The new version of PerfectIt has much more than that “.1” suggests! For the first time, you can control exactly what PerfectIt finds. Now you can turn PerfectIt into a custom checker designed (by you) to lift writing standards at your organization.

During the drafting and filing process, every legal professional develops tacit knowledge of local rules, court preferences, and judge’s pet peeves. That knowledge goes into every filing. However, the valuable know-how behind those choices is usually left undocumented. When the employee who did the work leaves, or if a long time passes, that tacit knowledge is lost. What can we do to change that?

It’s easy to press the italics button in Microsoft Word, but have you ever wondered if you’re using italics correctly? One of the common uses of italic type is for words and phrases that are in a foreign language. You might have noticed that documents in English use italics if, for example, any French, German or Latin words appear.

Writing a proposal is hard. There’s rarely enough time to give it the attention you want. You don’t always know much about the client, so you feel like you’re writing in the dark. The client may have an unrealistic budget, meaning your cost will knock you out of the running, no matter how well you’ve described your solution. What’s more, they may already have an awardee in mind and are only going through an RFP process as a formality.

Did you know? The first few days in a new job have a lasting impact on engagement, satisfaction and productivity. In order to get a new employee’s best work, your training materials must be effective, immersive, and flawless. This article shows how to make sure your training materials are the best they can be so that new employees at your organization get the best start possible.

What is billable legal work? Possibly not proofreading. The task of proofreading is both all-important and unimportant. Billable and nonbillable. Because the cosmetic perfection of legal documents serves as a proxy for our legal abilities, proofreading gains outsized importance.

There’s no faster way for law students, lawyers, law clerks, and judges to bond than through shared hatred for the Bluebook. Conversation grinding to a halt? Simply throw out a casual gripe about the Bluebook! It doesn’t need any substance or specifics. “Ugh…the Bluebook” will do.

American Legal Style for PerfectIt is designed specifically for lawyers to save time editing and proofreading legal documents.

Every young lawyer knows imposter syndrome. It’s the feeling that you’re an incompetent fraud—and it’s just a matter of time before others discover. But do those feelings affect our legal writing?

Legal writing is intellectually complex—both for the writer and the reader. At its core, legal writing builds relationships among ideas. Litigators will use pieces of caselaw from many sources to state a simple three-element claim. And transactional lawyers will manage legal implications from real estate, tax, and contract law, among others, to draft a short agreement.

American Legal Style is an option in PerfectIt that transforms it into one of the most powerful, yet nuanced, proofreading programs available today for legal professionals.

In publishing and media companies, use of a style guide is the norm. However, style guides can also be useful for any organization that prepares documents for clients and the public. This article is for organizations outside of the publishing industry who can benefit from the introduction of a style guide.

Implementing new technology in legal firms is broken. Upper management ponders sweeping changes to the law firm’s structure that will take years to implement, while missing small low-cost changes that can be made now.

Dissatisfaction with the practice of law can often be attributed to the fact that lawyers spend nearly as much time acting as word processors as they do solving complex and interesting legal problems. Ironically, clients are also dissatisfied with the amount of time spent on document preparation. Combined it leads to lawyers facing extreme billing pressure, boredom, and burnout all at once.

The advantage of lists is that they jump out at readers. However, if lists contain typos or inconsistencies then those will jump out at readers too. So it’s crucial to format and punctuate lists correctly, or your entire document can look sloppy.

Establish ground rules. Start by meeting with your client and, if practical, the graphic designer and printer. Create a realistic production schedule and make sure everyone involved knows what they will be expected to do.

You’re more important to your company than you know. You’re also more important to your company than the rest of your company knows. Which is a bit of a problem. And a big part of it is how you—and others—see your role in the company.

What’s better than a company where the CEO answers support questions? It sounds amazing to have a direct line to the CEO. And anyone who has contacted Intelligent Editing for technical support over the last ten years has had literally that. What could possibly be better? Anything. Literally anything.

When junior and mid-level associates aim to improve their legal writing, most try to be better, clearer, more concise, more persuasive, or more precise. I have yet to meet anyone who declares that they want to be a more confident legal writer. Yet if you lack confidence then increasing it is key. Confidence in your legal writing will help you meet your objectives. Training providers should take note because confidence also improves productivity and efficiency.