Case information stored in MerusCase is extensively used for automated letter creation, with case-specific details like party addresses and case numbers automatically populating in Word documents via merge fields we embed in preformatted letters. The result? Push a button, and you download an Opening Letter To Client.docx that's completely filled out. Once you have this document and you've made any edits you want, you can push our SaveToMerus button and it automatically updates in that case's Activities, no upload needed.
For many of our new users, the biggest part of switching to MerusCase is opening up these Microsoft Word documents when they want to send correspondence, instead of the Corel WordPerfect documents commonly used by many law firms. A big part of WordPerfect's dominance in the legal and government fields is due to the fact that it hasn't changed much over the years. Corel even uses this familiarity approach as a selling point when talking about training costs and compatibility.
Corel's relatively "closed" development led us to integrate with Microsoft Word for document creation. Over the years, Word has added tools and frameworks for third parties (including MerusCase) to build their own plugins. You can almost think of Word as a miniature operating system, as it can run programs written in the Visual Basic programming language. MerusCase uses Visual Basic for merging in case information and (as pictured above) for QuickSaving merged and downloaded documents back to their cases.
The time savings offered by our merging and QuickSaving capabilities are enormous, and our existing clients have come to depend on the added efficiency we've brought to the way in which they create and send correspondence. When new firms ask us, "Why don't you use WordPerfect?" we show them merging and QuickSaving as an answer. Word will still open WordPerfect files, but the limitations of WordPerfect itself prevent more advanced functionality.
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