Software for Building Tables of Authorities
Best Authority makes building a Table of Authorities (TOA) in a Word document simple. It provides extensive features that allow you to quickly construct and format a TOA to meet the needs of any attorney, firm or court. Unlike other products, Best Authority provides a unique review phase which provides tools to assist in quickly and accurately proofing your document. There are 2 editions of the software: Best Authority Light and Best Authority Premium. The Premium Edition offers a robust review phase with extensive editing tools.
Step One -- Startup
The first phase is startup where you select the scheme, scan range and placement of the TOA in your document. The scheme governs the formatting of the TOA. Using the parameters set with your scheme Best Authority will quickly build a TOA to the exact format specifications of an attorney, a firm, or a court. The TOA can be placed at any location inside the document.
Step Two -- Scan for Citations
Best Authority begins by scanning a document for citations. L&J has developed an advanced text mining technology that will accurately detect a much higher percentage of citations than existing tools. During the scan, Best Authority stores the detected citation data directly in the document. This data is then used for building a TOA.
Step Three-- Review the Scan Results
For both editions, Best Authority offers two ways to review the results of the scan, Draft Review and Full Page Review.
The Draft Review generates a draft of a TOA in the Word document. The Word screen is split, with the draft TOA at the top and the document in the lower half. The purpose of this review mode is to allow a user to see exactly what information will be used to generate the TOA. With Premium Edition, the user may make any edits or changes to the TOA without changing any text in the brief. All corrections are permanent, and will never have to be done again, even if you make substantial revisions to the document and need to rescan and regenerate a TOA! With Light Edition, you will note your changes and use MS Word to change the final TOA.
The Full Page Review provides a quick and easy way of reviewing the citations found by the scan. As you page through your Word document, all citations found will be highlighted in a user-specified color. Premium Edition includes an easy-to-use Interface which allows you to unmark a citation (remove it from the TOA), and mark (add) a citation that may have been missed by the scan and should be included in the TOA. Even on a long document, this is easy and fast. Just like the Premium Draft Review, all corrections you make will never have to be done again!
Both Reviews make allow you to quickly identify and correct problems in the document text. A Re-scan will pick up these corrections and any identify additional citations due to the corrections.
Step Four -- Build Your Table of Authorities
When your review and edits are completed, you build a TOA with as little as two mouse clicks! Best Authority provides many options for formatting the TOA and its entries to ensure a professional quality TOA and a TOA that is compliant with the requirements of an attorney, firm, or court.
The New Industry Standard
Since its release in June 2006, Best Authority® has been adopted by over 350 law firms. These include six of the ten largest law firms and 40% of the top 250.
Licensing and Pricing
Licensing for Best Authority is based on the total number of litigators* at your firm. It may then be installed on as many PCs as required. Licensing is not based on the number of PCs on which Best Authority is installed. See our licensing and pricing information.
If you would like to see a demonstration or if you have any questions, contact Ian Levit at ianlevit@levitjames.com or 703.771.1549.
*"Number of Litigators" means the total number of individuals among the Customer Staff who fit in any one or more of the following categories: (a) attorneys, including contract attorneys, billing or likely to be billing time on United States litigation matters; (b) attorneys represented or advertised (e.g., on Customer's website) as available for United States litigation practice; (c) research or litigation paralegals contributing citations to appellate briefs for United States courts; and (d) individuals who author other documents, such as multi-client research publications, for which a Table of Authorities is produced. A paralegal or other non-attorney who only checks citations or formats documents will not be counted as a litigator.
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