Are you a WordPerfect lawyer in a Word world? You are not alone.

Texas attorney Craig Ball was doing a tips program with me and several others at our 2004 OBA Solo and Small Firm Conference. I gave a WordPerfect tip and he said “Now, how many people are still using WordPerfect?” Taking the bait, I asked for a show of hands and well over half of the audience still used WordPerfect as their primary word processor. He was very surprised and made a comment about being in Shangri La, which most in the audience took to mean paradise or utopia, but I wondered if he really meant the land that time forgot.

A significant reason why many Oklahoma lawyers still use WordPerfect is our resident guru on WordPerfect, Oklahoma City attorney Doug Loudenback. He produces, and the OBA is the exclusive sales agent for, the Grande Macros for family law. These are only sold to Oklahoma lawyers with a license that restricts them from using them to do pro se pleadings. Otherwise he has a pretty liberal licensing plan, one copy can be installed on multiple computers in the office and drop down customizable menus allow several lawyers to use GM to prepare their pleadings. You can examine the many features of the GM at the link noted above and I’ll be happy to sell OBA members a copy. They are reason enough to stay with WordPerfect if you practice much family law in Oklahoma.

But having what many of us view as the more powerful word processor is of little use if you do not use many of its powerful features. So this week we are going to have daily features on how to unlock the power of WordPerfect. Many of these lessons will apply to that other word processor as well. But first let’s talk about what version of WordPerfect you use. If you are still using WP 8, 9 or even 10, it’s probably time to upgrade. Let’s look at Doug Loudenback’s reasons to upgrade to WordPerfect 12 (or not.)