For law students and lawyers alike, one thing most of us have in common is that we type way too much.  Another things that we all have in common is that we all tend to type the same, long words, day after day.  That’s why I’m always surprised to see that people are not taking advantage of a feature built right into Microsoft Word to make our lives easier.

It’s sort of a hack, because the AutoCorrect feature is primarily intended to catch misspellings and automatically correct them, but why not use it to your advantage?  It’s fast because you don’t have to run any external software, and it’s easy to set up.

Note: This tutorial was prepared using Word 2007.

Step 1: Open word.  (1) Click on the stupid Windows button on the top left-hand corner, and (2) click on Word Options.

Step 2: Select the (3) Proofing tab, then click on (4) AutoCorrect Options…

Step 3:  Type the shorthand version of the word you want to add to box (5) and the longhand version in box (6).  Click Add.  Repeat as necessary.

Now for some hints.  Don’t use a shorthand version of words in your native language.  For instance: test could be short for testator, but you probably don’t want to replace test with testator all the time.  For cases like that, I usually use an underscore ( _ ) as a prefix.  So test would be _test.  It’s quick, and quicker than writing testator.  In the case of symbols, this can save a lot of time.  I set _s to replace with the section symbol.

When you start adding symbols and replacing entire phrases with acronyms, this can be a serious time-saver.

Do you all have any other time-saving Word tips?