Microsoft has made a great product.

Never thought I'd actually say that.  But they have.  It's called Word.

Turns out Word has a bunch of features just for lawyers.  Not just the ability to write a brief on pleading paper (which has very specific and very complicated formatting requirements), but also for all the crazy requirements for writing an appellate brief.  The brief has to have different page numbering in different parts, but you still need to bring it all together with a table of contents.  You also need a Table of Authorities; a list at the beginning that shows all the cases and statutes you will cite, along with the page numbers where you site them.  You can imagine what kind of a monster that would be if you had to do it by hand.  But not only will Word do it for you, but you can even link the long cite and the short cite (long cite shows up in the TOA, short cite shows up in the document).  That means whenever Word comes across the short cite in the document, it automatically recognizes it and adds it to the list in the TOA!  And, of course, if you ever edit your document, you know those page numbers are going to change, but two clicks of the mouse and Word will re-generate the table for you.

Word just saved me an hour of work.  And since it's a quarter to two, I really appreciate that.

J