Legal Assistant

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CAUTION - the publications referred to on this page have been written for foreign legal systems. Do not rely on them for any information about the law or legal practice in Australia.

Dictionaries

Dictionary - Legal Terms (Canadian) - Canadian, but very comprehensive and some good explanations. See also Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of Law and West's Encyclopedia of American Law
Dictionary & Thesaurus
Dictionary of new words and phrases Dictionary of new words and phrases as they evolve
Thesaurus Visual - word maps that blossom with meanings and branch to related words. Hear words pronounced correctly.
Glossary of terms used in relation to land

Plain English Lexicon is a free download (I could only get the download to work in Internet Explorer). It is a guide as to whether or not your words will be understood and suggests alternative plain English words.

Writing Skills & Document Assembly

An excellent book on improving writing skills for everyone in a legal office is English Essentials - "The wouldn't-be-without-it guide to writing well". It is written by Mem Fox and Lyn Wilkinson and published by Macmillan.

Email Etiquette

Netiquette. "Netiquette" is network etiquette, the do's and don'ts of online communication.

Netiquette covers both common courtesy online and the informal "rules of the road" of cyberspace.

Useful and Useless Tools

Dealing with Difficult Clients
Paralegals Handbook (friendly advice)
Screen Cleaner
Computer Tan
Stretch Clock - a reminder and short video to stand and stretch every hour

Help Us Improve

Please give us feedback about your experiences using Foolkit and ideas for improvements.

Microsoft & Shortcuts

Hands-on pointers for Everyday Applications
The Word MVPS website is a collection of articles by experts on Word for PC. There are tutorials, general instructions and answers to specific problems (like good old numbering). Topics include Formatting, Macros/VBA, Mail Merge, Numbering and Tables, Fields & Forms.
60 indispensable Microsoft Word tips (free registration - but worth it)
75 essential Excel tips (free registration - but worth it)
ASAP Utilities - The essential free add-in for Excel users
KeyXL is a database of keyboard shortcuts and tips.
Excel shortcut keys
Firefox shortcut keys
Internet Explorer shortcut keys
Outlook shorcut keys
Word shortcut keys
2007 Microsoft Office Add-in: Save as PDF (Free)

Open Office

Open Office is the free alternative to Microsoft's software for use in the office.

Open Office can open Word documents and save its own documents in Word format.

Open Office has a toolbar like the older versions of Word, rather than the ribbon used in Word 2007. It has a more user friendly method of automatic numbering of paragraphs. If you have a document with complex numbering and Word is the standard software in your office, then consider preparing the document in Open Office then saving it as a Word document.

There is also a lot of other free open source software available. See the Open Source Software Primer for the Solo and Small Firm Lawyer.