Stop Re-Typing the Same Documents

You have an engagement letter you’ve used a hundred times. A power of attorney. A will template. A client intake confirmation. They all live in a folder somewhere - maybe on your desktop, maybe in OneDrive - and every time you take on a new client, you open the file, copy it, and start replacing names.

Find “Johnson.” Replace with “Thompson.” Check the address. Fix the date. Scroll through the whole document to make sure you didn’t miss one. Save it somewhere you’ll be able to find it later.

You’ve done this so many times you could do it in your sleep. Which is part of the problem - because when you’re doing it on autopilot at 9pm after a full day of client work, you miss things. The wrong client name in paragraph four. Last month’s date on the signature page. The old firm address because you moved six months ago and forgot to update your template.

Every solo attorney has sent a document with someone else’s name in it at least once. Most of us have done it more than once.

There’s a better way to do this, and it doesn’t require learning new software or abandoning the Word documents you already have.

Watch: From Template to Finished Document in 30 Seconds

How It Works

Writly’s document templates start with the Word documents you already use. You don’t have to recreate anything in a proprietary format or learn a new editor. If you have an engagement letter in Word, you’re 90% of the way there.

Step 1: Add placeholders to your Word document. Wherever you’d normally type a client’s name, address, or case details, you drop in a placeholder tag instead - something like <<Matter.Client.FirstName>> or <<Organization.Name>>. The tags map to information you’ve already entered in Writly: your contacts, your matters, your firm details. The document stays in OneDrive, in regular .docx format. It’s still a Word file - just one with fill-in-the-blank markers.

Step 2: Register the template. In Writly’s settings, you point to the file in OneDrive and assign it a document type - engagement letter, will, trust agreement, whatever it is. This takes about 30 seconds. Once it’s registered, anyone at your firm can use it.

Step 3: Generate from a matter. When you need the document, go to the matter’s Documents tab, click “Create from template,” and pick the template you want. Writly pulls in everything it already knows - the client’s name, address, the matter description, your firm’s information - and shows you the values before generating. You can review and change anything. Then click Generate.

Step 4: Done. Writly creates the finished Word document and saves it to your firm’s OneDrive, organized in a folder for that matter. Every generation is tracked, so you have a record of when the document was created and which template it came from. If something changes later - a client’s address, the scope of an engagement - you can regenerate with updated information.

That’s it. No copying and pasting. No find-and-replace. No accidentally leaving the wrong name in the document. And no proprietary file formats - what comes out is a standard Word document, same as what went in.

Why This Matters More Than It Sounds

Document generation isn’t glamorous. Nobody gets excited about automating engagement letters. But the cumulative time it saves is significant.

A solo attorney who opens five new matters a month and generates three documents per matter - an engagement letter, a fee agreement, maybe a power of attorney or initial filing - is doing 15 copy-paste-replace cycles per month. At 10-15 minutes each (including the proofreading pass to catch missed replacements), that’s 2.5 to 3.75 hours per month spent on work that a template handles in seconds.

That’s time you could be billing. Or time you could be spending with your family instead of fixing documents at 9pm.

And the error reduction matters just as much as the time savings. A document with the wrong client name isn’t just embarrassing - in a legal context, it can create real problems. Templates eliminate that entire category of mistake.

What About Clio Draft?

If you’re evaluating other practice management platforms, you’ll notice that document automation is often a separate product with separate pricing.

Clio sells document automation as Clio Draft - a standalone product that costs roughly $40-120/month plus $30/user/month, depending on configuration. That’s on top of what you’re already paying for Clio Manage. Some plans include limited document features, but full template-based generation with custom fields requires the add-on.

In Writly, document templates are included in every plan. There’s no add-on, no separate subscription, no additional per-user fee. It’s part of the product because document generation isn’t a premium feature - it’s a basic workflow that every attorney needs.

This is the pattern we keep coming back to: one tool instead of four. Matters, contacts, billing, calendar, intake forms, and document templates - all in one place, one login, one price.

Your Templates, Your Documents, Your OneDrive

One design decision worth calling out: everything stays in Word and OneDrive. Your templates are Word files. Your generated documents are Word files. They’re saved to your OneDrive, in folders organized by matter.

This matters because it means your documents aren’t locked inside Writly. If you cancel tomorrow, your engagement letters and wills and powers of attorney are still in your OneDrive, in standard .docx format, organized by client. You don’t need Writly to open them, edit them, or send them to anyone.

Data portability isn’t just a bullet point on a features page. It’s a trust signal. Any vendor confident in their product will make it easy to leave.

Getting Started

If you’re already using Writly, you can set up your first template in about five minutes:

1. Open one of your existing Word documents - an engagement letter is a good place to start
2. Replace the client-specific information with placeholder tags
3. Register the template in Writly’s settings
4. Generate your first document from a matter

If you’re not using Writly yet, you can start a free 14-day trial and bring your existing Word templates with you. And if you want help setting up your first few templates, I’ll do it with you personally - just book a call from the site.

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This post is part of the “How Writly Works” series. See also: How Copilot Finds the Billable Hours You Missed and Connecting AI to Your Practice Data.