Quick and easy document creation is crucial to keeping your legal practice running at the speed clients need and expect from modern firms. You can stay on top of heavy workloads by using templates for efficient legal document creation. Adopt this approach and you will find that you can help more clients more effectively.
Try these ten ways to save time with law firm templates:
1. Create your own standard forms
Many clients need the same basic forms. Much of your client communication follows the same basic outline. Create and upload form letters and documents in Smokeball legal practice management software, and revise as needed to suit individual clients.
2. Use general document templates when appropriate
Smokeball comes with thousands of forms, which automatically populate with relevant information for each of your clients. You can then adapt these forms to suit each client’s specific needs.
3. Easily incorporate letterhead
Save time making your documents client-presentable by formatting templates on your business's letterhead. This can be completed quickly and easily in Smokeball.
4. Make templates available throughout the law firm
While many lawyers informally create templates to cut and paste when needed, this method usually involves many people duplicating one another’s work. Using a cloud-based law firm software like Smokeball, all members of your team can take advantage of every template you have ever created.
5. Keep documents up-to-date
With centralised templates, one administrator can update relevant sections of forms for the whole business. Eliminate time-consuming work and avoid the accidental use of outdated information through these updates.
6. Automate basic forms with templates and software
Combine the time-saving power of templates with features like contact databases and simplified administrative tasks for improved efficiency. Use Smokeball to quickly produce and deliver legal and administrative documents.
7. Create and use templates in an easy-to-edit form
Smokeball integrates seamlessly with Microsoft Word and Microsoft Outlook. These powerful features make it easy to create and edit templates, import relevant legal documents, and send finished forms to clients.
8. Keep templates organised for ease of use
Once your firm has useful templates, they have to be easy to find when they are needed. With Document Management Tools Smokeball puts the templates you need at your fingertips, so every member of your firm can always find the forms they need.
9. Keep notes to speed up the process of filling in a template
Useful templates often include notes on what information needs to be filled in as well as the form text. Make each document as easy to complete as possible with a few words on what goes in each blank. Your firm can edit Smokeball’s templates to make any notes you need.
10. Avoid confusing duplicates
This is an area in which good legal document management software is crucial. Use Smokeball to organise your templates so that old and new versions of the same form never coexist in a way that could confuse a member of your law firm. Always keep the correct, up-to-date templates close at hand with Smokeball.
