Legal Extensions - Oct/Nov '04

Legal Extensions

The practice of law often is a study of the written word. We are constantly researching and writing to convince the courts. Sometimes, we need to repeatedly create sections of the same documents. Aside from being time consuming, this can get frustrating. Legal Extensions by Infoware helps automate the most basic parts of writing, saving a lot of time and frustration.

Legal Extensions is an easy-to-use software application for Microsoft Word that automates many of the basic aspects of document preparation. It’s basically a document generation assistant that integrates directly into your Word desktop. It adds several toolbars that are the representation of various automated tasks. By using these toolbars, you can create standard documents that provide the basic format for all your letters, memos, faxes, labels and envelopes.

The installation of this application was easy and relatively painless. It was extremely quick on a Windows XP machine using a 2.8MHz processor with 1,000MB RAM. This is a rather high-end computer, but installation should not be too difficult on a lightly configured machine.

Legal Extensions only runs on Microsoft Word. Most firms use Word these days, but it would be nice to have the Corel WordPerfect option.

There is an online demo illustrating all the standard features of Legal Extensions, along with a user manual, but I received my instructions directly from the Infoware staff. Infoware commonly works with its customers when the product is first installed on law firm systems. The company trains your staff and customizes the product if necessary. I found them to be very responsive to the few, small issues I had with the application.

Upon installation, the application places the aforementioned toolbars on your Word screen. They are placed on the right and left sides of the screen. You can access many of the features of this application directly from these tools. Apparently, Infoware clients have requested the automation of many of their standard word processing functions. The toolbars reflect this and were straightforward to use. All of the toolbar functions also have keyboard shortcuts.

The application is easy to use. When the user opens Word, the application asks what type of document you are creating (a letter, memo or fax), and walks you through a predetermined question set regarding key people, addresses, dates and facts relevant to that document. This question set is completely customizable. After you answer the questions, Legal Extensions creates the document. The user can edit the answers at any time, but these templates will save considerable time in document creation. You also can add sections, numbering, draft stamps, signing lines and letterhead. All of this can be accessed directly from the toolbar without digging through several Word menus and drop-down fields. I found this to be really useful.

In the full version of Legal Extensions, the bundled “Find Contacts” functionality also integrates with Microsoft Outlook. When you are completing the documents, Find Contacts automatically will search your Outlook address book and pull in the relevant addresses. This automatic search is an optional feature.

Legal Extensions also allows you to send the document you are printing directly to any bin on your printer. The final copies can go to the bin with letterhead paper, the envelope bin or the plain paper bin. All of this also can occur at the same time.

Overall, I really liked this product. It was a bit confusing when I first starting using it, but once I became familiar with its capabilities, I became completely stuck on using it.

Infoware Canada Inc.
(416) 360-2646

www.infoware.ca

Price: $80 ($65 for the base component and $15 for the Microsoft Outlook “Find Contacts” tool)

Windows Word 97 and higher.

Reviewed by Adam Nelson, an attorney and security consultant based in Chicago.

Oct/Nov '04 Issue

PROS
Significantly reduces the amount of time required to create documents.

CONS
Very few, although it took a little while to get used to the additional toolbars.

VERDICT
If you have a document-intensive legal practice, this will become an indispensable tool in the creation of your documents.