By Julie Bays, OBA Management Assistance Program Director

Artificial Intelligence may be getting most of the attention these days, but lawyers still spend a good part of every workday in Microsoft Word. We use it to draft contracts, pleadings, briefs, letters, discovery and many other documents. Yet most of us never received any real training in Word. We just learned enough to get the document finished and filed.

In “Microsoft Word Tips for Lawyers: Three Ways to Make Word Work Better,” Ben Schorr offers three practical suggestions for working more efficiently with long documents. He explains how to use the Navigation Pane, work with the Styles pane and adjust the way a document appears on your screen.

His discussion of the Navigation Pane is also a good example of how Word’s features work together. The Navigation Pane can serve as a dynamic table of contents and even allow you to move an entire section of a document. But it works best when the document has been properly organized using heading styles. If automatic numbering has been set up correctly, Word can also renumber the document after a section is moved.

The problem is that many lawyers do not know how these features work together. That is when Word becomes frustrating. A simple formatting change can disrupt the whole document, paragraph numbers can stop cooperating, or a file that looked fine yesterday can develop problems right before filing.

Learning to use Word more effectively is not just about saving time or avoiding frustration. Lawyers rely on Word to create documents for courts, clients and opposing counsel. Understanding styles, numbering, formatting and document structure can help reduce errors and produce more consistent, professional and reliable legal documents.

Join Us for a Microsoft Word Workshop

If you spend too much time fighting with formatting, or you suspect there must be an easier way to do the work you perform every day, join us for an in-person Microsoft Word Workshop on August 4, 2026, from 1:00 to 5:00 p.m.

This hands-on workshop will move from Word’s essential formatting tools to the advanced features lawyers need to create, repair and manage complex legal documents, including styles, automatic numbering, problem-document cleanup, navigation, tables of contents, cross-references, footnotes and tables of authorities.

The registration fee is $115. Review the program information and register for the Microsoft Word Workshop.