Law Technology Today From the ABA Legal Technology Resource Center
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As the Office Administrator at a small law firm, I need to make technology decisions that are the most appropriate and cost effective for the practice. Despite this, I wasn’t sure that my attendance at ABA TECHSHOW was warranted.
That changed almost immediately.
My ABA TECHSHOW experience paid for itself in the very first session I attended, which was about the use of Styles in Microsoft Word. I immediately obtained a takeaway from that track which I can easily implement at my firm. While it was something I’ve attempted to convince my staff to use in the past, it just wasn’t something they felt was necessary (myself included).
Barron Henley put a spin on the topic that convinced me of its importance and, of course, his humor helped to drive it home. The game changer for me was when Barron explained how to reveal the applied style and determine what the “normal” style of a document is. Like most attorneys, we start with a document we’ve used before or copy and paste language into a document and it all goes haywire. Barron helped me understand what is actually happening to the formatting on these documents, and now I’ll be able to show my staff what to do in order to prevent such chaos from happening in our documents!
Additionally, Barron provided details on how to export and import styles from one document to another. I had no idea that was possible! I always assumed that the styles stayed with each document and we would have to develop new styles for each document we created. Now, I intend on creating templates for staff to use and showing them how to import their favorite styles so they can quickly format and produce more consistent documents.
Sometimes you just need to hear information in a new way in order to see the light. Having this mindset, I’m confident that I’ll be able to implement styles at my office upon my return. This change will definitely make my support staff more efficient and, ultimately, increase dollars in the door.
The ABA TECHSHOW provided me with the opportunity to learn about legal-based technologies and hear stories (sometimes cautionary tales) from other law firms regarding their processes. Fortunately, I’ve learned that this conference is well-attended by various staff types from law firms across the country. I’ve worked for my firm for nearly 16 years and this was my first TECHSHOW. I feel I made the best decision for my firm by attending and hope to do so in the future.
