Template in Word If your law practice hasn’t created any templates, I suggest you begin with a simple one that will be immediately useful – your stationery or letterhead. While your firm may or may not still purchase printed letterhead for correspon dence, much correspondence is created on the computer and is sometimes never printed. Since most people will be looking at cop ies of the correspondence anyway, more firms are opting to cease or limit purchasing letterhead. 1) Open the Word document you wish to use to create the template. In this case, the soft letterhead you use. 2) Select File – Save As (with some versions, select Save a copy ). 3) Type a name for the new template in the File Name box. (It is okay to include the word “template” in the file name.) 4) Click on Word Template in the

Save as type list. If your doc ument contains macros, you will instead click on Word Macro-Enabled Template.

5) Click Save

When you open your new template, you will have a new “Document 1,” including all the information included in the template. This eliminates the

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THE OKLAHOMA BAR JOURNAL