Does it bother you to create rudimentary documents from scratch? Are there more than three files sitting on your desk that just need routine paperwork, but you haven’t had the time to do it? Are you tired of finding embarrassing typos in your or your staff’s work-a caption wrong, a client’s name misspelled, last years’s date in the header on page two? If so, you may be the perfect candidate for learning more about document templates.

Templates automate the process of creating documents. They can be a huge time-saver in getting basic documents out the door, and for more advanced users, they open up a whole world of sophisticated document creation possibilities.

What is a template? In the non-office world, a template is a pattern that’s made of a durable enough material that multiple copies can be cut from it without the original degrading. In the office world, it’s any document you use regularly-pleading, correspondence, memo, court form, or PDF-that could serve as an original model from which other, similar documents could be created or modified.

In other words, you probably have a standard engagement letter you send to clients, in which most of the document is standard and only a few elements such as file name, client name, address, and possibly scope of engagement change each time you send it. If you do litigation, you have standard pleadings you use to start a lawsuit or start its defense; correspond with the client or the insurance company; request medical records, police reports and the like. When the case settles, there are standard forms you use to close the case. In transactional work, you may have models which you rely on for contracts, agreements, corporate resolutions, wills, trusts, and are modified for individual clients, but retain their basic nature, with a few changes. All these items are perfectly suited for transformation into templates. So are documents and forms you use around the office: a new client or case information form, a fax cover sheet, a memo to the office or the file, an inventory of what’s in your closed files-all these qualify as well.

Before we begin, what’s your level of comfort around the computer? Are you a computer neophyte? Comfortable with daily use? Or a power user? There’s a level of template use for everyone.

Computer Neophyte
You may be able to produce a letter or a basic pleading, pretty much by finding a previous one on the system, pulling it up, and changing the basic information. Let’s say the letter you’re using as the model refers to client “John Smith,” but you want to address this one to “Jane Doe.” If you find the editing command for a global search and replace (go to “Edit,” then “Replace”-keystroke commands “Ctrl” and “h” in Microsoft Word) you can replace every instance of “John Smith” with “Jane Doe,” and voila, you’re done. No possibility of typos, if you’ve typed the names right, and checked every iteration of the replacement as it’s whizzed by on the system. Congratulations! You’ve just perfected your first template. Create a file folder on your system-someone can show you how if you don’t know-and stash model documents like this in that folder for the next time you need them.

Comfortable, Daily User
If you haven’t already done so, it’s time to expose yourself to how to create templates within your word processing software (e.g., Word or Word Perfect). Both leading packages come with stock templates that you can modify with very little effort-templates that handle basic document creation like fax cover sheets, memos, etc. In fact, every blank document that Word or Word Perfect creates is based on a template-but it’s their template, not yours. How much better if every blank document you created was based on a template of what you liked in a document, with formatting and even language that suited your preferences? It can happen.

Both Word and Word Perfect current versions contain instructions in the “Help” sections about how to create and modify templates. Macros and merges are two other skills worth learning that enhance document assembly hugely. Older versions of Word Perfect (e.g., 6.1 for Windows) use a tool called “abbreviations” to call up previously-formatted documents or key sections of documents with a single keystroke.

Your letterhead, envelopes, individual addresses, business cards, pre-formatted label sheets-these are all suitable choices for templates to deploy through abbreviations or macros.

Merge documents, which you’re able to accomplish in Word or Word Perfect, combine a form file (the template) with a data file (where you keep unique identifiers) to produce either a large volume of documents in one sitting (e.g., a mailing); or, a volume of the same document over time (e.g., an engagement letter to a series of clients).

Advanced, Long-Term, or Power User
You’ve probably longed to create document templates to make your work production that much more efficient, but maybe not known exactly where to start, once you’ve mastered what Word or Word Perfect can offer. The next step for you is learning about document automation software, like HotDocs¨, the worldwide market leader, now owned by LexisNexis, or any of the other similar products on the market (e.g., South Africa’s Ghostfill, Australia’s SpeedLegal, etc.).

HotDocs, which has been around since the mid-1980s, was developed by lawyers to be “software that thinks like a lawyer.” They claim time savings of 80% over Word and Word Perfect, and, with 400,000 users and every industry award, dominate the industry. All document automation software, though, is based on the same principles-that boilerplate language and formatting can be handled by computer, with attention given to only the unique variables and identifiers that set some sections of content apart.

Document automation software also offers the ability to handle complex computations behind the scenes, and “interview” the user about what unique identifiers present themselves in the content. There’s also great potential to customize the “user interface,” so that running through the interview is a visually pleasing, simple experience-making use of pull-down menus, check boxes, and the like, rather than strictly just filling in blanks.

There’s also usually the ability to remember previous answers you’ve given in similar files, rather than start from a blank slate every time. Some document automation packages like HotDocs also offer the ability to work with PDF documents (such as court forms, IRS forms, etc.) as templates, and seed them with custom variables-so that you can run PDFs with the rest of your templates in a complete set.

For the power user, and even the interested comfortable, daily user, it may be appropriate to start assembling a stack of form documents to create templates from in document automation software. Experts suggest that you follow the “80/20 rule,” and choose the 80% of documents of medium complexity that make up the bulk of your practice, leaving the 20% highly unique or particularly complex ones for a later run, when you’ve gotten more comfortable with what’s involved. Similarly, choose the 80% that best address the needs of your current and prospective clients.

Taking time to map out what the stock sections of documents are and what the unique variables are, and spending some time assigning roles to the variables that can be grouped according to type also simplify the process. You can learn document automation software to a serviceable level by taking the tutorial that’s usually packaged with the software, studying the manual, or attending a class or series of classes. You can also hire an expert to train you, or to write templates for you, so that you can focus on work production instead of template development. N