Give binders the firm's Word template

A closing binder goes to the client as the firm's work product, and its index should look like the firm's other documents: the firm's fonts for the section headings, the firm's style for each document entry, the firm's colours in a table index. As an organisation admin, or in practice support, you upload a Word template once and map its styles. Deal teams then choose it in their binder, and the index is built with the firm's styles.

Prepare the Word file

1. In Word, start from the firm's standard template and make sure it has a named style for each part of the index: the section headings, at up to three levels, and the document entries. If the teams use table indexes, add a table style too. Only paragraph styles that show in Word's Styles gallery are offered for the sections and documents, so add any style you need to the gallery.

2. Save it as a .docx file of up to 10 MB; a larger file or another format is not uploaded. The file name, without .docx, becomes the template's name, so name it for the teams: Firm closing binder.docx appears as Firm closing binder.

Upload the template

3. Open Admin panel from your user menu, and under Templates choose Binder (DOCX).

4. Click Upload Template and choose the file. It appears in the list with its name and file name.

   

Map the styles

5. Click the arrow on the template's row to open its style settings. Each change is saved as soon as you make it.

   

6. Under Sections, choose the style for Section Level 1, Section Level 2 and Section Level 3: a section, its subsections and theirs. The list shows the font and size of each style beside its name.

7. Under Documents, choose the style for each document entry in the index.

8. If teams use a Table index, choose the Table style, and under Sections inside table set the Fill and Text colour for each section level. Type a colour code such as #1F3864 or click the square to pick one; the cross beside a colour sets it back to auto.

   Index the teams choose	What to map
   Bullet points	Sections and Documents
   Table	Sections and Documents, plus Table style and the colours under Sections inside table

If the settings say No styles found in template. Make sure the .docx contains named styles., Juristic found no named styles in the file. Add them in Word and upload the file again.

How the teams use it

9. In a binder, the team chooses the template under Word Template, when they create the binder or later in Configure index. The panel then says Style mappings configured, or Style mappings not yet configured if the styles have not been mapped yet.

10. For a binder downloaded as ZIP (separate files), the team chooses under Index Format whether the index comes as Word Document (.docx) or as PDF.

When no template has been uploaded, the teams see No templates available. Ask your admin to upload one.

Change or remove a template

• To edit the file, download it with the download button on its row and change it in Word.
• To bring in a new version, upload it as a new template and map its styles, ask the teams to switch to it, and then delete the old one.
• To remove a template, click the red bin on its row and confirm. Binders that use it lose their template selection.

Tips from practice

• Map before you announce. A template with no mappings is already offered to the teams, and a binder that uses it gets the standard index until a style is mapped. Map the styles straight after uploading, then tell them.
• Try it on a small binder. Generate a binder with two sections and a handful of documents, in both index types, and check the result in Word before the first closing set uses it.
• One template per kind of bundle. A closing set for the client and a bundle for the lender can look different. Upload a template for each, named for its purpose.

The teams' side of the work is in put together the closing binder. For the firm's other Word and Excel templates, see make board Word exports use the firm's template and make Excel exports look like the firm's.