October, 2020 - Afinety

Tips and Tricks – Microsoft Word Table of Authorities

Posted on October 29, 2020May 12, 2021 by Colleen Furey

Afinety University Tips & Tricks Webinar Series is perfect for those working in the legal field looking to develop their skills in Microsoft Word and other common law firm software programs. This series is instructed by Diana Baker, Afinety’s Macro Developer and Trainer. Diana has over 20 years of experience working in the legal field. Her webinars demonstrate tools for attorneys, paralegals, and legal assistants to increase efficiency in Microsoft Word and save valuable time creating documents. The most recent webinar focused on Microsoft Word’s Table of Authorities feature. We’ve put together some of the key tips and features below, but you can watch the full webinar here.

Marking a Citation

Before getting started with the Table of Authorities feature, there are a few things to keep in mind. First, make sure the document is in its final draft before marking for a Table of Authorities. Second, turn on the “show / hide” option. This allows users to see the Table of Authorities field codes that will be inserted. Once these steps are complete, begin scanning for citations and highlighting.

There are two options for marking citations, users can go through the References tab, Table of Authorities group, and then select “marked citation”. The alternative option is to use shortcut key, ALT + SHIFT + I. From here, go through the document and mark the remaining citations. Another option is to use the “next citation” feature, but scanning line by line is recommended, as this feature can sometimes accidentally skip over citations.

Mark Citation Dialog Box

Let’s break down the mark citation dialog box. First, is the selected text. Edit this text how it should appear in the final generated Table of Authorities. For example, some lawyers may have a preference on abbreviations and other specific formatting. Next, select the category of the citation. A common mistake here is forgetting to select the correct category. Below category is short citation. A short citation should consist of a common factor that is contained in the long cites and in the short cites that are referenced throughout the document. Short citations are marked with a “short cite” field code. To finish using the mark citation dialog box, select “Mark All” and close. If an error is made, revisions can be made and then updated on the Table of Authorities. This will be reviewed later on.

Generating a Table of Authorities

Once ready to generate a Table of Authorities, turn off “show / hide” option. Next, place the cursor in the exact spot to insert the Table of Authorities and go to the References tab, click “Insert Table of Authorities”. By default, “use passim” is checked. This means that if a citation is referenced on more than 5 or 6 pages of a document, “use passim” will be listed in place of all the page numbers. For formatting, keep original and the category “All” can be selected. Once complete, users should select “OK” to generate their Table of Authorities.

Fixing Errors in Table of Authorities

One common mistake when fixing errors in the Table of Authorities is editing the information directly within the generated Table of Authorities. This is the wrong approach because any manual edits made to the Table of Authorities will be lost once it is updated or regenerated. Instead, users should properly fix errors by revisiting the Table of Authorities field code and making edits there. To then make revisions complete, regenerate or update the Table of Authorities.

For additional tips and tricks on the software programs you use most, register for an upcoming webinar.

Take Your Firm Farther With iManage Work 10 and IT provided by Afinety

Posted on October 27, 2020May 11, 2021 by Colleen Furey

To practice law is to manage. Clients, cases, correspondence, documents, memoranda — the assignments and responsibilities of the job are relentless and require ongoing management to keep everything straight.

You need a software solution that will help you actively manage your workload so you can keep tasks in order. iManage Work 10 helps you and your practice work smarter, not necessarily harder. Coupling iManage’s cloud-based platform with managed cloud services by Afinety, a fully licensed and certified iManage partner, you’ll get everything you need to run your law practice smoothly.

What is iManage Work 10?

Used by more than 1 million legal professionals around the world, iManage Work 10 is an email and document management software platform that is designed specifically for law firms like yours and the day-to-day duties that transpire, whether they play out in the office, on the road, in the courtroom or at home. With iManage and Afinety Cloud Platform, you get a fully managed IT environment that enables you to access data instantaneously and experience fast performance with your critical applications, increasing your productivity and output without compromising your firm’s or your client’s security.

No matter what type of law you practice, nothing is more important than performance and coming through for your client and their needs. iManage Work 10 puts you in the best possible position to achieve success with seamless and secure document sharing so communication to your clients, co-workers, colleagues and opposing counsel are maintainable and available. In short, iManage Work 10 is designed for the modern law firm where maximum output and efficiency on all devices is crucial to victory.

What makes Afinety and iManage Work 10 better together?

These days, there is no excuse for not delivering maximum effort for your clients. Thanks to broadband internet access and mobile computing, you can log on to your desktop wherever you are at all hours of the day, whether from your desktop, laptop, tablet or smartphone device.

iManage Work 10 runs seamlessly on all of these platforms so you can take your assignments and documents with you in a profession that is increasingly on the go. Based on input from hundreds of users around the globe, iManage Work 10 was redesigned to be a cloud-first solution so your ability to submit reports, store documents or share them is not dependent on your location. Anywhere, anytime access to your data means just that — you can obtain them from wherever you are, so long as you have a reliable internet connection.

As a certified iManage partner, Afinety has the expertise to help you seamlessly transition from an on-premises or hosted iManage solution to iManage’s modern software-as-a-service platform. In addition, Afinety Cloud Platform helps to streamline all of your applications by handling the maintenance, system upgrades and integration. In essence, we help you manage your entire IT environment – eliminating the need to own and maintain expensive hardware, offloading application upgrades and maintenance, and ensuring higher levels of information security than you could ever achieve on your own. Our turnkey solutions leverage Amazon Web Services to enhance security and your firm’s flexibility should you need to upsize or downsize. If your firm is merging with another, migrating the data isn’t a problem. Everything is fully scalable.

Since we take care of the hardware, the servers, the storage and more, you get to focus on what you do best; while we handle the IT stuff. From mission-critical applications like accounting software to document management, eDiscovery to court docketing, Afinety hosts all of your applications and maintains them so they’re never more than a cloud away.

Why you can trust Afinety

Unlike other cloud providers, Afinety is a certified iManage partner. Together for over 20 years, the Afinety Cloud Platform and iManage pairing provides comprehensive support for your document management and overall work environment. Through consultation and design as well as ongoing maintenance and training, our network engineers make all of this possible. Our dedicated services team will not only ensure your migration to iManage’s cloud platform runs smoothly, we’ll also help ensure your staff’s learning curve is as short as possible by providing them with the skills, tools and knowledge they need to explore iManage Work 10 smoothly and efficiently.

In addition to getting your iManage Work 10 environment up and running, Afinety ensures the rest of your environment is highly secure, backed by AWS and encryption technology. Amazon Web Services is the largest, most reliable cloud platform in the world. Additionally, the IT security professionals at Afinety specialize in data protection to further buttress and fortify the defense of client-privilege material.

Groundbreaking new features

Whether you’re in litigation, corporate, family or any other type of legal practice, there’s no getting around the need to put in maximum effort for your clients. It comes with the territory. iManage Work 10 leverages AI, big data analysis and other advanced technologies to track and analyze your work style so the program can help you work smarter and more efficiently.

Some of these machine-learning advancements include:

Smart Worklists: Smart Worklists are fully adaptable and provide an overview of data you can instantly call up with a click (on a laptop or desktop) or swipe (on a smartphone or tablet). Smart Worklists are thematically grouped as emails, clients, documents, downloads, large files and shared documents. And since it runs off the cloud, you can track the progress of documents edited by others in real-time and what the previous version looked like. This capability helps you and your team avoid duplication and improves time management, thereby increasing lawyer productivity through integrated electronic matter files and fully reusable project templates.
Document Timeline: Document Timeline function provides additional context to see not only who has edited certain documents but at what time. Even if they left the correspondence alone, Document Timeline allows you to see when it was viewed by anyone else, down to the minute they logged on.
Personalized Search: The search toolbar enables you to quickly access emails, matters and documents instantaneously, but what makes search for iManage Work 10 unique is its ability to deliver results that are most relevant to your needs and what data you access most. The machine-learning capabilities of iManage Work 10 strategically order the search results from most likely to least likely.
Email Management: Just as you likely search for certain subjects more often than others, the same is often true for who you email. iManage Work 10 keeps tabs on your most common recipients to learn your habits and then makes recommendations for who to send letters, documents or attachments to and appropriate filing locations for conversations, matters and subject headings.

Your clients expect you to deliver for them. iManage Work 10 can position you for success. To learn more, request a quote or to schedule an appointment for integration, please contact us at Afinety today.

Tips and Tricks – Microsoft Word Styles, Multilevel Numbering & Tables of Contents

Posted on October 2, 2020May 12, 2021 by Colleen Furey

Afinety University Tips & Tricks Webinar Series is designed for attorneys, paralegals, and legal assistants who would like to develop their skills in Microsoft Word and other common law firm software programs. Instructor Diana Baker, Afinety’s Macro Developer and Trainer, has over 20 years of experience working in the legal field and demonstrates easy tools to increase your efficiency in her webinars. This month’s webinar focused on how to format a pleading using Heading Styles and Multilevel Numbering, as well as generate a Table of Contents with a click of a button. We’ve highlighted some of the key takeaways below, but you can access the full webinar here.

Styles

Styles are a collection of formatting instructions which greatly enhance document automation and production. To get started with Styles, open the Styles Pane which will list styles contained in the document. Users can apply, modify or create new styles from the Styles Pane.

A user can preview styles by ticking the “Show Preview” box located near the bottom of the Styles Pane. Additional options for viewing the Styles Pane include the choice to show styles in the current document and sort the list of styles alphabetically or as recommended. Additionally, it is recommended to remove paragraph, font and bullet formatting from displaying in Styles Pane.

When creating new styles, it is best to start from scratch and base styles on “normal” and then build out each style by formatting the font and paragraph settings, and other preferences. When setting line spacing in a pleading document, one important tip is to set the spacing to Exactly 24 points (for double spacing) or Exactly 12 points (for single spacing) so the line spacing of the text of the pleading matches the line spacing used in the line numbering embedded in the header. A tip for Heading styles is to select “keep with next paragraph” and “keep lines together” in order to keep headings from appearing as the last line of text on a page.

Style Area

Instead of viewing Styles in a pane, users have the option to view in Style Area. To set up this feature, go to the File tab, Options, Advanced, Display, bringing you to the option “Style area pane width in Draft and Outline views” – insert a measurement like 0.7.” To see the Style Area in the left margin, you must be in Draft or Outline View.

Creating your own Style

To create a new Style in Microsoft Word, go to Styles Pane and select “A+ New Style”. From there, fill in the details, such as naming the style, select the style type as paragraph, style based on normal, and style for following paragraph. Then format the font, paragraph settings, and more.

Multilevel Numbering

To begin working with multilevel numbering, select the Multilevel List drop down located in the paragraph group in the Home ribbon. From the List Library, select a list that closely resembles the type of multilevel numbering you want to add to your Heading styles. Open the Multilevel list drop down again, and choose Define New List Style. Name the List Style, click Format and choose Numbering. Format each level of numbering and link to the respective Heading style. Be sure to watch the video for more details on formatting multilevel list numbering.

Table of Contents

If you applied heading styles to all headings throughout your document, you can generate a Table of Contents with a click of a button. Place your cursor in the exact spot where you want to insert the Table of Contents, from the References ribbon, click the drop down in the Table of Contents button, and choose Custom Table Contents. Users have the option to change the formatting of table of contents, by selecting and modifying “TOC Styles”. As a reminder, the “use hyperlinks” setting is turned on by default. Click OK to generate the Table of Contents.

Moving Forward

You can easily add the styles you create or modify into the template the document is attached to, so you have access to these styles in new documents moving forward. When modifying or creating the style, tick the “new documents based on this template” box. Another tip Baker mentioned was, do not select the “automatically update” button for styles because anytime direct formatting is applied to a word or paragraph, that formatting will be added to the style that word or paragraph is in.

For additional tips and tricks on the software programs you use most, register for an upcoming webinar.