Six Reasons Why Your Next Legal Software Purchase Should Be An MS Word Plug-in
By Ivy Grey, J.D., LL.M., Author at Law Technology Today
Lawyers spend a lot of time working in MS Word, so there are great benefits to improving how it works for you. Here are just some of the problems that MS Word plug-ins can help with:
1. You’re losing your reader’s attention due to sloppy mistakes
Typos steal focus, and the appearance of a document makes a difference. If your readers are struggling over typos, word choice, and layout, they’re not paying attention to your point—and they’re certainly missing nuance.
2. Proofreading and editing is taking longer than research and drafting
Lawyers are trained to strive for near-perfection. That pressure means it’s easy to spend nearly as much time proofreading your document as you spent to create it. But this focus is lopsided; and clients don’t feel that it provides enough value. Put the emphasis back where it belongs by using software right in MS Word that you control and can trust.
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3. Your realization rates are trending downward
Clients may not see the value of legal industry requirements such as properly formatting legal citations and creating tables of authorities, but you’ve still got to do them, and you’ve got to do them right. The result is that these time-consuming tasks are often written off on client bills. Proofreading software can help you minimize the time spent on that work. Use it to ensure the time you dedicate to a document is well-spent and billable. Use tools like American Legal Style for PerfectIt ensure that your writing is error-free. These programs are inexpensive so you can afford to buy them for yourself. Your reputation is worth it.
4. You’ve got to produce more complex, high-quality work in less time
Regulatory and litigation risk are increasing. That means document complexity is increasing, too. However, client expenditure has stayed the same. The result is that it takes more legal thinking and legal work to produce the same work product each year. A good place to reduce wasted time and effort so that you can still deliver the same output is in your word processing.
5. You dream of spending your days on more substantive matters
Nobody chose a career in law because they like proofreading, reformatting, and otherwise fighting with MS Word. Yet that’s how many lawyers spend their days. The result is burnout. But MS Word plug-ins mean you don’t have to fight with MS Word at all. Legal work is more fulfilling when you cut the amount of time you spend reformatting and spend more time on substantive matters.
6. You’re suffering from an endless cycle of exhaustion and distraction
You want to spend your best working hours performing high-value work, so you leave proofreading and editing your documents until the end of the day. Unfortunately, you’re already tired from a long day of work, so you are less likely to proofread effectively. It takes more read-throughs when you’re exhausted than it would if you were reviewing while refreshed the next day. But the pace of legal practice and the cycle of exhaustion makes it impossible to do that. Proofreading software can ease the burden and end that vicious cycle.
You can commit to making significant, yet low-risk improvements to your legal practice with inexpensive software. Try PerfectIt with American Legal Style for proofreading and editing. It's just $70 per year, or you can test drive it by adding it to MS Word free for 14 days.