When law firms talk about productivity, the conversation usually centres on billable hours, utilisation rates, technology stacks, or fee pressure. Rarely does anyone mention formatting. Yet formatting quietly consumes hundreds of hours across legal teams every year — and not in a way that adds value.

Formatting is often dismissed as “admin”, a necessary nuisance at the end of a document lifecycle. In reality, it is a critical operational function that affects efficiency, risk, brand perception, and lawyer wellbeing. Many firms that believe they have a productivity issue are actually suffering from something far more basic: inconsistent, manual, and poorly managed document formatting.

The Hidden Time Cost of Document Formatting

Formatting rarely appears on time sheets, but it dominates legal workflows. Lawyers and paralegals routinely spend time:

• Fixing numbering that breaks when clauses are inserted
• Correcting margins, spacing, and headings to meet court or client requirements
• Cleaning up documents received from multiple contributors
• Reapplying firm styles that disappear during version changes
• Adjusting tables, footnotes, and cross-references at the last minute

Each task may take only minutes. Collectively, they consume hours every week.

The real cost is not just the time spent, but who is spending it. Highly trained legal professionals are diverted from billable  work to wrestle with word processing issues. This slows turnaround times, increases frustration, and reduces capacity for higher-value tasks such as analysis, drafting, and client engagement.

Because formatting work is fragmented and informal, firms often underestimate its impact. There is no single “formatting problem” to point to — just a steady drain on productivity that has quietly become normalised.

Why Formatting Errors Create Risk and Rework

In legal practice, presentation is not cosmetic. Formatting errors can introduce real risk.

Incorrect numbering can invalidate cross-references. Inconsistent headings can confuse interpretation. Errors in footnotes, schedules, or annexures can undermine accuracy. When documents are filed with courts, regulators, or counterparties, even small inconsistencies can lead to rejection, delay, or reputational damage.

Poor formatting also drives rework. Documents circulate between lawyers, clients, and opposing counsel, accumulating changes along the way. Without structured formatting controls, each iteration increases the likelihood of style corruption. The result is last-minute scrambles to “clean up” documents before filing or execution.

This reactive approach is inefficient and stressful. It also creates dependency on a small number of “Word experts” within the firm, concentrating risk and knowledge in ways that are unsustainable.

Brand and Consistency Issues in Legal Documents

Every document a law firm produces is a brand asset. Clients may never see your internal systems or processes, but they will see your advice letters, pleadings, contracts, and reports.

Inconsistent formatting sends unintended signals. Differences in fonts, spacing, heading styles, or layout suggest a lack of cohesion and quality control. Over time, this erodes confidence — particularly for firms that position themselves as precise, premium, or detail-oriented.

Brand consistency is especially challenging in larger firms or across practice groups. Without centralised templates and formatting standards, each team develops its own variations. These inconsistencies are then perpetuated through reused precedents and copied content.

Formatting discipline is not about aesthetics. It is about credibility, clarity, and professionalism. Firms that treat formatting as an afterthought risk undermining the very expertise they are trying to showcase.

How SBA’s Formatting Teams Support Law Firms

SBA works with law firms to treat formatting as a structured, specialist function — not an ad hoc task left to individual lawyers.

Document Formatting

SBA’s document formatting teams provide end-to-end support for legal documents, ensuring consistency, accuracy, and compliance with firm and jurisdictional standards. This includes managing complex numbering, styles, tables, and court-ready layouts, allowing legal teams to focus on substance rather than presentation.

By embedding formatting expertise into daily workflows, firms reduce rework, improve turnaround times, and eliminate last-minute document crises.

Precedent & Template Management

Templates and precedents are only valuable if they are accurate, current, and easy to use. SBA supports firms in creating, maintaining, and standardising precedents so that formatting works by default.

This includes:

• Developing robust templates with locked styles and automated features
• Cleaning and rationalising existing precedent libraries
• Ensuring templates reflect brand guidelines and jurisdictional requirements
• Reducing variation across teams and practice areas

Well-managed templates prevent errors before they occur. They also significantly reduce the time spent reformatting reused content.

Resume Formatting

Resume formatting is often overlooked, yet it plays a critical role in recruitment, tenders, and client pitches. SBA ensures lawyer CVs and bios are consistently formatted, brand-aligned, and easy to update.

This removes another hidden administrative burden from fee earners and business services teams, while presenting a professional and unified firm image to the market.

Formatting as Infrastructure, Not Admin

The most productive law firms do not rely on individual effort to maintain document quality. They invest in systems, standards, and specialist support.

Formatting should be viewed as infrastructure — similar to IT, knowledge management, or risk systems. When done well, it is largely invisible. Documents work as they should. Templates behave predictably. Lawyers trust the tools they are using.

When formatting infrastructure is weak, the consequences are immediate and cumulative: lost time, increased risk, inconsistent branding, and frustrated teams.

Reframing formatting in this way changes the conversation. The question is no longer “Who can fix this document?” but “Why are we allowing formatting issues to interrupt legal work at all?”

Rethinking Productivity in Law Firms

Productivity challenges in law firms are rarely caused by a lack of effort. More often, they stem from poorly designed processes that push unnecessary work onto the wrong people.

Formatting is a prime example. It sits at the intersection of risk, efficiency, and brand, yet is frequently under-resourced and undervalued.

By investing in structured document formatting, precedent management, and specialist support, firms can unlock meaningful productivity gains without asking lawyers to work harder or longer.

In many cases, the solution is not another system or policy change. It is recognising that what appears to be a productivity problem is, in fact, a formatting problem — and treating it with the strategic importance it deserves.