This week we launched import from Word. That means you can now take a shell or a brief that is in flight and drop it into Rhetoric instead of starting from scratch. To get started, navigate to the home screen and look for the option to Import from Word. You can also find it in the file menu.
In the rest of this post, I am going to talk a bit more about the motivation behind this feature. The crux of the issue is that Microsoft Word is not going away any time soon, wish as we might. It is entrenched in the legal industry. It is what I was taught to use in my legal writing class at law school. Lawyers have libraries of Word templates for specific matters or jurisdictions that they have built up over the years, and many more are floating around on the internet. Some courts even require Word documents, especially for proposed orders. It is the lingua franca of legal documents.
That means that even if you switch to Rhetoric, or Google Docs, or a code editor (last week we learned that at least one lawyer writes in Markdown!), there is a fair chance that your judge, or your partner, or opposing counsel will not. Eventually, someone is going to send you a Word document.
We recognize this reality, and we are committed to actively supporting it. We launched with support for export to Word, and import from Word closes the loop on that story. Together these features form a bridge that lets you use Rhetoric for your work and translate to the common tongue when interacting with others at the boundary, in much the same way that you might speak one language in public and another more familiar one in the comfort of your own home.
From a technical perspective, there were dozens of interesting insights and edge cases to think through—for instance, did you know that section breaks can appear both inside and outside of paragraphs?—but I’ll save that for another post.
It suffices to say that if you have been waiting to try Rhetoric because your work lives in Word, wait no longer. Import an existing document and let us know how it feels.
Until next time.
Peace.
Mustafa Moiz, Esq.
Co-founder & CEO, Rhetoric