New Capabilities in Microsoft Office Word 2007 Helps Law Firms Keep Sensitive Information Private, Improve Collaboration and Support Compliance Efforts

If your law firm is like most, Microsoft® Office Word is a tool relied upon by nearly every partner, attorney and support staff to create and share documents. With Office Word 2007, part of the 2007 release of the Microsoft® Office system, you’ll find a number of new capabilities specifically intended to improve your productivity and collaborative efforts while also controlling risks.

The following “tips and tricks” highlights ways for you to achieve more with Office Word 2007 every day.

Experience Streamlined Document Creation

Does your firm need to access and re-create frequently used content within your documents? Office Word 2007 allows you to define, create and store “building blocks” of content to help you put together a great-looking document with ease. Building blocks are mostly located on the Insert Tab, where you will find galleries for the following types of content, shown in the screenshot below:

• Sample pages with content
• Cover pages
• Tables
• Headers
• Footers
• Page Numbers
• Text Boxes (pull quotes and sidebars)
• Quick Parts (custom parts)

Insert Tab showing the expanded Cover Page gallery.

And with Office Word 2007’s improved bulleting and numbering, you won’t be frustrated by trick or unpredictable formatting. Office Word 2007 can also help you create and automatically format references within documents, even updating them according to your selected style guide.

Speed Exchange of Documents for Collaborative Reviews

One of the most common uses of Office Word is the exchange of documents for review and commenting. Office Word 2007 documents can be easily exchanged as attachments, as part of document repositories, or through other means. Now your firm’s users can benefit from a familiar environment for adding and exchanging their feedback to documents with efficiency and speed.

Control Risks by Removing Comments and Sensitive Information

The Doucment Inspector feature of Word 2007

There’s a risk that many firms have when making a completed document public. Prior to distributing to its intended audience, how confident are you that sensitive information or internal comments are not still embedded in the document? With Office Word 2007 Microsoft has taken considerable steps to making the publishing process for documents safer.

Now your firm can use new, built-in tools inside of Office Word 2007 to help remove comments from documents and prevent unwanted changes. You may even digitally sign documents real time with your clients using Tablet PC.

Support for Addressing Compliance Regulations

Law firms and their clients are increasingly challenged with compliance regulations. Although many have started using electronic business and document management processes, it can be difficult to start managing and auditing electronic business records.

Office Word 2007, in conjunction with Microsoft® Office SharePoint® Server 2007 and Microsoft Exchange 2007, offers a robust solution for records management, archival and document-based workflow solutions. You’ll have a ready solution to protect and control access to sensitive information.

Reduce File Sizes, Improve Recovery and Build Sophisticated Templates

With Office Word 2007, organizations can develop more sophisticated templates than ever before. Using the new Open XML Formats, content controls, the new document information panel and other functionality, you can now build templates that connect to external data sources for new information, or “tag” content within documents for later extraction or reuse.

Office Word 2007 also includes support for new file formats that help reduce file sizes, improve the recovery of lost or corrupt data, and improve the ability of developers to create advanced document solutions.

Download a Free Whitepaper for More Detailed Tips

 For more information on how to make Office Word 2007 work harder for your firm, download a free whitepaper, “Microsoft Office Word 2007 for the Legal Community” at http://www.microsoft.com/industry/professionalservices.