Lawyers are professional writers, and we should want our documents — briefs, letters, contracts, trust documents — to reflect that professionalism. We should strive for documents that are formatted to be welcoming, authoritative, easy to navigate, and easy to read. We should also strive for consistency so that a package of contracts we deliver or a set of briefs we file all look like they came from the same law office. But lawyers are also busy and don’t have much time to format documents and, especially, to make sure that they are formatted consistently.

One good solution is to reuse documents. A lawyer who carefully formatted his last appellate brief might use that brief as the basis for their next one. It will already have many of the necessary components, after all, and some of the formatting decisions (typeface, line spacing, margins, etc.) will be preserved, at least for the body text. This is better than starting with a blank document but will still require some new formatting work — ensuring that each heading is on the same page as the first text that follows it and that the non-body text (such as block quotes and bulleted lists) is formatted correctly and consistently.

There’s a better solution, though, and that solution is to use Microsoft Word’s document templates. (Other programs have similar features; Word is simply the most used.) Document templates are Word files that save all your formatting decisions for future use. Each formatting decision is then only a mouse click away.

WHAT IS IT LIKE TO USE A DOCUMENT TEMPLATE?

To understand what it is like to use a document template, imagine a litigator preparing an appeal brief. They open their “appeal brief. dotx” template file, and a mostly blank document appears. This document has some of the framing for a caption, a mostly empty table of contents, and headings for the necessary parts of the brief (authorities, basis of jurisdiction, questions presented, facts, etc.). More importantly, Word’s Home ribbon displays, in the Styles section, buttons for “Normal,” “Block Quote,” “Heading 1,” “Heading 2,” and the like.

The lawyer moves to the facts section. They click the “Heading 1” style, and the text becomes bold, left-aligned, and single-spaced,1 with a hanging indent for the heading number.2 The lawyer types “1. Mr. and Mrs. Smith sign a prenuptial agreement.” Then the lawyer hits ENTER. Automatically, the “Normal” style is selected, and the text switches to roman (not bolded, italicized, or underlined), double-spaced, and fully justified. The lawyer begins writing a narrative about how the couple met, what assets they had, and why they decided on a prenuptial agreement. The next paragraph begins, “In the prenuptial agreement, the parties carefully defined their separate property.” Now the lawyer wants to insert the agreement’s definition, so they hit ENTER and click the “Block Quote” style. Immediately, the format changes to single-spaced text, with each side indented a half inch. The lawyer types or pastes in the definition and hits ENTER, and the formatting is “Normal” again. When the lawyer is done, they update the table of contents, and all the headings they typed into the document instantly appear, properly formatted and linked to the correct page.

Not once did the lawyer have to think about whether a heading should be bolded or italicized or about how to space or indent a block quote. They made those decisions long ago when they created the template. So now they need only to click on the style they want for the formatting to be applied. That is the beauty of a document template.

PARAGRAPH STYLES — THE KEY TO EFFORTLESS FORMATTING

The most important part of any document template is the paragraph styles that are built into it. A paragraph style is a collection of formatting choices that can be applied to a paragraph, such as font, type size, line spacing, indentations, tabs, and emphasis (bold, italics). These choices can even include advanced settings like “keep with next” (which keeps a heading on the same page as the text that immediately follows it) and “keep lines together” (which ensures that half a heading does not end up on the next page). They can also specify what the style of the following paragraph will be so that hitting ENTER after typing a “Heading 1” will begin the next paragraph in “Normal.” These formatting decisions can be saved as a paragraph style that appears in the Home ribbon, named as you see fit. This makes applying those settings as simple as clicking your mouse. And using paragraph styles ensures that each body-text paragraph looks the same, that each heading looks the same, and that each block quote looks the same — just as you would expect in a professional document. (A quick aside: Word comes with many paragraph styles by default. These are terrible, particularly for professionals, because they include unattractive formatting choices that simply do not match a professional document. Modify them, or create new ones.)

Creating these paragraph styles takes some work. First, you determine how you want your body text to look, then your block quotes, your headings, your numbered or bulleted lists, and the rest. Then you need to build those choices into a set of paragraph styles. While formatting and creating paragraph styles are both beyond the scope of this column, there is a lot of help online. To learn formatting, check out Matthew Butterick’s Typography for Lawyers, a terrific website and book with simple and clear explanations.3 And to learn the mechanics of creating, working with, and using paragraph styles, check out Deborah Savadra’s excellent Legal Office Guru website.4 She even has an article specifically about creating new paragraph styles.5

HOW TO GET STARTED

While the mechanics of creating document templates should be learned elsewhere, here is some general advice for getting started.

Start with your most common document type. This could be a brief, a letter, a contract, or a will, for example. We will use a brief as our example here.

Decide how you want the bulk of that document to look. While a brief will have a caption, headings, block quotes, and a signature block, most of it consists of ordinary paragraphs, which might be saved as your “Normal” style. What font do you want to use, and at what size? What line spacing should you use? How far should the first line be indented? Making these decisions about your most common paragraph style will make the choices for other styles easier.

Determine what styles are related to this first style ,and build them from it. In Word, one style can be based on another style. For example, a block quote probably looks a lot like a normal paragraph, except that its lines are closer together and that both sides are indented. So, when you create your “Block Quote” style, you can base it on “Normal,” changing only what is necessary. This saves time both at the start and if you need to make changes later. (For example, if you later change the font for “Normal,” it will also change for any styles based on “Normal” that don’t have an overriding font choice.) “Footnote” and “List Paragraph” styles also might be based on “Normal.”

Work on other styles that are not based on “Normal.” Headings, for example, might not share any formatting choices with your “Normal” paragraphs. So, you might create “Heading 1” as a style that is not based on another style and then base the other heading styles on “Heading 1.” For example, you might have “Heading 1,” “Heading 2,” and the like as different heading levels that look alike except for how far they are indented. So, “Heading 2” could be based on “Heading 1” and so on.

You can link styles to the table of contents. A very useful option is to link styles, like headings, to the table of contents.6 In this way, your table of contents can update automatically as you edit your brief. This allows you to create a complete table in seconds. And if you use Adobe to convert your briefs to PDFs before filing, the Adobe plugin can convert your table into PDF bookmarks, a real aid for your readers.

Learn to use the Style Gallery. Creating styles is one thing. The next-level skill is managing your Style Gallery — the collection of styles that appears in the ribbon — so that those you use most are easiest to find.7

Add initial text and structure. Finally, consider whether this template needs some initial text or structure. You may wish to rough out a caption and include headings for the necessary brief sections and a signature block. You might also choose to structure your brief so that the preliminary pages are numbered with romanettes (i.e., lower case Roman numerals, such as “i” and “ii”), while the introduction begins on page 1. You can save this initial text and structure to your template so that it is ready for you the second you open the template file.

CONCLUSION

Creating your first document template takes some time, but there is plenty of help available. It is also time well spent, because once you’ve created a template, using it will be a matter of a few mouse clicks, likely for years to come.