ANSWER: The Word v. WordPerfect debate has been the hot issue among law firms the last two years. This is probably the most frequently asked question I hear. In fact, although I wasn’t able to attend, I was supposed to be part of a panel discussion on this topic at the American Bar Association’s annual Techshow conference. In addition to me, the panelists included Ross Kodner, an attorney and President of MicroLaw, a Milwaukee-based legal technology consulting firm; Dan Coolidge, a partner with the New Hampshire firm Sheehan Phinney Bass & Green; and Guy Wiggins, a consultant with the Hoboken firm Lextech. Dan and I are both former chairs of the Computer and Technology Division of the ABA’s Law Practice Management Section and Ross is the current chairman of that Division. As a result of our experiences, the panelists had a good handle on the pulse of the national legal community as it moves to new word-processing systems.

Prior to the conference, the panelists was requested to provide their reasons for recommending either Word or WordPerfect. While there was some overlap among our views, it might be useful to share the more compelling reasons to assist you in deciding which direction to choose.

As recently as five years ago (a lifetime in computer software time), WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS was the definitive leader commanding about 80 percent of the legal word processing market. That percentage has dropped, because of the sale and resale of WordPerfect to Novell and then Corel, while Microsoft began strong-arming hardware vendors to include their suite with the Windows operating system. The combination of these forces led to the corporate world adopting the Microsoft Suite in record numbers. Some people also argue that WordPerfect and others were purposely misled to put their development dollars into OS/2 instead of Windows and ended up at a significant disadvantage in the market.

Despite the overwhelming migration to the Microsoft Office Suites in the corporate world, law firms have been slower to convert from their beloved WordPerfect for DOS. In fact, it seems that WordPerfect has held a larger part of the legal market share even as firms switch from DOS to Windows. In my consulting practice and in following national trends among law firms, I estimate that WordPerfect, in its various versions, has about 60 percent of the market share. Even among the four Techshow panelists, three of us prefer and use WordPerfect rather than Word.

I am skeptical of both Corel and Microsoft’s estimates of their market share since they are both choosing numbers favorable to themselves. Microsoft counts anyone whose new computer came with their suite preloaded. Corel focuses on the retail market where people pay for their own copies. Since they may already have the Microsoft Suite on their new computers, the main purchasers of a word processing suite will be buying the Corel or Lotus-IBM suite.

If your firm is getting ready to upgrade from WordPerfect 5.1 DOS to a Windows-based word processor, what are the reasons for picking one or the other?

The panelists offered these reasons for selecting Microsoft Word:

1. My clients are all using it. Given the difficulties of converting documents between the suites, this can be a very compelling reason if you regularly exchange documents with your clients.

2. Microsoft is in better financial condition than Corel. There’s a better than 50 percent chance Microsoft will be around a while.

3. Word’s style feature is superior. In the Windows environment, styles are a key feature for automating the formatting of text. Both Word and WordPerfect are built around styles, but Word’s style feature is easier to use and more flexible.

4. Word allows you to create a document map which appears in a frame on the left, and lets you navigate around a document. It’s particularly helpful for long documents with many sections like contracts. Since it is based on Word’s styles, it is automatically available.

5. Word’s Visual basic for Application language is better than WordPerfect’s Perfect Script for advanced customization. This means that third-party vendors of products like document management can write tighter links to Word than WordPerfect.

6. Better integration with Microsoft Outlook and Exchange for e-mail and groupware.

7. Word allows for collaborative editing with attribution by each person who adds comments. Word tracks each person’s edits in a different color, and when you place the mouse cursor above a change, a floating flag appears, detailing the change. You can then add or subtract changes by individual editor. The new version feature adds similar functionality to WordPerfect.

8. Auto Table of Contents and Table of Authorities are slightly easier to use in Word than WordPerfect although the Table of Authorities software included with WordPerfect Legal Suite 8 evens the score.

9. Word allows you to see your footnotes in context. Instead of opening a separate window to see the text of a footnote, you can float the mouse cursor over the footnote, and its text appears in a floating window.

10. No Reveal Codes. While many people rely on WordPerfect’s Reveal Codes, they can be quite confusing and some of the panelists prefer the visual formatting of Word.

Okay, so those are some good reasons for selecting Word. Why choose WordPerfect? Here are some of those points made by the panelists:

11. Moving from WordPerfect to Word is unnecessarily painful and expensive and is not a sound business decision for most law firms that have standardized on WordPerfect for years. In addition to more extensive training for Word, because it takes a totally different approach to document production than WordPerfect, you will have problems converting macros and documents. WordPerfect works more like lawyers do in approaching document creation and is a better tool for longer documents because it is structured in pages rather than sections.

12. Unless your computer comes with Office 97, WordPerfect is less expensive.

13. Reveal Codes. WordPerfect simply does a better job of letting you control the format of your document. Word’s Reveal Format does not provide you with a mechanism to modify your document’s appearance.

14. While neither Word nor WordPerfect does automatic paragraph numbering as well as WordPerfect 5.1 did, WordPerfect 8 is more flexible to accommodate the numerous ways lawyers number documents.

15. Features like Quick Format, where you can copy the formatting from selected text and paint it onto other parts of your document and Make it Fit, which in WordPerfect can shrink to a specified number of pages, are incredibly handy when the lawyer changes the formatting attributes she wants for headings or other parts of a document. There are no comparable features in Word.

16. WordPerfect allows for two headers and two footers, while Word allows only one on the first page or for each section. Since WordPerfect also lets you suppress a header or footer on specific pages, you have more control over the appearance of your document. Lawyers often require multiple headers and footers in documents. For example, you might want a draft of a document to include “DRAFT — FOR DISCUSSION PURPOSES ONLY” as well as the page number, date and time it was last revised. In WordPerfect, you can make these two separate headers so that you can activate them separately.

17. Handling printing from multiple paper bins is much easier in WordPerfect because of the Delay codes and paper sizes. The Delay codes option is particularly helpful when you need the first page of a document to pull from one paper bin and subsequent pages to pull from another. WordPerfect allows you to assign paper size codes on any page in a document. The Delay feature can be used for other functions such as margin changes, and can be set for several pages after the code. Using the Delay code, you can set the change to take effect wherever the second page starts. Since you can delay by a specific number of pages, you can more precisely control the printing of your document. Word limits you to selecting paper size codes for the first and subsequent pages only.

18. WordPerfect’s merge is more flexible and better suits lawyer’s needs. In a single merge, you can access multiple forms and data files. If you are creating correspondence, you can have WordPerfect automatically prepare envelopes along with the merged letters. There is no comparable function in Word.

19. The implementation of the templates feature is better in WordPerfect. It is easier to create templates and they are more intuitive to complete. While you could use Word Basic to create better looking templates in Word, this is unnecessary in WordPerfect. WordPerfect templates present you with a dialog box for the fields you want to complete. Word requires you to double click on each field, making it more likely to miss one of the fill-ins.

20. No annoying Office Assistant following you around. The Perfect Expert is comparable to the Office Assistant without the Bob-like character annoying you on the screen.

21. WordPerfect’s Open File dialog screen has more file management tools. Word seems to assume you will use other products to create new folders, copy, move and preview files and so on. This is also true with features like Tables, which, in WordPerfect, can perform most of the spreadsheet functions lawyers require, while Word assumes you will use the Excel spreadsheet for similar capabilities.

22. While both Word and WordPerfect will crash from time to time, WordPerfect 8.0 is considerably faster than any preceding version. This is, perhaps, the most important improvement. WPWin 8.0 also is noticeably faster than Word 97. That’s because the core application itself is much smaller — the code has obviously been dramatically optimized. WordPerfect 8.0 also is more stable than it’s ever been (in its various Windows incarnations).

While many lawyers are fearful of spending a lot of money and making the wrong decision, if your firm has only used 10 percent of the features of WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS, either Word or WordPerfect will more than meet your needs. When I consulted firms implementing WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS, I was often asked to write extensive macros to assist them with document production. Even simple tasks like printing an envelope from the inside address of a letter required a macro. Both Word and WordPerfect for Windows do not require as many macros or customization as their DOS counterparts. With the software versions changing with the seasons, I now advise my clients to limit customization to their basic functions and to documents like letters, fax cover sheets, memos, and pleading captions by customizing their basic toolbar. By keeping the customization to a minimum, it is easier to move from one version to another without feeling like you are throwing away the time and money it cost you to tailor-make your word processor.

One other option for even the smallest firms to consider is selecting either suite as your primary word processor and purchase a single copy of the other for use when you need to share documents with others.

Carol L. Schlein is president of Law Office Systems, a Montclair-based training and consulting firm specializing in law firms. She formerly chaired the Computer and Technology Division of the ABA Law Practice Management Section and is a former member of its Council. She can be reached at (973) 746-6454 or carol@losinc.com.

Questions for Carol Schlein on law office technology may be faxed to New Jersey Lawyer at (732) 750-0010 or mailed to “Law Technology Questions,” New Jersey Lawyer, Koll Corporate Plaza, 485B Route 1, Suite 100, Iselin, N.J. 08830.