Economics Archives | TheFormTool

Every Firm Has One Person It Can’t Afford to Lose

The Team at TheFormTool — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 23:31:43 +0000

Scaling Expertise – Article 1

Every Firm Has One Person It Can’t Afford to Lose

Every professional organization has one.

The attorney everyone consults before filing an unusual motion. The partner who knows exactly how a complex transaction should be structured. The litigator who has refined an argument through years of experience. The assistant who remembers why a particular clause changed ten years ago.

Ask around the office who would be hardest to replace, and you’ll usually hear the same names. Most firms accept that reality.

One firm we worked with decided to change it.

Instead of allowing expertise to remain inside individual lawyers, they asked a different question:

How can the firm’s best lawyers work for everyone?

It was one of the most important management ideas we’ve encountered in nearly twenty years working with professional document systems.

A Different Way of Thinking

The firm was large enough that it didn’t have one “best” lawyer. It had dozens. Each was recognized as an authority in a particular practice area. Estate planning. Litigation. Real estate. Corporate. Employment. Tax.

Traditionally, that kind of expertise creates dependence. Other lawyers ask questions. Drafts circulate for review. The experts become increasingly busy because everyone relies on them.

This firm chose another path. Each expert became responsible for developing and maintaining the firm’s best work product in that area. Not merely writing documents. Capturing judgment. Explaining choices. Refining language. Improving procedures.

The firm’s technical specialists then transformed that expertise into intelligent document systems that every lawyer could use.

The result was remarkable.

A young lawyer could begin with the same carefully developed knowledge that previously required years of experience—or a call to one of the firm’s experts. The experts continued improving the system. Everyone else benefited from every improvement.

Expertise Became Infrastructure

Most organizations think of expertise as something people possess. This firm treated expertise as infrastructure. That single shift changed everything.

Instead of answering the same drafting questions repeatedly, experts improved the underlying system. Instead of correcting recurring mistakes, they eliminated the conditions that caused them. Instead of becoming bottlenecks, they became architects.

Every improvement they made strengthened the work of hundreds of other lawyers. Expertise no longer flowed one conversation at a time. It became part of the firm’s daily operation.

The Real Asset

Many firms believe their greatest assets are their people. That’s certainly true. But there is another asset hiding inside those people. Their accumulated judgment. Their experience. Their understanding of what works—and why.

If that knowledge leaves when someone retires, changes firms, or simply goes on vacation, the organization loses far more than another employee. It loses part of its institutional memory.

The most successful organizations we’ve observed understand that expertise should be captured while it is available, refined while it is current, and continually improved by the people most qualified to improve it. Not because experts are replaceable. Because they are irreplaceable.

The Experts Were Multiplied

One detail from that firm’s experience has stayed with us. The experts never became less important. Quite the opposite. Their influence expanded dramatically. Instead of helping one lawyer at a time, they helped hundreds. Instead of reviewing the same issues repeatedly, they invested their time making the entire organization better.

Their expertise became available every day, on every matter, to every lawyer using the firm’s systems. The experts weren’t replaced.

They were multiplied.

An Unexpected Outcome

Years later, the lawyer who first championed this strategy has become one of the firm’s senior partners. Looking back, that isn’t surprising. He wasn’t proposing a better way to create documents. He was proposing a better way to manage knowledge. He recognized that the firm’s greatest competitive advantage wasn’t software. It wasn’t templates.

It wasn’t even its lawyers. It was the expertise those lawyers had accumulated over decades of practice. His insight was that expertise should become an institutional asset rather than remain an individual possession.

Every Firm Has One Person It Can’t Afford to Lose

Actually, every firm has many. The question isn’t whether those people exist. The question is whether their knowledge benefits only the people who know to ask—or whether it strengthens the entire organization.

The firms that will thrive over the next decade won’t simply hire outstanding professionals. They’ll find ways to capture, preserve, improve, and distribute the expertise those professionals develop. Because the greatest contribution an expert can make isn’t solving today’s problem.

It’s making tomorrow’s professionals better equipped to solve theirs.

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How to Fix Word Numbering Problems in Long Documents

The Team at TheFormTool — Sat, 13 Jun 2026 22:22:18 +0000

How to Fix Word Numbering Problems in Long Documents

If you’ve ever spent twenty minutes fixing paragraph numbering in a contract, only to have Word break it again after a copy-and-paste operation, you’re not alone.

For many professionals, numbering problems are not a rare annoyance. They are a recurring part of working with long, structured documents. Lawyers, contract managers, policy writers, engineers, and government staff often spend far more time managing numbering than they ever expected.

If a lawyer billing $300 per hour spends twenty minutes repairing numbering in a single contract, the cost of that repair exceeds the purchase price of a lifetime license for Snapnumbers.

The frustrating part is that Word’s numbering system usually appears to work perfectly until it doesn’t. A document can look fine one moment. Then a clause is inserted, a section is moved, or language is pasted from another document, and suddenly numbering restarts, skips a value, changes levels, or loses its structure entirely.

Why Word Numbering Breaks

Most people assume Word numbering is broken. In reality, Word is usually doing exactly what it was designed to do.

Word’s numbering system was built around lists. That works well for simple outlines and short documents. Unfortunately, contracts, pleadings, policy manuals, specifications, and agreements are not simple lists. They are structured documents that may contain hundreds of numbered paragraphs, multiple numbering levels, cross-references, and content gathered from many different sources.

The more complex the document becomes, the more opportunities exist for numbering conflicts.

Common triggers include:

* Copying text from another document
* Applying inconsistent styles
* Moving sections from one location to another
* Mixing manual numbering with automatic numbering
* Restarting numbering at the wrong level
* Importing content that carries hidden formatting

Often the document appears correct until a later edit exposes the conflict.

The Most Common Numbering Problems

Numbering Restarts Unexpectedly

Perhaps the most common complaint is that numbering suddenly starts again at 1.

This frequently occurs after a section break, after content has been pasted from another document, or when Word interprets a paragraph as belonging to a different list.

Users often solve the immediate problem by selecting “Continue Numbering.”

Sometimes that works. Sometimes the same problem returns during the next round of edits.

Numbers Skip or Repeat

Another common issue is numbering that jumps from 5 to 7 or repeats a number already used. This usually indicates a conflict between formatting rules that Word is maintaining behind the scenes. The visible numbering is only part of the story. Word also stores list definitions, styles, indentation settings, and other information that users rarely see.

When those elements disagree, numbering becomes unpredictable.

Multilevel Numbering Loses Structure

Long documents often rely on numbering structures such as:

These structures are extremely useful but can also be fragile.

A heading may suddenly appear at the wrong level. A sub-clause may lose its parent numbering. A section may display correctly but behave incorrectly when edited later. Many users discover that fixing one heading simply creates a problem somewhere else.

Copy-and-Paste Chaos

If there is a single operation responsible for more numbering problems than any other, itÕs copy and paste.
Content brought in from another document often carries hidden formatting, styles, and numbering definitions. The pasted text may look identical to the surrounding content while quietly introducing a completely different numbering structure.

The resulting problems may not appear until hoursÑor daysÑlater.

Documents Most Affected

Word numbering problems become increasingly common as documents become more structured.

Examples include:

* Contracts and agreements
* Court pleadings
* Policy manuals
* Employee handbooks
* Technical specifications
* Regulatory submissions
* Corporate governance documents
* Construction documents

In these environments, numbering is not cosmetic. A mistaken reference to Section 8.4 instead of Section 9.4 can create confusion, delay review, and in some cases create substantive problems.

Why Lawyers Hate Word Numbering

Lawyers are among the heaviest users of numbered documents in the world. A commercial agreement may contain hundreds of numbered provisions, sub-provisions, schedules, exhibits, and defined terms. Litigation documents, regulatory filings, and policy manuals often depend on numbering to maintain structure and clarity.

The challenge is that legal documents rarely remain static.

Clauses are inserted during negotiations. Entire sections are moved. Language is borrowed from prior matters. Opposing counsel returns redlines. Clients request revisions late in the drafting process. Every change creates another opportunity for numbering to shift unexpectedly.

The visible numbering problem is often the least important consequence. A cross-reference may point to the wrong clause. Review comments may reference the wrong section. Negotiators may spend time discussing a provision that no longer exists where the document says it does.

Professionals should be spending their time evaluating substance, not repairing numbering.

The Hidden Cost of Word Numbering

If a lawyer billing $300 per hour spends twenty minutes repairing numbering in a contract, the cost of that repair exceeds the purchase price of Snapnumbers.

The real expense is not the software.

The real expense is the recurring loss of professional time.

A Numbering Problem Is Rarely Just a Numbering Problem

When numbering changes unexpectedly, the visible error is often the least important consequence. Cross-references may point to the wrong clause. Review comments may reference the wrong section. Negotiations can become confused when parties are discussing different versions of the same provision.

The cost is not the numbering. The cost is the time spent finding and correcting the mistakes that follow.

Practical Ways to Reduce Numbering Problems

Several habits can significantly reduce numbering issues.

Use Styles Consistently

Avoid formatting headings manually. Word relies heavily on styles to understand document structure. Consistent use of Heading 1, Heading 2, and related styles provides a more stable foundation.

Avoid Mixing Manual and Automatic Numbering

Typing numbers directly into a document often creates problems later. Manual numbering does not automatically update when content moves.
What looks correct today may be wrong after tomorrow’s edits.

Paste Carefully

When importing content from another document, consider using “Match Destination Formatting” or pasting as plain text before applying local styles. This removes many of the hidden formatting conflicts that lead to numbering problems.
Review Early and Often

Do not wait until the final draft to review numbering. A five-minute review after major edits can prevent hours of cleanup later.

Why Some Users Eventually Look Beyond Word’s Numbering System

For many documents, Word’s built-in numbering works well enough.

For others, especially long agreements and heavily structured documents, users eventually reach a point where they spend more time managing numbering than drafting content.

At that stage, the question changes.

Instead of asking: “How do I fix this numbering problem?” the question becomes: “Why am I fighting the numbering system at all?”

This is one reason Snapnumbers was developed.

Rather than relying on Word’s traditional list-based numbering model, Snapnumbers uses a character-based approach. Numbering behaves more like ordinary document content and less like a complex collection of hidden list definitions. The result is often greater predictability, particularly in long documents where clauses are routinely copied, moved, revised, and reorganized.

Final Thoughts

Word numbering problems are not merely an inconvenience. In long documents they can become a recurring source of wasted time, frustration, and review effort.

The good news is that many problems can be reduced through better document practices, consistent styles, and careful handling of imported content. For professionals who work with long, highly structured documents every day, it may also be worth considering whether Word’s traditional numbering system is the best tool for the job.

Sometimes the most effective solution is not another numbering repair. Sometimes it is using a numbering method designed specifically for the way professionals actually work.

Tired of Fighting Word Numbering?

Snapnumbers was designed for professionals who regularly work with long, structured documents.

Instead of relying on Word’s hidden numbering rules, Snapnumbers uses a character-based approach that gives authors direct control over numbering.

Learn more about Snapnumbers →

Download a sample document →

From Hours to Minutes: How Smart Firms Turn Time Savings into Profit

Why Offline Document Assembly is the Safest Choice for Law Firms

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Security Considerations in Document Automation, #4

The Team at TheFormTool — Tue, 15 Jul 2025 19:09:26 +0000

Security Considerations in Document Automation, #4

This is the third of five articles in the Series Security Considerations in Document Automation Trust is your firm’s most valuable asset. Clients depend on you to protect their information—and to get every detail right. In today’s digital world, both security and accuracy are essential to maintaining that trust. This study explores how smarter document automation can help you safe-guard client confidence, reduce risk, and deliver better results—without compromise. In other words, security and cost need real consideration.

https://theformtool.wp.urdemo.website/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/Security-1.mp4

Security and Cost — No Surprises, No Hidden Fees

Security isn’t just about locking your data down—it’s about making sure your business is protected from unpredictable costs.

Cloud-based document automation often comes with: Monthly or annual fees that add up over time. Extra charges for storage, bandwidth, or “premium” features. Price increases with little notice, and sometimes expensive “migration” costs if you want to move your data.

With TheFormTool® PRO and Doxserá®, you pay for the software and nothing more. Your documents stay on your system. There are no extra charges for storage or “data center rent.” No surprise invoices or usage-based tolls.

Offline automation gives you: Predictable, transparent costs. No hidden fees—ever – Total control over your data and your budget.

Over time, offline pays for itself.

As your document library and usage grow, your cost per use keeps dropping—while your competitors pay the cloud tax, year after year.

Want to see how much you could save by going offline? See HotDocs vs. Doxserá: A Lawyer’s Guide to Choosing the Right Tool

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From Hours to Minutes: How Smart Firms Turn Time Savings into Profit

The Team at TheFormTool — Thu, 15 May 2025 23:20:11 +0000

From Hours to Minutes: How Smart Firms Turn Time Savings into Profit

One firm’s story shows how document automation can deliver client value and higher returns—all in less time.

For most lawyers, time is the currency of their work. Billable hours, flat fees, and client deadlines all revolve around it. But what if saving time didn’t just ease your workload—what if it actually made your firm more profitable?

That’s exactly what happened for one boutique firm when they adopted Doxserá®, a document automation tool that works directly inside Microsoft Word.

From Six Hours to 40 Minutes

The firm had long offered a flat fee of $2,500 for a frequently requested banking matter—one that typically took six hours to prepare, review, and finalize. After implementing Doxserá®:

The same work took just 40 minutes
They reduced their flat fee to $1,800, a win for their clients
Their blended hourly return soared from $416/hour to over $2,700/hour
This wasn’t just about speed. It was about leveraging automation to do high-quality legal work in less time, then passing part of the savings to clients while keeping the lion’s share of the gain.

The Power of Gross Margin

Here’s a concept more law firms should embrace: gross margin—the difference between what a firm charges and what it costs to deliver a service.

Let’s break it down:

A mid-level attorney might cost a firm $135/hour (after salary, benefits, and overhead)

That same time might bill at $300/hour

The firm’s gross margin? About $165/hour

So when automation saves 5 hours per matter, that’s more than just convenience—it’s $825 in pure margin regained. Better yet, if those hours are redeployed to other billable work, the firm has effectively expanded its revenue capacity without hiring.

A Lawyer’s Edge in a Flat-Fee World

Flat-fee billing has grown in popularity, but it puts pressure on firms to increase efficiency while maintaining quality. Document automation allows firms to:

- Standardize their work
- Reduce human error
- Deliver faster turnarounds
- Increase profitability per engagement

Or put more simply: it gives lawyers a business edge.

Takeaway

Whether your firm bills by the hour or offers fixed fees, time saved is value created. The question is—who captures that value: you or the clock?

With tools like Doxserá^®, smart firms are rewriting that answer every day. See how in the KB.

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How Customers Make Money Creating Documents for Others

The Team at TheFormTool — Wed, 01 May 2024 17:28:23 +0000

Making Money Creating Documents for Others

A growing number of our customers are generating revenues and significant income by using their libraries of forms to create on-demand private label documents for others. An example is an insurance firm that requires some of its documents to both bear its branding but also that they must be created or individually approved by its outside counsel.

The result: The law firm uses it’s own up-to date-forms and Doxserá’s “Wrappers” feature to style and brand the finished documents in accordance with the client’s standards. The process takes no longer than standard document creation, typically seconds or short minutes, but creates a far greater perceived value. Law firms typically charge a low fixed price with large margins or, even better, a retainer, instead of an hourly rate. The client gets the certainty of a known price, and timely well-crafted “custom” documents.

The most powerful aspect is the attorney/client relationship stickiness that the arrangement fosters. Some of our customers, large and small, have created actual profit centers to capitalize on the opportunities made possible by this extremely valuable feature of the software they already own, Wrappers. While Wrappers are available on all our professional programs, real magic happens with Doxserá’s and DB’s ability to use the Multidocs feature for mass personalized production.

The one-minute demo is here.

Here’s the complete how-to video.

This article is adapted from our April 2024 Word Warrior newsletter.

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Inflation: Why Does It Hurt So Much If It’s Better?

The Team at TheFormTool — Sun, 21 Apr 2024 21:02:06 +0000

The Forecast

It was in January, 2021 that we first forecast that inflation would need to total 35% over time to fully offset the amount of new paper currency printed to pay for the increase in federal spending that had accelerated the year before.

Since then prices of typical baskets of goods have increased about 20%, but commentators ignore that the “fire sale” printing rate has continued. But that’s a problem for tomorrow. For today our question is, why is consumer sentiment so very negative given that the posted inflation rate is moderating?

Why the Hurt?

The cause of the divergence between our lying eyes and what we’re told every day was created in 1983, just two years after the economic trauma of 1979-1981, when reported inflation reached 14% and short term interest rates neared 20%. In 1983 the ingredients of the Consumer Price Index were changed as interest rates were excluded from the calculation. For years it made no big difference, but that changed dramatically in 2023. Calculations by Bolhuis, Cramer, Shula and Summers in The Cost of Money is Part of the Cost of Living: New Evidence on the Consumer Sentiment Anomaly in the National Bureau of Economic Research report in February show the CPI including interest rates, as it was done until 1983, hit 18% compared to the reported 3.4%.

According to the authors, that adjustment explains 70% of the difference in consumer sentiment from the level expected given the published CPI and the actual level.

Productivity

The only effective private sector antidote for inflation is increased productivity, at which programs from TheFormTool excel.

What’s $4000 of Free Service Worth?

The Team at TheFormTool — Wed, 24 Jan 2024 20:49:50 +0000

$4,000 of Free Service?

Yes, and worth every penny to us!

Since its founding TheFormTool, LLC has offered 100% free service to all of its customers, even the thousands using only the free version of TheFormTool. Our team’s 10,000 service encounters have produced a 99.97% success rate solving the customer’s issue(s) and providing us with hundreds of ideas on how to improve our products, leading to more than 100 updates and upgrades.

The vast majority of service calls involve just a single issue and are typically resolved in about 15 minutes. We’ve learned that the difficulty reaching a solution increases as the square of the number of simultaneous but separate issues; two issues are four times as difficult, three are nine, and record-breaking four issues require at least 16 times the normal time and effort.

In every case though, when the Team on our Service Desk starts with free service it keeps going, no matter what.

This was brought home in a recent case where our internal costs to diagnose and fix a customer’s problems for free exceeded $4,000, a record. We believe the most significant problem, and the one most difficult to diagnose, was once again caused by a Microsoft Word update, this one distributed on December 12, 2023. We believe it is the third automated Microsoft update over the past twelve years to cause a serious problem, in this case both blocking and interrupting Doxserá’s Sets function. The previous bugs were repaired by Microsoft in subsequent updates. In this case, we’ve already adjusted program and user processes to avoid the problem. Please see the following article.
Customers can be confident that our commitment remains the same: whether an issue is program-, user-, environmentally-, or even Microsoft-created, our team at the Service Desk stands ready to help.

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Is Artificial Intelligence Really Smart or Just Really Slick?

The Team at TheFormTool — Wed, 23 Aug 2023 23:39:08 +0000

Smart or Slick?

In our last newsletter we predicted that the effects of Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) chat bots on the legal profession will be substantially less than the current hype.

Last week, three researchers at Stanford and U.C. Berkeley reported that the “intelligence” demonstrated by leading large language model services (“artificial intelligence” agents, in this case ChatGPT 3.5 and 4.0) may not be so much intelligent as facile. Like the many smooth human talkers we’ve all known, GPT can put up an appearance of intelligence that is only skin deep, a facade. In this test, GPT’s cognitive abilities declined in selected areas both across generational versions and over time, sometimes substantially and without warning.

Yes, that’s right. AI has gotten dumber.

At TheFormTool we sell tools that leverage real intelligence, to help our customers’ real smarts compete efficiently against the artificial players.

The practical effect was illustrated in a Southern District of New York case where sanctions were ordered against two attorneys and their firm after they offered a brief that contained six citations “made up out of whole cloth” by ChatCPT and included in their filings. Opposing counsel researched the citations and found them non-existent. The judge was not pleased.

An additional concern not directly addressed in the case is a worry about disclosure to others of information relating to representation of a client. Reuters reported, “‘That’s one reason why some law firms have explicitly told lawyers not to use ChatGPT and similar programs on client matters,’ said Holland & Knight partner Josias Dewey, who has been working on developing internal artificial intelligence programs at his firm.”

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How to Escape the Handcuffs of Hourly Billing

The Team at TheFormTool — Fri, 17 Feb 2023 21:19:28 +0000

Whatever the perspective,
whether as a professional, a consumer, an economist,
there is insufficient value to continue the practice of hourly billing

The reasons to avoid it are legion and persuasive, but for this audience the most telling argument is that working for an hourly wage prevents the accumulation of wealth while it encourages an excessive investment of the most valuable resource, time.

The pivot point for evaluating hourly billing is that by definition it forces on the professional and the consumer diametrically opposing goals; one wants to maximize; the other, minimize. That is an obstruction that prevents trust, a real hurdle when building any business because it focuses the consumer’s attention on the need to trust the professional on both competence and cost simultaneously. Worse, it supports an impression that the professional lacks confidence.

Instead, there should be a single, overarching common goal between the parties: complete the task at hand at the agreed-upon price.

If the task is especially complex, where the risks of uncertainty cannot be contained, then divide and conquer— design and price the initial task so its goal is to determine the follow-on services required, while providing a range of estimates for the follow-on work. In other words, piecemeal the pricing based on definable steps.

If you needed a medical specialist, an intervening cardiologist or a neurosurgeon, the hourly rate would be not only irrelevant, but also actually detrimental to your decision making. You’d want the task accomplished and the overall price affordable. Period.

Our recent publication, Case Study: Foreclosure, tells how one lawyer and his firm moved from charging for its labor to charging for the job. The result was happier clients and a five-times increase in effective income.

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Inflation is Going to Grow, a Lot

The Team at TheFormTool — Sun, 03 Jul 2022 17:24:30 +0000

It was in January 2021, 18 months ago, that we first forecast massive inflation was coming our way created by runaway use of federal printing presses flooding the world with new paper dollars. Whether it is called “quantitative easing”or “printing money”, we predicted sudden and massive devaluing of the currency. In other words, inflation.

Historic Fed Funds Rate

The current episode is worse, substantially worse, and it will continue to deteriorate because we are only at the beginning of digesting the 35%—and still growing!—increase in money supply.Imagine the effect of even the earlier 20% interest rates in an era when outstanding federal debt is $30 trillion, more than 30 times what it was in 1980. The resulting six trillion dollars of annual interest payments will nearly triple the total current federal budget, much of which is already borrowed.It is uncertain whether the administration has the will or the Federal Reserve has the tools to ever solve the problem on this scale.

Catch-22.

For ourselves and our customers, TheFormTool PRO will remain at its original introductory price—a lifetime license for just $89—for it’s tenth year.

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