A table of authorities is a standard way of keeping track of what authorities you’ve cited and where they appear in your document. The instructions below will help you create a table of Authorities in your own documents. The Table will keep track of page number changes as you edit your document.

Beginning the Table of Authorities:

1. Before beginning work on your Table of Authorities, think about the authorities you have cited in your document and the corresponding categories that define those citations. In addition to Cases and Statutes, you should review your document to determine if there are any other categories of citations that will be included in your table.

2. After you have decided which sections you want in your table, click on Tools in the menu bar. When the drop-down menu appears, select Reference and then Table of Authorities. A new tool bar will appear under the line ruler

Marking and Formatting Your Authorities:

Each legal authority you refer to in your document needs to be ‘marked’ the first time it’s cited. You also need to tell WordPerfect exactly how you want each citation to look when it appears in your Table. The following instructions explain how to do these things.

1. Go into your document and use your mouse to highlight the first authority you’ve cited.

2. Click on the Create Full Form button. The Create Full Form dialog box will appear. In the box entitled Name, type in the name of the section you want to this authority to be listed under (e.g., Cases). So, if the first citation you are marking is a case, you will need to type Cases in the section box.

3. Next, go to the Short Form box and edit the full form citation to a shorter form. After you’ve edited the citation, click on OK. (The short form will be used later if you cite the authority more than once in the document.)

4. The next screen shows you how the full citation will look in the Table of Authorities. Edit the citation if necessary. Then click on the Close button.

5. Repeat these steps for each authority. If you have already added the name of the section the authority falls within, simply select it from the pop-down list in the Name box.

If an authority is cited more than once:

1. Highlight the repeated citation or position your cursor at the end of the citation.

2. Find the citation in the Short Form box on the tool bar; highlight the short form citation in that pull down menu to ensure that it is the one visible in the box and then click Mark.

3. Repeat these steps for each authority you cited more than once.

Editing Your Citations:

1. If you want to edit a citation you’ve marked, select the button that says Edit Full Form. Then select the citation you want to edit by clicking on it with the mouse. You can edit the full citation form, the short citation form, or the section (e.g., Cases). If you decide not to cite to an authority you already marked, you cannot remove it from the list of authorities, but it will not appear in your Table.

Generating Your Table:

1. Once you’ve marked all of the legal authorities that appear in your table, you need to choose the place in the document where the table should appear. Move the cursor to that point. This is very important. To make sure your cursor is in the right place, you might want to type a letter first and then delete it. (Hint: In legal memoranda and briefs, it is usually in the front of the document.)

2. Type a section heading, e.g., Cases, making sure you line up the heading as you want it to appear in your finished document including appropriate font size and characteristics (bold, italic, etc.). Hit the enter key to add a line between the heading and the citations.

3. Click on Define. The Define Table of Authorities box will appear.

4. Click on the section that you want to appear first in your Table of Authorities and then click on Insert. You will see the following text appear on your screen:
   ((Table of Authorities will generate here.))

5. Hit return a few times to delineate between sections and then type in the next section heading; hit return once more to add a line between the headings and citations. Again click Insert, and the message indicated in Step 4 will appear again. Do this for all of your section headings.

6. When you have added all your section headings, click on Generate. When the Generate dialog box pops up, click OK.

7. Within a few moments, your Table of Authorities should appear at the insertion point.

8. If you want to add more authorities to your table later, repeat the steps under Marking and Formatting Your Authorities and Generating Your Table.