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Rethink What Document Templates Can Do for Your Law Firm
October 29, 2020
Today's TechnoLawyer Buyer's Guide report covers a template management system for Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, and Excel that ensures document consistency throughout your firm and which offers a growing collection of apps for additional functionality.
Rethink What Document Templates Can Do for Your Law Firm
No lawyer should ever start with a blank document or waste time on formatting tasks. Enter document templates — the unsung heroes of law firms. A decade ago, a folder of Word templates in .dotx format seemed like a productivity game changer but today it's just table stakes. Law firms need more automation than static templates can provide.
veroDocs in One Sentence
veroDocs from Litera is a template management system for Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, and Excel that ensures document consistency throughout your firm and which offers a growing collection of apps for additional functionality.
The Killer Feature
veroDocs resides in a Microsoft Ribbon that you can customize and even brand. With one click, users can access your firm's library of available templates — contracts, briefs, letters, memos, notes, pleadings, etc.
Instead of dozens of templates with small variations, you can keep the categories general and offer users several options for each template. For example, in the image below the Note template lets the user choose from four types. A letter template can make a letterhead optional for those planning to print onto letterhead paper. Users can even switch back and forth among options anytime — turn the letterhead off for printing and then turn it on again.
veroDocs includes a number of apps that automate document drafting and workflows. The most important of these consist of integrations with document management software (DMS) such as iManage, NetDocuments, and Worldox. Other examples include apps for choosing among your firm's offices, selecting the author§ among your firm's attorneys, adding contact information from Outlook and other sources, and changing the language of a document.
Much like a smartphone app, you can easily swap veroDocs apps such as when your firm upgrades to a new version of a DMS. Litera can build custom apps for integrations and other functionality per your requirements.
"We are very pleased to offer this new product for law firms," says Litera Director of Marketing Communications Kerry Carroll. "We undertook a detailed analysis of template and document production systems globally. We acquired Verowave — now rebranded veroDocs — because it's built on the latest in document technology and has become successful in only three short years."
veroDocs enables you to add options to document templates. This enhances ease of use because you need only create one template per document type.
Other Notable Features
veroDocs has a seemingly small but important feature — the ability to suppress the blank document that Word normally presents. This forces users to use veroDocs to create a new document. If you have a DMS, veroDocs can require users to save the document before creation, ensuring correct storage by client, matter, and document type. veroDocs can insert a Document ID and update it when a user creates a new version.
In addition to apps, veroDocs offers built-in tools for document drafting. Chief among these is the Content Manager, which is like Word's Quick Parts on steroids. With the Content Manager, you create Content Blocks consisting of both content and paragraph styles that anyone in the firm can then use. Examples include attorney bios with their photo, tables of authorities, frequently used boilerplate clauses, and entire documents such as a retainer agreement.
For documents that don't use the Content Manager, users can apply your firm's custom styles from the veroDocs ribbon, including your preferred paragraph numbering system. veroDocs can replace Word's default styles, cover pages, and other options with your firm's own so that users who explore beyond the toolbar end up using veroDocs regardless.
What Else Should You Know?
Smaller firms can configure veroDocs on their own after minimal training. Larger firms tend to require more extensive customization and implementation. veroDocs runs on Windows 10 and works with the Microsoft 365 version of Word, PowerPoint, and Excel as well as standalone versions back to Office 2013.
Neil J. Squillante is the founder and publisher of TechnoLawyer, an award-winning network of free email newsletters for lawyers and law office administrators. Many consider TechnoLawyer newsletters the only ones they need. A Fastcase 50 award winner, Neil has a long track record of inventing successful advertising and publishing technologies and related best practices. Previously, Neil practiced commercial litigation at Am Law 100 firm Willkie Farr & Gallagher. He received his J.D. from UCLA School of Law and his B.A. from Duke University. At UCLA, Neil served as a Managing Editor of UCLA Law Review.
