John Cord, Esquire, of the Maryland Daily Record’s Generation J.D. forum provides a brief but worthwhile discussion of checklists and forms in the practice of law.
I do not use a large variety of standardized forms in my practice but the one that I use I use very often. Routine “notice” and “request” litigation filings allow for the use of the Microsoft Word Forms function, to allow for the repetition of data within a form and to keep a form from getting modified except within the data fields. While this will not do for motions requiring specific or original content, an entry of appearance in District Court of Maryland criminal practice benefits from LESS, not more, originality.
The Forms function in Word allows for the locking of all content except the fields, and allow the user to tab from one field to the next. This prevent typos from stray keystrokes or mouseclicks, while making the document more efficient to crank out. The application works as well for other forms including in-house forms, etc.
