You Went to Law School to Learn the Law. Who Taught You Microsoft Word?

Lawyers spend an extraordinary amount of their working lives inside Microsoft Word and Excel.

Yet most lawyers have never been formally taught how to use either application for the work they actually do.

Instead, we learn enough to get by.

We copy old documents. We inherit spreadsheets. Someone shows us a shortcut. We find a workaround. And eventually, those workarounds simply become the way we work.

The problem isn’t that lawyers aren’t capable of using Microsoft Office. Far from it.

The problem is that most lawyers have never been shown what the software can actually do for them.

I’ve worked in both private practice and in-house, and in both environments I’ve seen some exceptionally capable lawyers struggle with Word and avoid Excel wherever possible.

That isn’t particularly surprising.

Microsoft Office simply isn’t a priority when the legal curriculum is being developed at university or during practical legal training. Somewhere along the way, it seems to have been assumed that lawyers will simply “pick it up”.

But from where?

Who is actually teaching lawyers these skills?

If you’re a senior lawyer, you might be thinking:

I don’t need to know this anymore. I can delegate it to a junior lawyer or legal assistant.

And sometimes you can.

But there is another question worth asking:

Who is teaching them?

You may be mentoring junior lawyers in substantive law, strategy, drafting, negotiation, client management and the countless other skills required to become a good lawyer.

But are you teaching them how to properly structure a complex Word document?

How to control numbering rather than manually repairing it?

How to use Styles, fields and cross-references?

How to organise and analyse large amounts of information in Excel?

Probably not.

And that isn’t a criticism. Most lawyers were never taught those skills themselves.

So where did I learn Microsoft Word and Excel?

Long before I became a lawyer, the first part of my career was entirely in information technology.

I started in programming — including mainframe and PC applications — while working for a large insurance company.

But I began noticing something.

People throughout the business were using Word and Excel every day, yet many had never been properly taught how to use them.

Sales teams were trying to produce professional reports and client material. Other teams were building spreadsheets and working with increasingly complex information. People were finding workarounds simply because they didn’t know what the software could do.

The more I looked, the more I saw the same problem.

So I moved away from programming and into Microsoft Office training, document troubleshooting and practical technology support.

Over the years, through teaching, troubleshooting complex documents, supporting professionals and working on major bid submissions, I accumulated more than 50,000 hours of training and hands-on experience with Microsoft Office — long before I ever practised law.

When I later moved into the legal profession, I assumed workplace technology training would have evolved.

I expected generic, one-size-fits-all software training to gradually be replaced by training designed around the actual work people performed in their professions.

Unfortunately, that hasn’t really happened.

If anything, many professionals now receive less structured software training than they did previously.

What if Microsoft Office training was designed specifically for lawyers?

A few months ago, a friend in the legal profession asked me a very simple question:

Could you create Microsoft Word and Excel training specifically for lawyers?

My immediate answer was yes.

And the more I thought about it, the more obvious the opportunity became.

There are countless Microsoft Office features that can make legal work easier, faster and more efficient — but many of them are either not covered in generic training or are taught without any connection to the work lawyers actually perform.

In Word, that includes things such as:

• Styles and document structure
• Multilevel numbering
• Long-document formatting
• Cross-references and fields
• Section breaks
• Tables
• Headers and footers
• Templates
• Document troubleshooting

And in Excel:

• Formulas and functions
• Tables
• Sorting and filtering
• Conditional formatting
• Conditional functions
• Lookups
• PivotTables
• 3-D references
• Data cleaning and organisation
• Analysing large amounts of information

The aim isn’t to teach lawyers every feature Microsoft Word and Excel contain.

You don’t need to know everything the software can do.

You need to know what it can do for you.

And that is the idea behind Office Wizards.

Introducing Office Wizards

Office Wizards is practical Microsoft Word and Excel training created specifically for lawyers and legal professionals.

Rather than releasing one enormous course and expecting participants to work through hours of generic training, Office Wizards will build skills progressively through short, targeted lessons focused on practical application.

The program will also include live Q&A sessions, with the training and recordings becoming a growing reference library that members can return to whenever they encounter a problem.

I’m currently preparing a limited Founding Beta and gauging interest from the legal profession before the program launches.

Beta participants will have some significant advantages, including the opportunity to help shape the subjects covered, participate in the live sessions and access Founding Beta pricing at 50% below the future standard price.

At this stage, joining the waitlist does not commit you to enrolling.

It simply means you’ll be among the first to receive the program details when enrolment opens and will have the first opportunity to decide whether Office Wizards is right for you.

If you’ve ever found yourself thinking:

“There must be a quicker way to do this…”

there probably is.

And I’d like Office Wizards to show you what it is.

Interested in Office Wizards?

JOIN THE OFFICE WIZARDS FOUNDING BETA WAITLIST

There is no obligation to enrol.

And if you know another lawyer, legal professional or firm that could benefit from practical Microsoft Word and Excel training designed specifically for legal work, please feel free to share this article with them.