Thousands of legal writing professors, paralegals, and students use Microsoft Word to create and edit documents. Word includes sophisticated editing tools like Track Changes and Comments.

But Word's basic tools fall short in some areas, and can be greatly enhanced to help teachers work more efficiently—creating better feedback while cutting way down on the time it takes to grade assignments.

Professors of legal writing at dozens of law schools are now taking advantage of the powerful enhancements Annotate for Word Legal Writing Edition offers to help them grade memos and briefs. The University of Miami School of Law, Suffolk University Law School, and West Virginia University College of Law have even made bulk purchases of Annotate LWE in response to requests from their faculty.

Annotate for Word Legal Writing Edition is an easy-to-use add-in for Microsoft Word 2007 and Microsoft Word 2010 (we don't yet support Mac Office). Annotate improves on Word's basic commenting features as well as adding custom buttons for frequently used comments. There are over 600 buttons in Annotate for Word Legal Writing Edition, with 350 pre-written comments (authored by Professor Mitchell Nathanson of Villanova Law School). All of these plain-text buttons and their underlying comments can be edited by the user. No more macros to update, no more comment-filled clipboards to keep open. Your own tailored comments—added to a memo or a brief with just one mouse-click.

Launched in December 2010, Annotate for Word Legal Writing Edition is already exciting legal writing professors and paralegal studies departments:

"What I like best about Annotate is that it allows me to customize the program to reflect my own voice and style.  I also love the fact that it allows me to draft quite lengthy comments, all the better to explain complex or multi-step concepts to my students."

Lisa T. McElroy
Associate Professor of Law
Drexel University Earle Mack School of Law

"I've just downloaded and installed the Annotation software and it feels like I'm driving a Cadillac with a GPS. My first impression is that it's fabulous.  I look forward to making some after-factory improvements to customize it, but it's pretty cool as it is.

Thank you for all the work you put in. I make my students write a lot, and your tool will help me be a lot more efficient and patient with my commenting."

Madisun Browne
Assistant Professor
College of Law, University of Saskatchewan

If you’re a Legal Writing professor or teach legal studies, this product could revolutionize your working life—helping you to greatly reduce your grading time without sacrificing the quality of feedback you provide to your students.

Designed for Law and Paralegal Studies Faculty 350+ prewritten, plain-text comments Content authored by Professor Mitchell Nathanson of Villanova Law School Insert text as comment bubbles or inline text Edit labels, content, and add 300+ comments of your own! $95 per user	Edit 10 labels and their underlying  content Leverage Annotate's improvements to Microsoft Word's editing and commenting tools Free

See the Annotate for Word Legal Writing Edition Toolbar

The toolbar installs into Microsoft Word, and features plain-text buttons that insert both margin and inline comments. The margin comments improve upon Word's basic commenting process by making the comment bubbles larger and more legible for both faculty and students. Click on the image below to see a full-scale version.

About the Author

Professor Nathanson received his JD from the Georgetown University Law Center and his BA from Tulane University.  A Professor of Legal Writing at Villanova Law School, he has taught at the university for 11 years. He has teamed up with 11trees to create the Legal Writing Edition of Annotate for Word, software used by thousands of teachers and editors across the globe since 2008.

Much of Professor Nathanson's scholarship has focused on sports-related topics, specifically, the interplay between sport and society.  His recent book, The Fall of the 1977 Phillies: How a Baseball Team’s Collapse Sank a City’s Spirit (McFarland, 2008) was a social history of 20th century Philadelphia as told through the relationship between the city and its baseball teams – the Athletics and the Phillies.  A portion of this book was based on his article, The Irrelevance of Baseball’s Antitrust Exemption: A Historical Review, 58 Rutgers L. Rev. 1 (2005),which was awarded the 2006 McFarland-SABR Baseball Research Award, presented annually by the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) in recognition of the best historical or biographical articles of the year.