In practice: How many Word experts does it take to build a document?

Consider someone working on an important legal document. They understand the matter and know what needs to go into the document, which clauses are required, what needs changing and what the finished document needs to achieve. But how much do they also need to know about Word?

Should they have to understand how the numbering has been set up? Why one heading behaves differently from another? How to make sure a new clause appears correctly in the table of contents? Where is the approved wording stored? Or should more of that already have been taken care of well before the new document has been created?

The document has a job to do

A legal document is rarely finished in a single pass. It is reviewed, amended, compared, reused and passed from one person to another. Clauses are added. Others disappear. Tracked changes are turned on and off. Comments come and go. References change. By now, the document has started to gather quite a history behind the scenes.

And through all of that, it still needs to work. The numbering needs to make sense. Headings need to look right. References need to point to the right place. The structure needs to hold together as the document evolves.

Most people working on the document don’t need to know why all of that works. They simply need it to work reliably, consistently and in an on-brand way.

Think about the reader

It’s easy to focus on document creation, but perhaps the people who matter most are those who will be interacting with it when it leaves the firm.

A client, another law firm, a barrister or a corporate legal team may be dealing with a long document containing dozens of clauses, schedules and references by the time it lands in their inboxes. They’re busy people. They should be able to find what they’re looking for without unnecessary effort.

Can they navigate the document easily? Does the table of contents take them straight to the right place? Do cross-references still point to the clause, section or schedule they say they do? Nobody wants to spend time hunting through 80 pages for clause 14.3 because the document has helpfully (or unhelpfully!) told them it exists and then left them to get on with it.

These may seem like small details, but they save time, reduce confusion and make a document much easier to work with.

There is another benefit too. A document that’s easy to navigate, accurately cross-referenced and properly structured simply feels well put together. The reader may not notice the individual details, but they will notice that the document is easy to work with. Together, those details help to shape their impression of the firm it’s originated from.

Let people focus on the document

Producing a document that works well shouldn’t depend on the person creating it being an expert in Word.

They already have important decisions to make. What needs to be included? What has changed? Which wording is appropriate? What needs to be checked? Those decisions require their legal knowledge and judgement.

Decisions about how a heading should look, how a paragraph should be numbered or where the current approved wording is stored are different requirements which shouldn’t fall under their remit and are outside their areas of expertise. When the firm’s formatting, numbering and approved content are built into the Word environment, people can concentrate on the document’s content and purpose rather than the mechanics of producing it.

Put the knowledge where people need it

This is where Word experts come in. Working with those responsible for drafting approved content and document standards, they can configure Word around the firm’s knowledge and processes, making the right tools and resources available where people need them, often at the touch of a button.

That’s Word customisation in practice.

Customisation might mean making approved wording easy to find and insert. It might mean giving people a straightforward way to apply the correct formatting or numbering. It might mean automating a task that would otherwise involve several steps, or making a more complex process available through the Ribbon.

The important part isn’t the technology itself. It’s that routine tasks can be completed without somebody having to remember each step or work out what to do. The expertise is built into the Word environment, reducing the need to call on a Word expert for everyday help.

Training and customisation should work together

Training matters. Always. Yet it’s often one of the first things to be squeezed, shortened or overlooked, whether consciously or not.

Training is most valuable when it helps people understand what they are doing and use the available tools confidently. It’s less valuable when it becomes an exercise in memorising procedures, workarounds or particular sequences of buttons.

With routine steps taken care of, training can concentrate on the situations that genuinely require understanding and judgement.

Customisation doesn’t replace training. It allows training to focus where it adds most value.

When it's working properly

Good Word customisation should not feel particularly dramatic. People start work on a new document with the essentials already in place. The firm’s branding is built in. The things they regularly need are easy to find. More complex tasks are brought within reach when required. Much of the cleverness can remain out of sight.

The result is less formatting to fix, less to remember and less dependence on specialist Word knowledge for day-to-day work. The document remains reliable as it changes. The reader can find their way around it. The firm’s standards are there without anybody having to recreate them. And the person working in Word can concentrate on the document, the client and the work that matters.

The end of the In Practice series

And so we come to the end of this In Practice series – but hopefully not the end of the conversation about how the tools we use every day can work harder for the people using them.

Across the series, we’ve looked at three different parts of the same picture.

We started with ‘Putting your brand guidelines to work’, exploring how good brand guidelines can move beyond an instruction document on a shared drive and become something people can actually use.

We then turned to PowerPoint in ‘Before you say a word’, looking at how a well-designed template can give people a strong starting point and take care of some of the decisions before the presentation begins.

And finally, we looked at Excel in ‘Let’s start at the very beginning: Getting Excel right from the ground up’, considering how building the right choices into the spreadsheet can make consistency easier without getting in the way of the work.

This last blog brings the focus to Word, where the same principle applies in a different way. When formatting, approved content, processes and useful tools are built into the environment, people can spend less time working out how the software works and more time concentrating on what they’re trying to achieve.

That, really, has been the thread running through the whole series: good technology should make the right way of working easier.