Templates: your forms, verbatim

The Templates tab is the firm's form library. A template is your document kept verbatim — nothing shredded, reordered, or translated — plus two light overlays BALA understands: variables (named spots that take a value) and conditions (deal facts that include or exclude content). The structure is the firm's; the understanding is BALA's.

The editor

Templates open in a full contract editor: legal numbering and sub-numbering, declaraciones-style sections, tables, headings, page breaks, find, undo, and paste that doesn't drag Word formatting along. Select any passage and point at it — make it a variable, wrap it in a condition, or leave a comment. Variables and conditions read back as plain sentences, the way a lawyer would say them. Everything autosaves with a version history you can fall back to.

Draft vs. published

Generation only ever reads the published snapshot. Edit freely — drafts never issue paper until you press Publish, and each publish is a numbered version. A side-by-side redline shows the draft against the last published version, so what changed is never a mystery.

The library table

The Templates view is one table. Each row on the left is a kind of contract a production needs — not a category — and to its right sits your firm's form that covers it, with what it's used for, its state, and what's left to review. Keep several forms for one contract (an adult release and a minor one) and they sit together as variants, with the column that says which one a given deal receives. A contract you have no paper for still gets a row, and it takes an upload directly: you bring the form, BALA reads it, proposes its variables and conditions, and the draft waits for counsel's review before it ever issues.

Word, both directions

Download any template, edit it in Word — including on a Mac — and upload it back; the template keeps its identity, overlays, and version history. Print gives a contract-grade layout for pen-and-paper review.