As a result, technology commentators believe WordPerfect is on its last leg. Corel's business problems: Corel has struggled to compete with Microsoft (and now Google) and has been losing market share for well over a decade.Converting regularly between WordPerfect files and other formats raises the chances of file corruption. File corruption risk: File conversion can be problematic.Technical bent: Reveal codes are clearly designed for users familiar with software coding, a concept with which many lawyers and staff may not be comfortable.Additional support requires additional time and money. Programs may also have to plan to train new staff who have not been using WordPerfect - or let them use Word instead. IT staff will likely need to support WordPerfect along with Word and the rest of the Microsoft Office suite. Support costs: WordPerfect adds to support and training overhead.WordPerfect use outside of the legal profession is rare. Fewer users: Although WordPerfect retains many users in the legal community, the majority of law firms now use Word.(Although the professional versions of Word 20 allow for easy PDF conversions as well.) Format conversions: WordPerfect allows for easy conversion to other file types such as PDF.

This can be especially useful for pleading papers.

Document formatting: Headers and footers are easy to manipulate, and page numbering is independent of footers.Specialization: The legal profession is the largest retained market share for WordPefect, and Corel caters to legal professionals with specific tools such as options for pleading numbering, redaction, and a pleading editor.

This is especially helpful when collaborating with other users who may not be formatting documents correctly.

Formatting fixes: The reveal codes feature allows for quick formatting fixes for users comfortable with WordPerfect code conventions.

We thought we'd summarize the discussion (with a little bit of added information) by comparing the two programs and discussing some additional considerations.

Although legal aid still has some strong WordPerfect adherents, it seems that most legal aid techies now favor Word (or even Open Office or Google). The question of which word processing program best serves the legal aid community has been discussed regularly on the list. WordPerfect issue came up again on the LStech listserv.

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