What tools do you primarily use in your law office? For most law firms, high up on the list of most-used tools are email and Microsoft Word. Law firms produce documents−lots of documents. Considering how much effort is expended each day producing documents, it is somewhat surprising that many law firms and their support staff are not that skilled at using Microsoft Word. Many of us started out as WordPerfect users. But Word and WordPerfect work entirely differently and skills with one program do not translate to the other.
One of the very best instructors I have ever seen on Microsoft Word for lawyers is Barron K. Henley with the Affinity Consulting Group. He is coming to Oklahoma this month to teach Mastering Microsoft Word in The Law Office this week. This is a great program to improve office productivity.
Here are the links to see the schedule with all of the topics covered and for registration.
Tulsa on April 20 http://bit.ly/BHenleyCLETulsa
Oklahoma City on April 21. http://bit.ly/BHenleyCLEOKC
April 21 will also be a live webcast that will not be repeated or rerun. This is the enrollment link for the webinar. http://bit.ly/BHenleyWordWebcast
I already know of at least one lawyer who has enrolled for the webcast with the plan that his legal assistant will be "auditing" the class along with him, learning as well. If you are not an Oklahoma Bar Association member and want to attend the webcast on Friday, you will need to call Renee Montgomery at 405-416-7029 before 1:00 p.m. on Thursday April 20th to enroll.
I interviewed Barron for my column two years ago in Law Practice magazine, Your Document Czar. Go read that if you need any additional motivation.
“You can use Word for twenty-five years and your skill level will be the same as it was approximately 2 weeks into using it,” says Henley. “Many of the features are hidden, so you won’t stumble onto them.”