Courts Enter Contract for Microsoft Office The Administrative Office of the United States Courts announced today that it "has entered into a multi-year contract to provide the Microsoft Office Professional office productivity software suite to the judiciary. The Microsoft Office Professional suite includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access and several other software applications broadly used in the courts. This centrally funded contract provides the judiciary with immediate rights to the current version of Microsoft Office Professional 2003, as well as Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2007, scheduled for release early next calendar year."
The District of Utah made Microsoft Word available in chambers in early 2006, to facilitate counsel's submission of orders in that format. Microsoft Word predominates in law offices nationally and has proven to be a predominant format in draft orders submitted to chambers by email, under the District of Utah Administrative Procedures. The availability of the entire Microsoft Office suite to all federal courts will further enable courts and counsel to integrate better.
The announcement memo states "Corel WordPerfect will continue to be the judiciary’s standard desktop word processing application."  ¶ 8:15 PM