Dynamic gender pronouns in Filevine DocGen (his/her, he/she)

Filevine DocGen · advanced guide

Pronouns are where a lot of Filevine DocGen templates fall down. You can't hard-code "his" or "her" into a template that serves every client — so most firms leave a his/her placeholder and fix it by hand after every single generation. That defeats the point of automation. Here's how to make pronouns fill themselves in, driven by each party's gender in Filevine.

The tool: a Word IF field

Filevine DocGen runs on Microsoft Word's field engine, which includes conditional IF fields. An IF field compares a value and outputs one of two results. Combined with a Filevine gender merge code, it becomes a pronoun that changes per document.

The logic reads: if this party's gender is Male, print "his"; otherwise print "her."

Building it step by step

1. In Word, place your cursor where the pronoun goes.
2. Press Ctrl + F9 to insert a pair of field braces: { }. (You must use Ctrl+F9 — typing the braces by hand won't work.)
3. Type the IF logic inside. Where you need the gender value, insert another Ctrl+F9 field pair and put the Filevine gender merge code inside it.

The finished field looks like this (each set of braces is a real Word field, inserted with Ctrl+F9):

{ IF "{ MERGEFIELD client.gender }" = "Male" "his" "her" }

When DocGen runs, the inner field resolves to the client's gender, the IF compares it to "Male", and the correct possessive pronoun prints. Change the two quoted words to match the grammatical form you need:

• Subject: "he" / "she"
• Object: "him" / "her"
• Possessive: "his" / "her"

Handling multiple parties

A single document often references several people — the client, the defendant, a spouse. Each needs its own gender source. Point each IF field at that party's gender field:

{ IF "{ MERGEFIELD defendant.gender }" = "Male" "he" "she" }

The mistake to avoid: reusing the client's gender for every pronoun in the document. If the defendant's pronoun is driven by client.gender, it will be wrong the moment the two parties differ.

A neutral fallback

What if a party's gender is blank or set to something other than Male/Female? A two-way IF will fall through to the "else" branch (e.g. always "her"), which is wrong. For a safe neutral default, nest a second IF so unknown values produce singular they/their/them:

{ IF "{ MERGEFIELD client.gender }" = "Male" "his"
  "{ IF "{ MERGEFIELD client.gender }" = "Female" "her" "their" }" }