How to Create a Table of Authorities for Legal Documents in Microsoft Word

In the legal profession, drafting a complex brief or memorandum requires precise citation of case law, statutes, and constitutional provisions. Before submitting a brief to a court, legal professionals must usually provide a “Table of Authorities” (TOA) at the beginning of the document. This table lists every single case or statute cited in the text and meticulously details the exact page numbers where each citation appears.

Manually scanning a 50-page document to find every mention of Brown v. Board of Education and typing out the page numbers is a massive waste of billable hours, and it guarantees formatting errors if the document is edited later. Microsoft Word includes a specialized, automated tool specifically designed to build and update a Table of Authorities instantly.

Step 1: Marking Your Citations

Before Word can generate the table, you must teach it which words in your document are legal citations. This process is called “marking.”

1. Scroll through your document and find the very first time a specific case or statute is mentioned (the “long citation”).
2. Highlight the entire citation text using your mouse.
3. Click on the References tab in the main Microsoft Word ribbon.
4. In the “Table of Authorities” group on the far right, click the Mark Citation button (or press Alt + Shift + I).

A dialogue box will appear with the text you highlighted already populated in the “Selected text” box.

Step 2: Categorizing the Citation

Inside the dialogue box, you must define the citation.

• Category: Use the drop-down menu to specify what type of law this is (e.g., Cases, Statutes, Other Authorities, Rules). The TOA will group citations by these categories.
• Short Citation: In legal writing, you use the full name the first time, and a shortened name later. Edit the “Short Citation” box to reflect how you will refer to this case later in the document (e.g., changing “Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483” to simply “Brown”).

Once categorized, you have two options:

• Click Mark to tag only this specific instance.
• Click Mark All to have Word automatically scan the entire document and tag every single instance of both the long and short citations. (This is highly recommended for speed).

When you click Mark, Word will insert a string of hidden, messy-looking bracketed code next to your text (e.g., { TA \l "Brown v. Board" \s "Brown" \c 1 }). Do not panic; this is hidden formatting code that will not print.

Step 3: Generating the Table

Once you have marked all the different cases and statutes throughout your document, it is time to build the table.

1. Navigate to the page near the beginning of your document where you want the TOA to appear.
2. Click on an empty line.
3. Go back to the References tab.
4. Click the Insert Table of Authorities button.

A formatting window will appear. You can choose different visual styles (like “Classic” or “Formal”) and decide whether to use dot leaders (the string of periods connecting the case name to the page number). Ensure the “Category” drop-down is set to “All” so every type of law is included.

Click OK. Word will instantly generate a perfectly formatted table, automatically alphabetizing the cases within their respective categories and listing every page number where they appear.

Step 4: Updating the Table After Edits

The true power of this feature is its dynamic nature. If a senior partner reviews the brief and deletes two pages of text, all your page numbers will shift, ruining a manual table.

With the automated TOA, simply click anywhere inside the generated table to highlight it in grey. Right-click, and select Update Field (or press the F9 key). Word will instantly rescan the entire document and correct all the page numbers perfectly in less than a second.