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What is Best Authority^®?

Best Authority^® is a terrific software application which makes it easy to build a Table of Authorities (“TOA”) for any legal brief.  Best Authority^® works as an add-in to Microsoft Word^®.

Levit & James’ customers report to us that by using Best Authority^® they can build a TOA four to eight times faster than with their previous methods.  They also report that their TOAs are more accurate than before.

Since its release in June 2006, Best Authority^® has been adopted by over 300 law firms. These include 60% of the ten leading law firms and over 35% of the top 250.

Best Authority^® comes in two editions (Light and Premium), and has two feature sets (Light Mode and Advanced).  Light Edition offers only the Light Mode Feature Set. Premium Edition adds the Advanced features, and Enterprise Administration functions as well.

Click here for our
Edition Comparison Chart

Light Mode Feature Set (Both Editions)

The advantage of the Light Mode Feature Set is this:  If you’ve ever prepared a TOA using any other method, then you can learn to use Best Authority in Light Mode in about an hour.  We offer an e-learning module and sample documents which you can use for self-training, or as the basis for developing your own training class.

The Light Mode Feature Set offers you these big benefits:

• Best Authority^® has a highly accurate function for identifying citations in a legal brief – more accurate than any other product ever sold.
• Best Authority^® offers two unique reviewing tools, including a split-screen “Draft Review Mode” where you can compare the entries in your TOA with the original citations in context, in the body of your document.  This makes it a breeze to resolve questionable items.
• You do all of your editing using Microsoft Word as your editor, so there’s very little training required.
• And yes, when Best Authority builds your TOA, the page numbers are always right!

Advanced Feature Set (Premium Edition only)

The Advanced Feature Set adds a menu and a series of dialogs which allow you to specify edits to the TOA contents.  Any changes you make are stored with the document, so that even if that document is subsequently modified by the authors, you can generate the final Table of Authorities very quickly when the brief is ready to be filed.

Using the Advanced Feature Set requires some additional training, but for users who frequently produce TOAs, or who deal with particularly complex TOAs, that training is paid back very quickly with increased efficiency.

The Advanced Feature set also provides special functions, such as the ability to produce a combined TOC/TOA (known in Illinois as a table of “Points and Authorities”), which no other TOA product can build for you.

Please Note: Many sites which purchase the Premium Edition start by rolling out the Light Mode Feature Set to a broad base of users. They then implement the Advanced Feature Set more gradually, beginning with the “power users.”

Enterprise Administration Features
(Premium Edition only)

The Premium Edition also enables a number of administrative features which are very useful for centralized organizations.  For example, it includes a very simple and very effective mechanism for distributing updated Schemes (standardized TOA designs) and other data to user desktops, which is a viable alternative for firms who don’t regularly employ a file-push process.  Also, Best Authority^® Premium allows your staff to custom tailor application permissions based on Active Directory groups or User IDs.

Administrative functions are explained with great clarity and detail in the Best Authority Administrator’s Guide.