Templates – From Simple to Sublime
Do you ever pull up an old document and use it as a template for a new document? Find and replace text, copy and paste clauses, look for party names and information to insert? This method is slow and inefficient, plus it provides opportunities for errors. There is a better way! While the time commitment is substantial, creating templates will eventually save your firm time and lets you do more work.
Besides documents, your firm can also leverage templates for emails and for requesting information from clients. There are many tools, add-ins, and functions even built into software you already have so you can spend very little money and still take advantage of templates.
Email Templates
If you use Microsoft Outlook, there are many ways to create email templates. You do not have to look through your sent mailbox to find that perfectly crafted email to resend. Let’s look at a couple of ways to create email templates.
Quick Parts
Quick Parts have been in Microsoft Word and Outlook through many versions of the software. The downside to Quick Parts is that they are not shared between the two applications, and they are stored on your computer – meaning you cannot use them anywhere, but the software installed on that computer. Another downside is that Quick Parts can easily be lost or corrupted. If you develop an extensive list of Quick Parts, be sure to create a backup, which can be as simple as a document with your clauses.
To create a Quick Part, find a previously sent email and hit “reply”, then select the text (or image) that you want to save as a clause that you want to reuse. Or start a new email and write the text that you want to save as a clause in the Quick Parts gallery. Quick Parts with images and retains formatting, such as bullet points and hyperlinks. Select the text or image and go to the Insert tab in the Ribbon, then click on Quick Parts, and at the bottom of the list click “Save Selection to the Quick Parts Gallery”. You will be prompted to give your new selection a name.
When you want to insert a selection from the Quick Parts gallery in a reply or new message, put your cursor in the body of the email. Then go to the Insert tab, click on Quick Parts and select your text from the list. It is that easy!
You can also use Auto text to add text. This tutorial shows you how to use Quick Parts, back them up, modify them, add them to the Quick Access toolbar, and much more.
Set Up a Rule to Respond with an Email Template
If you get email notifications from your “contact us” forms or other forms on your website and want to set up an auto response via email, you can use MS Rules and respond with a template. To create an email template that includes a subject line, first craft your email and then click “Save As” and in the file type options choose “Outlook Template”. This will save the email in the standard Microsoft templates folder.
Create a blank MS Outlook rule to apply to messages you receive. Choose your conditions, for instance with the specific word “contact form” in the subject or from a certain email address. Click “next” and choose “Reply Using A Specific Template”. Click on “Specific Template” and find the template you created in “User Templates in File System”. The next time you get an email generated from your form it will automatically respond with your template. This is handy for automating processes like responding to a potential client with the message that you received their request, that you do not yet represent them, information sent via the form is not confidential, and you will respond as quickly as possible. Here are the instructions with screenshots.
You can also send emails using templates you saved, but it is not an easy process. To send your template go to New Items – More Items – Choose Form. Then look in “User Templates in the File System” and choose your template and click Open.
My Templates Add-In
If you have a subscription to Microsoft 365, you can get the My Templates add-in. My Templates is a free add-in that adds a button to the ribbon and lets you create a library of text to drop into your emails. It is very similar to Quick Parts. However, My Templates works in the browser version of MS Outlook. Follow the instructions in this tutorial to get the add-in and learn how to use it.
Ablebits Shared Email Templates
To share email templates across the firm, there are a few ways to do this. However, the Ablebits Shared Email Templates let you do more than other tools. You can share templates, personalize replies with fillable fields, generate templates with macros, create HTML designs, and more. There is a free trial for 60 days and then pricing varies from $3 per user per month to $15 per user per month.
There are a lot of ways to create email templates in MS Outlook/365. If you are a Gmail user, though, do not despair – you can create templates in Gmail too!
Document Templates Using Microsoft Word
Many lawyers use Microsoft Word to draft documents. The word processor has a lot of sophisticated capabilities to insert text, control formatting, create form fields, create intelligent documents that change text or add text based on conditionals, and more.
Like Microsoft Outlook, you can create Quick Parts in MS Word. You can also use the Quick Parts menu to insert fields into a Word document. AutoText in Word lets you drop in text (up to 255 characters), and it can be configured to use with AutoCorrect so you can trigger automatic text with a short cut. These clauses and text live only in your computer, so while they can help you, they aren’t great as shareable templates.
To create shareable templates in MS Word you can save a Word document as a .dotm (File – Save a Copy) and choose file type as a .dotx template or .dotm macro enabled template. Then when you or anyone else opens the file, the template doesn’t get overwritten, and a new document is created.
You can create document templates with formatting controlled with Styles. Styles also let you automate the creation of finding aids like a Table of Contents, auto numbering and more.
MS Word also has tools like Mail Merge, to bring in text from a spreadsheet or other source of information and generate emails, letters, labels, and more.
Do you want fillable fields, date choosers, drop down menus, and more in your Word template? No problem, but you first must add the Developer tab to the Ribbon so you can see your options.
You can mix and match these functions in MS Word to create simple to complex document templates. It just takes time and know how. Check the CPM video library for video tutorials on “Using Word’s Built-In Features to Create Fillable Forms and Templates” and “Intelligence and Automation in Microsoft 365” from the Automation Workshop and the “Microsoft Word Styles Tutorial” (1/5/2020).
Third Party Document Assembly and Automation Tools
In addition to the features built into Microsoft Word, there are dozens of technology tools that make generating documents based on templates and existing data possible. Many of the law practice management (LPMS) and client relationship management (CRM) applications have features that make quick work of generating custom documents. Many leverage the mail merge feature in MS Word and let you add fields to a document template that pull data from the system. For instance, you can create engagement agreements, fee agreements, closing letters and far more that can be auto filled with information about the client that lives in the database. Many have also built in esignatures tools so you can pull the information from the system, insert it in the template and send for a signature electronically with a few clicks.
Some law practice management applications let you fill court forms. Tools like Smokeball provide a library of forms converted to fillable templates from the PDF and make it easy to fill them in with client data in the system.
There are also many document assembly programs available as add-ins for Microsoft Word. The free version of the Form Tool is simple but can show you the power of turning your templates into easily fillable finalized documents. If you want conditionals, phrases, shared data, and more you can pay for their products like The Form Tool Pro, Doxsera and Doxsera DB. Similar tools include Pathagorus and Lawyaw (recently purchased by Clio). Woodpecker, recently acquired by MyCase, works within Microsoft Word in an easy and intuitive interface. You can reuse client data, fill multiple forms at once and send out client questionnaires that fill in the document for your review. Like other document assembly tools, you can also pay for their help coding the documents.
Inside Out
Many of the stand-alone document assembly engines like HotDocs, ContractExpress, and Xpertdoc are powerful and complex document assembly engines. Tools like HotDocs are the underlying technology that powers practice-specific subscription document generation products like WealthCounsel’s WealthDox and Thomson Reuters’ CheckPoint.
One of the more notable trends in many of the document assembly products is the ability to let clients fill in online questionnaires or “interviews,” which then can populate documents. If you have to gather information from a client you wouldn’t normally collect during initial intake, and you do not want to copy/paste information, you can get your client to help! Sometimes firms have even developed full blown products, like Cooley Go Docs, Littler’s ComplianceHR and HelloDivorce (powered by Documate). For more examples of firms of all sizes leveraging the expansion of document assembly into client interview products, see Afterpattern’s (recently acquired by NetDocuments) Marketplace.
Conclusion
You can be as simple or complex with your use of email and document templates as you would like. If you are just getting started with assembly tools, begin with simpler documents like engagement agreements, non-engagement agreements, and closing letters. Who will code the documents? In some firms a team member will be the document assembly guru, though some firms will outsource the function. Be consistent in where you save the templates and provide instructions on how to use them. Make sure that each template has a responsible party who can review periodically to make sure the template is up to date. Document templates, automation, and assembly engines take time and money to get started, but you will recoup your costs, reduce risk, and can even provide new services in the end.
Catherine Sanders Reach is director of the NCBA Center for Practice Management.