More than 50% of the documents produced by legal professionals come from repetitive, standard templates.

Processing these documents manually is not only incredibly boring, it’s also time-consuming and susceptible to embarrassing errors.

No matter what document automation solution you choose to invest in, there are numerous reasons that standardizing your legal documents by turning them into smart templates makes a ton of sense for your practice.

Here are our top 4:

1. Spend less time on monotonous paperwork and spend more time on meaningful or billable work

Time spent drafting paperwork is not only tedious, it’s almost always non-billable time for lawyers and their staff.

Standardizing your legal documents with smart technology saves hours in document prep time, which greatly simplifies your day-to-day. Those hours can be spent taking on more clients, spending time on projects that actually require your legal skills, or enjoying much needed time away from the office.

Smart templates inevitably help you manage more volume with ease and accuracy. Today, automation at speed is key to a firm’s success and is within easy reach.

2. Ensure consistency across your practice’s memos, briefs, and client documents

When preparing contracts manually, whether from scratch or from an old template, it's easy to run into issues with inconsistent formatting, word choice, pronoun misalignment, and varied clause usage.

This is particularly true when multiple lawyers are working on different versions of contracts simultaneously. Preventing these embarrassing mistakes usually requires lots of manual review, which can be completely eliminated with smart templates.

Using smart templates ensures your team produces professional, error-free documents, the first time around, saving time and your reputation.

3. Eliminate the potential for mistakes that cost your firm

When copying and pasting from documents in Microsoft Word or editing an old document with information about a new case, details can be easily missed or entered incorrectly.

Sloppy paperwork not only reflects poorly on your practice, but it can also adversely impact your negotiations or your client’s cases and wastes valuable time with the inevitable back and forth that ensues.

Standardizing your documents using smart templates greatly decreases the potential for human error and ensures perfect paperwork every time.

4. Stay competitive in today’s rapidly-evolving legal market

Technology has significantly changed the legal profession over the last several years.

Embracing (or at least becoming comfortable with) technological advancements is critical to staying competitive and relevant in today’s legal marketplace.

With websites like LegalZoom providing low-cost legal services, reducing the amount of time you spend preparing documents will help you offer competitive prices and keep your clients from choosing budget alternatives. 

Ready to leave manual document preparation behind? Give Woodpecker a try!