Top Ten Tips for Legal Power Users
By Neil Moore
Editor's note: We asked Microsoft Corp. and Corel Corp. to pick the 10 best features, for legal users, of word processing software in their new 2000 Suites. Here's their lists!
Over the past several years, the Microsoft Word development team has focused on creating a productivity suite and word processor for legal professionals.
Here's our picks (after research with legal secretaries and word processing managers in large and small law firms around the globe) for the top features for legal users.
1. Copy and Paste from Multiple Documents
No more jumping back and forth to copy and paste information between different documents. "Collect and Paste" makes it easy to copy up to 12 pieces of information from any Office documents, and then paste them, either one at a time (in any order) or all at once, into your Word document.
2. Format Documents
Select the perfect font the first time with the new drop-down WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) font menu, which gives you a preview of font styles before you choose them.
3. Enhanced Word Counting
With a macro from the Office Update Web Site, Word 2000 will now count the words in footnotes and endnotes with partial text selections that contains footnote or endnote references.
4. Draw and Format Tables
Take advantage of improved table flexibility to build nested tables, tables with an integrated header row, and create documents that contain floating tables.
Tables can now be moved around the page, positioned side by side, or have text flow around them.
The new Office 2000 suite lets you create tables exactly the way you want them
to appear.
The updated "Table Tool" makes it easier than ever to design, draw and edit tables.
Lawyers can draw tables one cell at a time, erase several lines at once, and even split cells diagonally. These improvements make it easier for users to work with tables in Word 2000.
5. Send Documents Instantly
You can now send your document without ever leaving Word. Just click to open the new Office E-mail header in Word and then send your document as an e-mail message that retains all of your original formatting.
You also can take advantage of powerful Mail Merge capabilities in Outlook 2000 that help you send personalized e-mail messages, letters and faxes to your contacts with ease.
6. Find and Leverage Information
Today, law firms commonly share files by saving them out to a file server while Web servers are generally used as a one-way, read-only means of distributing information.
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Legal Tech New York: Hilton N.Y. & Towers
* "Microsoft Office 2000 Desktop Applications Suite for Legal Professionals" will be held on Jan. 24, from 9 a.m.-10 a.m.
* "Corel WordPerfect Law Office 2000" will be held on Jan. 25, from 9 a.m.-10 a.m.
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However, Web servers are capable of two-way interaction and have many advantages over a normal file server. A file server is essentially a big hard drive -- it's great for storing files, but not that intelligent for enabling users to find information quickly.
One of the key advantages of sharing information on an Intranet server, rather than a file server, is that Web servers can index the pages on a site so you can search all the text they contain.
This search feature is implemented by installing the Office 2000 server extensions on a Windows NT4 Web server or on a Windows 2000 Server.
7. Internet-Based Collaboration
In addition, law firms can turn the Web into a collaboration tool with Web Discussions.
Discussion comments can be annotated on any internally accessible document in the firm or also on any public site on the Internet!
The legal team can see one another's discussion comments and thread them on-line either in the web browser or in the Office application.
8. Change Notification
Web Subscriptions allow you to easily track collaborative efforts. Subscribe to be notified of changes made to any Office 2000 or HTML document, which are automatically sent to you by e-mail.
9. Self-repairing Applications
Self-repairing applications in Office 2000 search for missing or corrupted files and repair them automatically, so you don't have to. The goal is to get users working as quickly as possible, often without even knowing there was a problem, eliminating non-productive down time.
10. Version Compatibility
Through customer research, Microsoft found that most firms do not upgrade all their machines to a new program in one day. The process often takes a few months, and during this time, files created in the older and the newer version of the productivity suites must co-exist. To help in this migration effort, Word 2000 allows users to turn off features that are not supported by the company standard format.
For example, if a firm is migrating from Word 97 or WordPerfect to Word 2000, formatting features that are not supported in Word 97 or Word Perfect can be disabled in the user interface during the migration process.
Office 2000 file formats are binary backwards compatible with Office 97 file formats in all of the applications except for Access 2000.
Neil Moore is technology specialist for Microsoft Corp., based in Dallas.
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