Table of authoritiesHow to build a table of authorities without uploading your brief

A table of authorities is hours of careful, dull work, and most tools that automate it want the brief on their servers. This one builds it in your browser from the citations it finds there.

A guide from Zero Witness · September 27, 2026

The short answer

Drop the brief, as a PDF, into the free citation checker, check its citations, and press Table of authorities. You get every authority sorted under its heading with the pages it appears on, ready to copy into Word or download as text. The brief is read in your browser and never uploaded; only the citation numbers are sent, to check them.

What goes in it

  • Cases, alphabetical, with a leading “The” set aside. Unreported decisions cited by docket number sit among them, as a table of authorities lists them.
  • Statutes (the U.S. Code), Regulations (the C.F.R.), the Federal Register, and Rules: the federal rules and court rules together.
  • Each authority once, with every page it appears on. A short form such as “570 U.S. at 360” counts toward its case.

How to do it

  1. Save the brief as a PDF from Word. The page numbers come from the PDF; a Word file or pasted text has none to read.
  2. Open the checker and drop the PDF on it. The citations are found in your browser, and you see the list before anything is sent.
  3. Press Check these. Only each citation’s volume, reporter and page are sent.
  4. Press Table of authorities. Then Copy (it pastes into Word as formatted text) or Download .txt, with dot leaders to the page column.

What to check before you file

  • Page numbers are the PDF’s own count, with the cover as page 1, not the numbers printed on the brief. If your front matter is numbered separately, adjust them.
  • “Id.” and “supra” are not counted, so a page where a case appears only that way is missing from its entry. There is no “passim”: every page is listed.
  • Case names are the court’s own, as our copy of the law records them, so they may not match your citation style word for word.
  • It lists what it found. A citation in a form it doesn’t read, or to a state statute, won’t appear. Read it against the brief.

The same check tells you whether each case exists, whether it is the case the brief names, and whether your quotations are in it. See how to catch a fabricated citation before you file.

Inside a matter

In Legal Matters, the workspace for a whole case, the table is offered before anything is sent at all, and it uses the names your draft gives each case.

Related guides: How to catch a fabricated citation before you file · How to get a deposition summary from AI that you can check · Can you put client information into an AI chatbot?. All guides.

Questions

No. It’s read in your browser. Only each citation’s volume, reporter and page are sent, to check that the case exists, and you see the list before they go. The table itself is built in your browser.

They are the PDF’s own page count, with the cover as page 1, not the numbers printed on the brief. Adjust them if your front matter is numbered separately.

No. Every page a case appears on is listed, and you can replace a long run with passim yourself.

Yes, with no account and no sign-in.

Build a table of authorities Free. No account. The brief stays on your computer.