Brief Formatting: Step Two: Customize TOA Categories in Word

These are the category headings you use in your TOA for different types of authorities. The TOA of the sample brief shown below (taken from the textbook appendix), uses the categories Cases, Statutes, Other Authorities, and Constitutional Provisions.

You need to follow the relevant guidelines (i.e., court rules and/or your professor's instructions) on how the brief Table of Authorities should be organized, including the category headings you should use for different types of authorities. There may be times when you want to subdivide your authorities into more categories than those mandated by the instructions. 

The tool in Microsoft Word (Word) that helps you build your Table of Authorities (TOA) asks you to assign a category to each of your authorities. Word has default categories (cases, statutes, other authorities, rules, treatises, regulations, and Constitutional provisions), but these can be customized. When you insert the TOA, Word will list all of the citations you have marked. Citations will be organized under the category headings assigned, and Word will list each category in the same order as listed in the category drop-down box.

If you need to deviate from the Word defaults, you will save considerable time and frustration if you modify the category drop-down options as the first step of creating your TOA. This might mean changing category names or changing the order in which they are listed in the drop-down box so they are in the order you want categories listed in your TOA. Although you can manually edit the TOA after it is generated by Word, this can be time consuming.

1. Determine what categories you will use in the TOA and how these should be ordered. Note all the categories you might possibly cite. If you create a category but do not end up citing sources that fit under that category, that will not cause a problem when you generate the TOA. (If you forget a category, you can add it during the process of marking citations, but you may have to manually re-order parts of the TOA at the end, so try to be comprehensive here.)
2. Open a new Word document. The changes you make to the Word TOA category drop-down menu are not specific to any particular document; they are specific to your computer. Plan on doing this work on whatever computer you will be using when you are marking citations in your brief.
3. Open the Mark Citation dialogue box located in the References tab of the Word ribbon. The PC keyboard shortcut is Alt+Shift+I. Mac users can assign their own shortcut if they'd like.
4. Then click on Category (PC) or Set Category (Mac). This will bring up the Edit Category dialogue box. (Note this might appear elsewhere on your monitor, including on top of the first dialogue box rather than to the side.)
   
   This is what it should look like on a PC:
   
   
   This is what it should look like on a Mac:
   
5. If you want the categories as they are listed, you can click cancel and you are done. Be sure to verify both the category names and the order of categories are as you want them to appear in the Table of Authorities. 
   Default Category Numbers:
   1 - Cases
   2 - Statutes
   3 - Other Authorities
   4 -  Rules
   5 - Treatises
   6 - Regulations
   7 - Constitutional Provisions
6. If you need to make changes, you will do them a category at a time, making sure the order in the drop-down menu is the order you want them to appear in your Table of Authorities. For example, if you do not simply want Cases as a category, but you want to subdivide by court level, you will have to make those changes here. You would

• Click Cases
• In the "Replace with" box type your new category name, e.g., U.S. Supreme Court
• Click Replace. (Do not click OK yet.)
• Continue this process until you have all the TOA categories you might use in the order you want them to appear. You can assign up to 16 categories. 
• When you are completely done, click OK, which will close the Edit Category dialogue box.
• Then, click Close in the Mark Citation dialogue box.

The next time you go into the Mark Citations option on the same computer, you will see the categories as you have modified them.

0:00 Introduction
0:13 Word default categories
0:29 Accessing Edit Category dialog box
1:43 Changing category names
2:07 Changing category order