Put a document into the firm's house style

A document has arrived in someone else's fonts, heading styles and numbering: a draft you are taking over from the other side, the client's own precedent, or work from the client's previous advisers. The version that goes out under the firm's name should look like the firm's own work. The house-style workflow in the Word add-in reformats the draft using the firm's reference document, so nobody has to restyle it paragraph by paragraph.

One question decides how you start: have you formatted a document from this source before? If you have, the work of matching their styles to the firm's is already done.

Format the document

1. Open the draft in Word and click Juristic Assistant on the Home tab.
2. Click Workflows at the bottom of the add-in, then Apply Company Style.
3. Choose where to start:
   • Existing font groups if you or a colleague have formatted a document from this source before. Search for the group, then click Select.
   • Create new font group if this is the first one. Under Pick a font group name, name it after the source, for example "Sigma Capital drafts", and click Create. The add-in reads the fonts in the document, which takes a moment.
4. Under Match fonts, the add-in lists every style it found in the draft, shown as it looks there. For each one, open Select font and choose the firm's style it should become: their body text to your body text, their "Heading 1" to your first heading level, their definitions style to yours. Your choices are saved to the font group as you make them.
5. Click Format document once every style is matched; the button stays greyed out until then. The add-in creates a formatted copy of the draft and downloads it as formatted-document.docx. The document open in Word stays as it was.
6. Click Done, open the formatted copy and read it through before it goes anywhere.

When the workflow is not there

• Apply Company Style is greyed out: the firm's styles have not been set up yet. Your administrator uploads the firm's reference document, which sets the fonts, margins and styles every formatted document follows. See give the Word add-in the firm's templates and house style.
• Apply Company Style is not listed at all: the house-style tool is not switched on for your account. Ask your administrator.
• The Workflows tab is missing: the tabs at the bottom of the add-in come with JuristIQ access. Ask your administrator.

Tips from practice

• One font group per source. Firms and clients reuse their own templates, so the next document from the same source usually has the same styles. With a group for each, the next one is a matter of choosing the group and checking the matches.
• Match by role, not by name. Their "Body Text 2" may be your body text and their "Heading 3" your second level. Look at how each style is used in the draft, which the list shows you, rather than what it is called.
• Keep the original. The formatted copy is a new file. File it next to the document you received rather than over it, so you can always show what was sent.
• Check numbering and cross-references. Read the clause numbers and the references to them in the formatted copy before it goes to the client.

To work on the content of the draft with JuristIQ, see review a contract in Word with JuristIQ. For a new document that starts in the firm's style, start a document from a firm template in Word.