Legal documents, such as pleadings and briefs, can be made up of hundreds of pages, making document formatting time-consuming work.

While document styles save creators a significant amount of time, they aren’t always straightforward to use. Especially if you’re dealing with a document created by someone outside your organization.

When lawyers spend hours fixing formatting, styles, numbering, it’s valuable time taken away from assisting their clients.

It’s a problem that also impacts IT departments. Approximately 60% of calls to IT Support are for document formatting problems. This tends to be because the correct styles weren’t applied to the document, new styles were introduced by external parties or third-party content, or the document is corrupt.

That’s why firms rely on a solution like styleDocs to manage document formatting, numbering, and repair. Keep reading to learn how it helps lawyers produce high-quality documents in less time.

1. Save over 80% of document formatting time

Firms tell us up to 10% of timekeepers’ time and over 20% of secretaries’ time can be spent dealing with document formatting issues. When you use styleDocs to format, repair, standardize, and style legal documents, you can save up to 80% of reformatting time spent on any legal document.

With its powerful, automated document repair process, styleDocs can do in minutes what it may take even the most experienced Word user hours to do. This includes standardizing quotes in a document by converting to or from smart or straight quotes, converting textual cross-references to automated Word cross-references, and importing predefined style and numbering sets.

2. Produce high-quality, consistent legal documents

Legal documents that are consistently well-presented reflect well on a law firm and ensure your clients the service you deliver is to a high standard.

With styleDocs, you have a way to standardize document styles and formatting. It makes it easier for everyone to deliver consistency and best practices in every document, every day.

3. Ensure document creators have fast and reliable access to house styles and document numbering schemes

styleDocs eliminates the need for expert Word skills to quickly insert house style content and formatting. Instead, users can easily apply house styles via a dynamic toolbar in Microsoft Word as they make their documents.

And, using the toolbar, it’s easy to switch between document numbering schemes for schedules, appendices, and defined terms.

4. Maintain branding

Use styleDocs to preserve your firm’s branding across different document elements, from cover pages, footers, tables of contents, and other highly branded features in marketing documents and customer reports.

Plus, updating your firm’s logo, color palette, address, or other branding elements becomes a straightforward process with styleDocs.

5. Repair problem documents 

Problematic documents exist for various reasons. Usually, it’s because of document formatting that becomes broken or unstable.

styleDocs can check the quality and stability of document formatting and repair problems it finds. For example, in seconds, styleDocs locates broken cross-references throughout your document and lets you update them easily. It can check and repair both internal and third-party documents.

6. Deliver greater visibility with reporting on document corruption

You can use styleDocs to analyze and report on over 50 common causes of document corruption and instability. Use the information to identify common issues across different documents and give stakeholders more visibility into how document corruption impacts the business.

7. Easily rebrand hundreds of documents as part of a merger or acquisition 

Rebranding of documents is often required as part of a merger or acquisition.

styleDocs allows users to clean up, repair, rebrand, and reformat an entire document in a single process. Use it to restyle batches of letters, agreements, live documents, precedents, and PDFs converted to Word.

When working with third-party documents, such as those inherited from another firm, users can quickly identify, correct, or edit applied document numbering schemes and formatting styles.

8. Help lawyers be more productive

When lawyers have access to technology like styleDocs, they can reduce the amount of time spent repairing documents and focus on the law and the needs of their clients.

styleDocs helps lawyers produce high-quality work in a fraction of the time it would usually take. Working with documents more efficiently gives lawyers – and the firms where they work – a significant competitive advantage.

9. Help lawyers to work independently

With styleDocs, lawyers have all the tools they need to format, fix, and repair documents themselves. That means they aren’t held up waiting for help from IT or document production teams to send out letters or contracts or file with the courts.

10. styleDocs integrates with Microsoft Office and major document management systems 

styleDocs integrates with Microsoft Office and major legal document management systems, including iManage, to deliver even greater efficiency in document formatting and styles. Download the styleDocs datasheet to learn more.

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