Most legal documents contain text that should not be referenced in the TOA. This usually includes the title page, TOC, the TOA itself, the Certificate of Service, etc. Best Authority has you set the Scan Range so that you can explicitly omit these areas from the scan. Including these areas will confound the scan results, particularly on a re-scan.
Another case where it is important to set the proper Scan Range is for jurisdictions that require that you create separate TOAs for different sections of the document.
Best Authority automatically detects the location of an existing Table of Authorities and will use that location without a prompt. To re-set the TOA location, you can always revisit the Startup tab in the Best Authority Wizard dialog.
Most legal documents contain text that should not be referenced in the TOA. This usually includes the title page, TOC, the TOA itself, the Certificate of Service, etc. Best Authority has you set the Scan Range so that you can explicitly omit these areas from the scan. Including these areas will confound the scan results, particularly on a re-scan.
Another case where it is important to set the proper Scan Range is for jurisdictions that require that you create separate TOAs for different sections of the document.
A quoted citation is a citation that is referenced by another citation and usually follows the word “quoting” or “citing”. Best Authority provides an option to include these citations in, or exclude them from the TOA. Best Authority also treats citations found inside block quotations in the document as quoted citations.
On occasion, there are terms that will be identical for one or more states; the state is implied from the jurisdiction in which the document is being filed. One example is the term “Gen Laws”, which in Massachusetts means “Massachusetts General Laws”, while in Connecticut, it means “Connecticut General Laws”. When you specify a state for customary abbreviations, Best Authority will know which state is referred to for such citations.
You should use the international dictionary ONLY when the citations in the document employ international terms. Using the international dictionary requires more time to load when running the Best Authority scan, and can also unnecessarily add a large number of Suspect or false citations to the scan results.
A re-scan of the document is recommended in the following circumstances:
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Corrections to the source text of some citations have been made.
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Text that contains additional citations has been added to the document.
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Portions of the document text have been added or removed, possibly affecting the long/short relationships established by the previous scan.
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For Premium Edition users: you have marked or unmarked one or more citations, possibly affecting the long/short relationships established by the previous scan.
The Remove All option should only be employed on a re-scan when the current document contains citations that were pasted in from another document on which Best Authority was run. Also, there are times when a re-scan with the Remove All option selected is necessary in order to properly implement specific formatting changes in the TOA Options dialog.
For all users, the Draft Review is useful for reviewing TOA Entry data, such as TOA groupings, long/short relationships, TOA Entry text, and TOA Entry sorting. For Premium Edition users, citations may also be marked and unmarked in the same way as in Full-Page Review mode.
For Premium Edition users, Full-Page Review is useful for easily performing corrections to scan results where citations have been mis-scoped, falsely identified, or missed. Full-Page Review can also expedite processing of extremely large documents.
Yes. However, after changing either the text or the text formatting of one or more citations, it is best to run a re-scan of the document in order to allow Best Authority to pick up any additional short citations that it may have missed because of the error in the document text.
Best Authority can miss citations if they contain syntactical errors, formatting errors, or if they use terms that are not contained in any of the dictionary overlays. Syntactical and formatting errors are best resolved directly in the document text, after which a re-scan of the document should be performed. Otherwise, for Premium Edition users, Marking the missed citation will add it to the database used to construct the TOA.
Highlighting colors may be modified via the Preferences dialog, which is accessible from the Wizard dialog by selecting the Options tab. When setting the colors, you are also given the option to choose “pastel” colors for a softer color scheme which may be easier to read.
For Premium Edition users, in either Draft Review or Full-Page Review mode, select the text that was missed and click “Mark/Mark Citation”. You will be prompted to instruct Best Authority whether the selected text represents a long or a short citation. If a long, the Edit Citation dialog will be displayed. If a short, you will be prompted to select the long citation related to the newly-marked short citation. These edits are permanent and will not have to made again, even if you rebuild the TOA.
For Light Edition users, and for Premium Edition users working in Light Mode, since Best Authority places your Table of Authorities inside your document, after exiting Best Authority you can manually add the citation using Microsoft® Word. If you re-build your Table of Authorities, you will have to make the same addition again.
In Premium Edition, in either Review mode, click in the citation, and then click on the Unmark/Unmark Citation button. Once unmarked, a citation will not again be picked up as a citation during a re-scan. The deletion from the TOA is permanent and will not have to made again, even if you re-build the TOA.
In Light Edition, since Best Authority places your Table of Authorities inside your document, after exiting Best Authority you can delete the citation using Microsoft® Word. If you re-build your Table of Authorities, you will have to make the same deletion again.
In Premium Edition, in either Review mode, click on the citation and use the Edit function. In the Edit TOA Entry dialog, you have the ability to change the citation text and/or the formatting of the text.
In Light Edition, since Best Authority places your Table of Authorities inside your document, after exiting Best Authority you can add, delete or change any citation using Microsoft® Word. If you re-build your Table of Authorities, you will have to make the same addition, deletion or change again.
In Premium Edition, if Best Authority has mis-scoped a citation for any reason, you may correct the problem in either Review mode by selecting the correct text and clicking on the Mark/Mark Citation button. Any data associated with an overlapped citation, whether active or unmarked, will be removed and replaced with the data for the newly-marked citation. These edits are permanent and will not have to made again even if you re-build the TOA.
In Light Edition, since Best Authority places your Table of Authorities inside your document, after exiting Best Authority you can change the citation using Microsoft® Word. If you re-build your Table of Authorities, you will have to make the same changes again.
In Premium Edition, there are two easy ways to move a citation from one TOA Group to another:
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In either Review mode, edit the citation and explicitly set the TOA Group to which it belongs.
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In Draft Review mode, click “Move TOA Entry >> Move to Different Group” and choose the new TOA Group.
In Light Edition, since Best Authority places your Table of Authorities inside your document, after exiting Best Authority you can use Microsoft® Word to move your citations into the correct Group. If you re-build your Table of Authorities, you will have to move your citations to the correct Group again.
The Best Authority Print function offers the ability to print the document with detected citations highlighted. This is very useful for quickly identifying the scan results, and for comparing the scan results with a manually-highlighted copy of the document.
No! Best Authority was designed specifically to allow you to build interim versions of the full-format TOA in draft versions of the document. In Premium Edition, any edits you make to citations in Review mode will be permanent, even after a re-scan. The advanced user can even select which groups of citations are included in the final TOA; interim builds may include Suspects and Non-TOA references, while the final build will not include these groups.
Light Edition users can build TOAs in their draft versions, but must remake all edits to the TOA entries after each build. Most Light Edition users only mark changes on hard copy of their draft versions, and input all changes for the final TOA.
If the formatting of the final TOA is not exactly what you want, you simply enter the TOA Options dialog, change one or more of the formatting settings, and re-build the final TOA. I.e., you do not have to re-scan the document. Also, you can modify any of the TOA-related style definitions so as to change the formatting of affected paragraphs.
Please note that any modifications made directly to the TOA will be erased on a subsequent build. All such modifications should be made only on the final draft of the document.
A Best Authority Scheme stores all information contained in the TOA Options dialog:
- TOA Groups
- TOA grouping criteria
- Citation Types assigned to TOA Groups
- Sort options
- General output options
- Global formatting options
Each Scheme is stored in a *.BASC file located in either the Private or Shared Folder under the User Profile Folder. Once a Scheme is loaded into a document, it is stored in the document (as a document variable) and therefore travels with the document. Subsequent users do not need to have the Scheme saved on their computer in order to use the Scheme that is stored in the document.
If you have loaded a Scheme into a document, made changes to the TOA Options settings, and then wish to make those options available for other documents, click on the Save As Scheme button in the TOA Options dialog. This will create a private Scheme on the current workstation that can be selected when loading a Scheme into other documents. Note that when saving Schemes, you cannot choose a name already reserved by a shared Scheme.
A Scheme may be exported to an arbitrary location from the TOA Options dialog by clicking on the Export button. When the current TOA Options are exported, a *.BASC file is created at the user-specified location. This file can then be imported into Best Authority on another workstation via the Import function. Note that the user importing the file must have Scheme import/export or Scheme administrator permissions; see the Best Authority Administrator’s Guide for details.
A Scheme file (*.BASC) may be imported from the TOA Options dialog by clicking on the Import button. The import dialog will prompt you to locate the Scheme file to be imported. Note that the user importing the file must have Scheme import/export or Scheme administrator permissions; see the Best Authority Administrator’s Guide for details.
As of version 2.1, Best Authority enables you to configure Schemes to automatically create Sub-Groups such as are used, for example, with California-style statute TOA Entries. With this feature, sub-grouping can now be automated for users running in Light Mode. See the Best Authority User’s Guide for complete information.
Many Group properties will be the same among all of the TOA Groups in the document. Each Scheme provides for a “Default Group” containing these common settings that can optionally be assumed by each Group. Changing an option to be used in every Group is simply a matter of changing the Default Group property, thereby eliminating the need to change the same property for each TOA Group in the Scheme.
There are three sort modes: “sorted”, “sequential”, and “manual”. The sort mode in a TOA Group can be explicitly set to sorted or sequential by the user; manual sorting is only set by Best Authority when the (Premium Edition) user manually moves an entry within a Group in Draft Review mode. By default, each Group is set to “sorted”.
By default, in sorted mode, Best Authority employs a “Smart Sort” algorithm to treat alphabetical and numerical entries in such a way that they appear in the logically correct order. There is an option in the TOA Options dialog to disable the Smart Sort algorithm and sort all entries strictly alphabetically.
Sequential sort mode orders the citations within a TOA Group by order of appearance in the document. If the citation appears in a footnote or endnote, its location in the document relative to other citations is determined by the footnote or endnote reference point.
From the TOA Groups tab in the TOA Options dialog, you can add a TOA Group by clicking on the Add Group button. You will then be prompted to fill in the appropriate Group properties. To remove a TOA Group, select the Remove Group button.
Note that after adding a TOA Group, no citation will automatically appear in that Group until you assign one or more Citation Types to that Group, via the Assign Citation Types dialog. With Premium Edition, citations may also be moved into a TOA Group with a manual assignment in Draft Review mode, by using the “Move to TOA Group” function.
Groups may also be added and removed via the Assign Citation Types dialog.
Citations are automatically placed into TOA Groups depending on their Citation Type (i.e., case, statute, etc.), geographic scope and code, and their docketed status (cases only). In Premium Edition, these automatic assignments may be overridden in Draft Review mode using the “Move to TOA Group” function.
This is done in the TOA Groups tab in the TOA Options dialog. If you only have one Group for cases, click on Add Group to create another cases Group. Edit both Groups as necessary to give them the proper names (e.g., “Federal Cases” and “State Cases”). Most importantly, make sure to set the geographic restriction for the “Federal Cases” Group to “Federal Only”, and for the ”State Cases” Group to “State Only (Any)”.
If you wish to have three Groups named “Federal Cases”, “California Cases”, and “Other State Cases”, select the geographic restriction for “California Cases” to “State Only (Specified)” and select “CA” for the state. The “Other State Cases” geographic restriction should be set to “State Only (Any)”.
You may also separate local and international cases and statutes by choosing the appropriate geographic restriction in the applicable TOA Group.
The current version of Best Authority supports the use of text pattern matching to assign citations to Groups based on the citation’s text. These text pattern matching criteria can be used in conjunction with the other standard restrictions, such as Citation Type, Geographic Scope, and Docketed (cases only). See the Best Authority User’s Guide for complete information.
Best Authority contains a global formatting feature that allows you to apply specific formatting to part or all of a TOA Entry based on its Citation Type (i.e., cases, statutes, etc.). This allows you to specify a uniform look to the TOA Groups, regardless of how the citations are formatted in the document text.
If you wish to make changes to all TOA Entries, you could consider either modifying the Word paragraph style being used for TOA Entries, or else modifying the current Scheme to apply a different paragraph style to TOA Entries.