I have not used Word for a month and to get my job done I must use WordPerfect much of the day to get the job done. This isn't due to my lack of knowledge of Word as I am already as proficient as the product. I also found when I contact paralegals who have only used Word for years, they are either frustrated by the same "problems" or it has never occurred to them there was a better way to accomplish the task.

Before becoming an attorney, I was as a medical software architect trained to focus on efficiency and error elimination. My biggest gripe with Word is that it is horribly inefficient in the things I need as an attorney which is constant word-processing. Granted the product provides many excellent features I appreciate but do not use regularly or may never use. Nonetheless, that is never an excuse to make a product less efficient for its primary purpose.

I don't question your assertion MS made the product as is due to majority requests from corporations. Large corporate installs are important, but the majority of most markets are usually smaller companies. It is possible to appease both markets. It would be just as easy to option to lock the menus to prevent this problem and still provide the versatility others need. The only efficient thing I can see that MS did for the legal profession was for themselves by giving the software to government entities so they would require the rest of us to buy and use it.