Real lawyers use WordPerfect

30 September 2009 • Ricardo J. Bascuas • 9 Comments » • Tags: None

The Powers That Be keep asking me what we’ll need for the clinic next semester. So, the other day I ordered some blue and red Paper Mate Flairs. Today, I’m going to have my assistant get some of the good legal pads (by which I mean Ampad Dual Pads, obviously). I spent yesterday flipping through potential course materials and asking advice of Prof. Sarah Schrup, who runs Northwestern Law’s wildly popular Seventh Circuit clinic and Supreme Court clinic. Then, I spoke with one of our research librarians about getting us a PACER account, so that we don’t have to use DOM’s. Tomorrow I’ll go downtown to the FPD’s Office to continue talking about how and when we will select cases. And then I guess we’ll be more or less ready. (Application information can be downloaded from the sidebar.)

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Except that this morning I realized we’re going to have the word processing issue. Students think Microsoft Word is an acceptable word processor. Because they don’t know any better. Those of us who processed words before 1987 know that Word is just barely serviceable and that— because it sports tons of useless “features” strewn about a labyrinthine agglomeration of nested menus that it tries to explain with that infuriating dancing paper clip—it is really not much of an improvement over just dictating entire briefs to a secretary with an IBM Selectric. It is so embarrassingly deficient that it’s hard to find anyone who used WordPerfect before using Word who doesn’t deeply despise Redmond’s product. In fact, I run a virtual Windows machine on all of my Macs solely so that I can run WordPerfect. (They no longer make a Mac version.) In fact, the early 1980’s versions of WordStar are in some ways better than today’s Word. And in fact, that is why many lawyers and the federal judiciary and the Department of Justice use WordPerfect to this day. So, now I have to figure out how to surmount this little obstacle.

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9 Comments on “Real lawyers use WordPerfect”

  1. 1 Anonymous said at 4:08 pm on September 30th, 2009:

    the government still uses wordperfect because it’s years behind on everything it does….. what else is new?

  2. 2 Anonymous said at 6:07 pm on September 30th, 2009:

    I really, really want to be a law professor when I grow up.

  3. 3 Anonymous said at 6:27 pm on September 30th, 2009:

    Apple Pages

  4. 4 Anonymous said at 11:17 pm on September 30th, 2009:

    Make them use Open Office; X4 interoperates with it, more or less.

  5. 5 Anonymous said at 12:17 pm on October 1st, 2009:

    Ditch the Flairs. Everyone knows the Pilot Precise V7 fine point rolling ball is the best writing instrument around.

  6. 6 Carl Spagnuolo, Esq. Palm Beach Gardens, FL said at 12:21 pm on October 1st, 2009:

    FINALLY, Somebody stated the truth, and so well done! The Emperor has no clothes, and MS-WORD is thoroughly non-functional. To respond to the comment above about the government’s use of WordPerfect – The Masses use MS-WORD just as cattle aimlessly and mindlessly follow one another. They have no reason, they just do it because it’s being done by everybody else. End of story.

  7. 7 Anonymous said at 3:05 pm on October 1st, 2009:

    Corel offers an academic license at a discounted price that is less than any text book. Schools have no problem forcing students to pay for pricey books, why not force them to pay for software that will be useful after they graduate?

  8. 8 Suzie said at 4:38 pm on October 23rd, 2009:

    I’m a lawyer and recently took a job at a place that uses Word exclusively. I was hired to do a complete overhaul of the organization’s constitution. Lots and lots of indenting paragraphs. Indent in WordPerfect? Press the F7 key. In Word? Move cursor to toolbar; find teeny tiny triangle; press down on left of mouse; hold and move the triangle! Word is a nightmare! I agree that real lawyers use WordPerfect; anyone who’s logical uses WordPerfect.

  9. 9 Anonymous said at 9:45 pm on October 26th, 2009:

    The computers in the law library have Word Perfect…