Posts Tagged ‘law office’

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Footnotes Hot Key in MS Word – Law Offices Love It!

Tuesday, January 13th, 2009

If you are employed in the legal arena, then you know that there are always lots of fun little footnotes in your documents, especially if you are still in law school. Believe it or not, I grew a lawyer – yes, my son is an attorney at law so I know of what I speak. You will note the Baltimore Injury Lawyer Blog on my Blog Roll – yep, that’s my boy!

I think I speak for lawyers and legal assistants everywhere when I say that it is a big old pain in the butt to click on Insert | Reference | Footnote every time you need a footnote in your document. So I will share this handy dandy hot key that will make your life sooooo much easier. My mantra is save time and keystrokes!

MS Word has a nifty hot key that will insert a footnote for you no matter where your cursor is sitting in your document. See below for the magic key combination:

  • CTRL + ALT + F

Abra cadabra! You now have a footnote – just enter the text.  I really do know how to save time in a law office don’t I?

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Posted in Microsoft Office, Microsoft Office Word, Office Productivity, Word 2003 | No Comments »

Table of Authorities in MS Word

Thursday, October 30th, 2008

If you are employed by a a law office there are times when you need to create a Table of Authorities for a pleading, such as an Amicus Brief. A Table of Authorities is used to to cite references to cases, statutes, etc. referenced in your pleading.

MS Word has the ability to quickly and easily create your Table of Authorities for you. All you have to do is mark the citations within your document and then tell MS Word to create your Table for you.

Follow the steps below to create your Table of Authorities:

  1. Select the long, full citation that you would like to use.
  2. Click on SHIFT + ALT + I, which will cause the Mark Citation dialog box to appear.
  3. Make any formatting changes that you like to the text in the Selected Text box.
  4. Use the drop-down Category list to select the category to which the citation belongs.
  5. In the Short Citation box, edit the text to reflect the short version of the citation.
  6. Click on Mark to mark the instant citation or Mark All to search your document and mark all instances.
  7. Click on Cancel or Close.

Now all you have to do is click on the designated page for your TOA and click on Insert | Reference | Tables and Indexes and select Table of Authorities.

That’s it! You are finished.  Pretty cool isn’t it?  Most secretaries blanch at the thought of creating an automatic TOA but it is really quite simple.

This tip is for MS Word version 2003

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Posted in Microsoft Office, Word 2003 | No Comments »

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