Brief Formatting: Step Four: Insert, Correct, and Update Tables

1. Put your cursor where you want to insert your TOA. In the brief template, turn on show/hide hidden characters  to make sure you have placement right. (You want it at the start of a blank line after the Table of Authorities heading and before the Section Break (Next Page).

2. Turn OFF hidden characters.Verify that hidden characters, like paragraph breaks, are not showing so that your page number references are right.
3. Go to the References tab and then click Insert Table of Authorities.
4. The TOA box that opens has the same options on both PC and Mac, but the layout is a bit different on each:
   
    

5. Set your TOA preferences Unless your professor otherwise instructed, 

a) Leave Use passim checked
b) Leave Keep Original formatting checked
c) Leave dots for your tab leader
d) Choose From template under Formats
e) Under Category, leave the selection at All to insert all authorities at once.
f) The preview box will show what your TOA will look like.
g) You should not have to change the template, but if you chose to do so, you would click the Modify button to adjust TOA styles.

6. Double check that your preferences are as you want them and click OK.

Carefully review and correct any errors you find in your Table of Authorities. Citation mistakes that might have been obscured by the text of your brief will be very obvious here, which provide a great opportunity to make sure everything looks right.

There are two kinds of changes you might need to make.

Changes Only to the Mark Citation Coding

Mistakes to the categorization of a citation can be corrected just by changing category number (\c #) in the TOA mark citation coding. As described under step one, your categories have corresponding numbers based on the order in which they are listed in the category box in the Mark Citation tool. Here is an example:

Within the Mark Citation coding in the curly brackets, I changed the category number from the wrong one (2) to the right one (1)

Changes to Both the Mark Citation Coding and the Text of the Brief

The other change I need to make is to italicize the Wallace case. This will need to be done in both the text of the brief (in the red box below) and the coding that generates the TOA, which appears after the \l.

Avoid Editing Directly in the TOA

You can make changes directly to the Table of Authorities, but if you update that table, all of these changes will disappear. If you have small changes to make, at the very end of the process, you may choose to edit directly. (The very end of the process is also after you update your Table of Contents, in case that changes brief pagination.) Be sure you do not update the table after this point. If you do so, also remember any changes that need to appear in the text of the brief itself need to be made in the brief.

If you made any corrections, you will need to update your Table of Authorities.

First, make sure hidden characters are turned OFF.

Word will treat each category as a separate TOA. If you only need to update one category, click into it. Word will highlight that entire category. Click Update Table on the Table of Authorities section of the References tab. (You can also click into the TOA and then press F9 on a PC).

If you want to update all categories (the entire table), select all of the table text and then click Update Table on the Table of Authorities section of the References tab. 

When your table of authorities shows all citations as you want them in the right categories, you can make any needed manual edits to your Table of Authorities. That is, if you have changes that can only be made by directly editing the auto-generated TOA, you want to do this now, as your last Table of Authorities step.

For example, after correcting all mistakes in the brief and coding and updating your TOA, it may look like this:

If you wanted the reporter information for the Freedom cases to appear on the same line, rather than split across two lines, you could add a manual line break (soft return) before the volume numbers. Position your cursor where you want the break and press Shift+Enter to insert the soft return. Those two entries would now look like this:

The brief template included a rudimentary Table of Contents with all of the brief main section headings. (In the template, we also marked Table of Contents to appear in the Table of Contents; some briefs omit this heading.) The table needs to be updated so that it also includes all the point headings you added.

1. Go to the page with your Table of Contents.
2. Make sure hidden characters are turned OFF.
3. On the Table of Contents section of the References tab, click Update Table.
4. In the pop-up box that appears, select Update entire table.
5. Click OK.

This will appear slightly differently on a Mac and a PC:

PC

MAC

The Table of Contents styles should ensure that your point headings appear in the Table of Contents with the correct outline numbering and indentations, as seen below.

If your professor (or the court) specifies the need for any additional formatting, you will have to manually edit the styles. If the needed changes cannot be controlled by the styles, you will have to manually edit your Table of Contents. Manual edits to the Table of Contents will be overridden if you later update the Table of Contents, so do not do this until everything else is done. In other words, wait until you have proofread everything and have no more changes to make.

If you need to review instructions later, here are some key moments in the video:

0:00 Introduction
0:12 Prior Steps (Using template, setting TOA categories, marking TOA citations)
0:29 Inserting the Table of Authorities
1:55 Reviewing the TOA and correcting any mistakes
5:22 Inserting the Table of Contents

If you would prefer to practice generating the Table of Authorities and updating the Table of Contents in a document that is not your brief, here is the document used for the demonstration.