If you’ve ever typed a really long set of discovery answers/objections, you’ve seen language like this:

[Party] objects to this request on the grounds that it is vague, ambiguous, immaterial, irrelevant, not reasonably calculated to lead to the discovery of admissible evidence …”

In fact, every attorney I know has his/her own boilerplate discovery objections — full paragraphs containing every possible objection one can make to a discovery request.

You don’t want to type that over and over and over again for 37 different discovery requests, do you?Good.  I don’t want you to, either.  So I’m going to show you how to get out of it.  Without quitting your job.

There’s this nifty little feature in Word called AutoText that works sort of like an autofiller like you’d see on a web page — you know, you start typing your name, and somehow the form offers to fill in the rest?

What’s helpful about Word’s AutoText feature is that you can define your own entries.  So if there’s a long phrase you don’t want to have to type repeatedly (like the one above), you can just type the first few letters and wait for Word to “suggest” the remainder of it.  Hit Enter and — voila! — the entire phrase pops in.

Let’s check this out in action:

video thumbnail

So, what phrases or sentences do you see repeated in the documents you prepare?

Deborah Savadra

I spend an inordinate amount of my time playing with computers and attempting to explain technology to lawyers and law office staff. It's not always easy, but someone's got to do it.

But, seriously, I'm a law firm software trainer by trade with nearly 30 years of experience in and around law firms and their technology. This blog is my attempt to spread the word about better and more efficient ways to use Microsoft Office in a legal practice context.

Similar Posts