Do-It-Yourself Tutorials for Microsoft Word 2010 and 2013

In last week’s Tech Tuesday post, we promised to feature tips and tricks to help you increase the efficiency and productivity of your daily practice, many of which will focus on legal writing and document production using Microsoft Word.  To kick off our series, we’re recommending a couple of good online resources for learning and/or fine-tuning your word processing skills. Using these sites to identify your weaknesses and build on your strengths, you’ll become an expert in document preparation and a master of efficiency!

Some of the best tutorials for learning the nuts and bolts of MS Word 2013 can be found, as expected, on the Microsoft website. These do-it-yourself lessons are grouped by skill level, covering everything from margins to mail merge. We also recommend the lessons at LearnFree.org, which cover basic operations and common tasks in MS Word 2010. 

Simplifying Your Legal Writing with Microsoft Word Tech Tips

Technology has dramatically changed the practice of law. The pace of this change is so rapid that it can be difficult -- and expensive -- to keep current with the latest trends in law office management. Comprehensive practice management systems are wonderful tools, but many of the essential functions performed by these all-in-one programs can also be accomplished with the software already at your disposal.

Built into Microsoft Office are a number of simple, user-friendly mechanisms for making your legal writing much less frustrating. Occasionally, Tech Tuesday will feature a new tip to help you increase your efficiency and productivity. A previous tip focused on using the Styles feature in Microsoft Word. Check the blog frequently to see what we’ll cover next. In the meantime, visit the University of Michigan Research Guide on Microsoft Word 2010 and 2013 for a detailed overview of the many functions that are the keys to defeating wasted time, talent, and treasure in your daily practice.

ABA Techshow

If you’re a lawyer or other legal professional who uses email, cloud storage, or a mobile device to more efficiently run your practice, the ABA TECHSHOW® is for you. This annual conference, presented by the ABA Law Practice Division, is a unique event where lawyers and other legal professionals come together to “talk tech.”

Take a look at the conference brochure and peruse the offerings. If a particular session catches your attention, visit the Legal Talk Network website, where more than a dozen episodes of the Special Reports podcast have been posted. These 7-minute recordings feature interviews with the presenters, giving you a taste of the ABA TECHSHOW experience. A recording of the keynote presentation is also available.

Next year’s conference promises to be just as rich and substantive as this year’s event, so perhaps a springtime trip to Chicago for ABA TECHSHOW 2017 will be in your future . As registration information becomes available, we’ll keep you posted. 

Using Styles to Format Appellate Briefs

According to the Texas Rules of Appellate Procedure, briefs must follow very specific formatting conventions. Spelled out in Rule 38, these conventions ensure that all appellate briefs are consistently uniform in appearance, organization, and theme. Meeting these specifications fulfills the requirements of the court, conveying not only compliance with court rules but professionalism and credibility.

Formatting can be a time consuming and sometimes frustrating process, but drafting documents in Microsoft Word, taking full advantage of its built-in tools, simplifies the process considerably.  The Styles feature, which is often overlooked by even the most proficient MS Word users, is one such time-saving tool.

A Style is a collection of formatting instructions, applied consistently throughout a document to standardize the font, titles, spacing, paragraphs, headings, and sections. Using Styles to create a document template, you can cleanly and properly format your briefs, substantially transforming the draft-writing process to one of ease and efficiency. Due to the cascading effect of Styles, any one title or heading is formatted just like all of its kind. Therefore, one minor change in some basic feature of the text, particularly one that repeats throughout your brief, is no longer a source of aggravation and wasted effort. And Styles are an excellent remedy for the frustration of formatting your tables of contents and tables of authorities as well. For a useful resource guide, see Georgetown Law School's Styles, Tables of Contents, and Tables of Authorities in Microsoft Word 2010.