Have you tried working with label styles? You can adjust many variables of labeling and save these to your own user styleset. When I did this with some custom labeling of point features, it preserved the specified angle at which I tilt my labels, along with weighting, fonts, character spacing -everything I had customized. Saves me lots of time re-doing my customizations when working with a new map layer.
Have you clicked on the properties button in the dialog shown here to see what additional properties you can access? Is there something you want to do that can't be done through that?
Yes, I have tried the properties and the different styles, but it doesn't always cover what you need. Such as, it is impossible to put the heading directly to the right of the legend symbol. That is just one example. There should be some way that the user can choose where each text element and legend symbol goes, or the ability to eliminate something all together, then when the style is made it can be saved. This should be able to be done with pull down menus of all the options around the legend symbol.
