Hello. I run a title company (law office) on the Northshore of Lake Pontchartrain. I've been using Open Office for a bit and it dosn't seem to have many features geared towards large production environments (i.e. law firms actually use a lot of that feature bloat in MS Word to help generate their paper bloat). Some things that would be helpful:
Pleadings. A legal pleading has a heading, usually one unnumber paragraph, then paragraphs with some numbering system usually centered followed by an unnumber paragraph and a signiture line. For Example [Heading} Now into court come Jane and Tom Roe who do state that: 1. [Centered] [Indent Begining of Para] John Doe Died Yesterday 2. [Centered] [Indent Begining of Para] John Doe's Heirs are ... WEREFORE the heirs of John Doe pray this honorable court that they be put into possession of the estate without administration. [Signiture Block} Invariably at some point if you are creating the numbering by hand you're going to miss a number or put the same number twice. This is why MS Word has a pleadings wizard. Something likewise would be good. Document Assembly Most everyday legal documents are state specific and repetitive. What would be nice is the ability to generate buttons in the tool bar (attached to a template) that when clicked will insert text and fields in an otherwise locked doucment. Then all you have to do is tab over to the field insert the party specific information and your ready to go. Example go to spot in document hit button it inserts: We require [Radial Menu] of that [input field] in the amount of [input field]against [input field] recorded at [input field] of the records of [Large Radial Menu] Parish, Louisiana. (Writen out: We require cancellation of that Mortgage in the amount of twenty five hundred dollars again John Doe recorded at Index Number 111234 of the records of Tangipahoa Parish, Louisiana.) Another useful feature would be to be able to EASLY create self referencing fields. For example creating a document with the field [defendant] all the way through. Altering of the name in one [defendant] field would alter the name in all the other fields instantly. If these two were combined with a wizard so that one document could be told to go get [defendant] from the same named field in another document Open Office would be doing the same thing as a $1000+ document assembly program. --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
