The Clause Library allows you to centrally store and quickly insert text, graphics, Fields, Tables, and other items that you frequently use. Clause library items can be organised into logical groupings or categories. For a law firm, typical categories would be Wills, Banking and Finance, Property, and Leasing.
The master text for clause library items is stored in standard Word documents. You would typically have a separate Word document for each category of clauses. For example, you would typically put all of your Wills clauses into a document called Wills.doc and all of your Leasing clauses into a separate document called Leasing.doc. The clause library text is stored in Word documents (as opposed to storing the text in a database) because this allows maximum flexibility as to what you can store in the clause library – if you can put it in a Word DOC or DOCX file then you can basically use it as a clause item, including all of the formatting and Word Style control.
Each separate clause library item is assigned a unique "code". A user inserts a clause into a document they are building by first entering the code into the document, and then clicking the Clause Library Toolbar button (or pressing the keyboard shortcut). In this respect it is very similar to Word's AutoText function. The I-Deal Docs clause library offers a number of advantages over Word's AutoText function though, most notably: