[Split] Track Changes v. Handwritten Redline Forum

[kaiser]

Strange comments ITT. Agree with the above. Handmarking documents is totally the norm and is usually easier for reviewers to read/comment on paper as opposed to a computer screen. The people who are railing against it in this thread clearly have not been in Biglaw.

What is the "norm" is entirely dependent on your firm and the folks you work with. Very few people I've worked with hand marks docs and I've worked for 2 biglaw firms over 7 years. Not sure why you think handmarking is easier for reviewers to read/comment on. The few times I've gotten handmarked-up docs, I often can't even read the chickenscratch and have to waste time going back to the partner to clarify what the markings and comments even say. No need to worry about messy handwriting or inconsistent use of marking symbols when done electronically.

[icansortofmath]

Only one partner/MD did this and I thought it was really good system.

He just changed the font of stuff he wanted changed to red and inserted a comment and made the interns and juniors make changes themselves.

I'm confused how this is easier/better than track changes?

To be clear I don’t think it is if we’re only concerned about time.

I think he did it so people can’t just accept all changes. We also worked a lot with PowerPoint decks where track changes still, to this day, isn’t very good and he wanted to just use one system.

[nixy]

Only one partner/MD did this and I thought it was really good system.

He just changed the font of stuff he wanted changed to red and inserted a comment and made the interns and juniors make changes themselves.

I'm confused how this is easier/better than track changes?

To be clear I don’t think it is if we’re only concerned about time.

I think he did it so people can’t just accept all changes. We also worked a lot with PowerPoint decks where track changes still, to this day, isn’t very good and he wanted to just use one system.

Ah, got it. Thanks.

[smokeylarue]

Strange comments ITT. Agree with the above. Handmarking documents is totally the norm and is usually easier for reviewers to read/comment on paper as opposed to a computer screen. The people who are railing against it in this thread clearly have not been in Biglaw.

oh ok brb gotta let my group know we're not in biglaw

I’ll wake up and realize it was all a dream and my life hasn’t been a waste being a biglaw attorney

This forum is basically entirely devoted to biglaw, so you telling people to not do something that is widely practiced in biglaw is just strange and poor advice.

[Anonymous User]

The inexperienced folks in this thread are really underestimating how much junior lawyers abuse track changes. Just off the top of my head I can think of 5 or 6 times where something like [NTD: PLEASE CONFORM THIS CHANGE THROUGHOUT AGREEMENT] ended up in the draft going to the other side (with the change, of course, not conformed).

A partner I work for, who has awful handwriting, gets around this by providing comments in track changes that he’s saved as a PDF. It works like a charm but man, if you want to see juniors get pissed off give them PDF track changes comments. They go nuts.

[icansortofmath]

Another one I see a lot is:

<<Date: ask/confirm with client>> or something similar gets accepted into doc without anyone noticing.

[rahulg91]

The inexperienced folks in this thread are really underestimating how much junior lawyers abuse track changes. Just off the top of my head I can think of 5 or 6 times where something like [NTD: PLEASE CONFORM THIS CHANGE THROUGHOUT AGREEMENT] ended up in the draft going to the other side (with the change, of course, not conformed).

A partner I work for, who has awful handwriting, gets around this by providing comments in track changes that he’s saved as a PDF. It works like a charm but man, if you want to see juniors get pissed off give them PDF track changes comments. They go nuts.

Is it really that hard to put that shit in a comment?

[rahulg91]

Strange comments ITT. Agree with the above. Handmarking documents is totally the norm and is usually easier for reviewers to read/comment on paper as opposed to a computer screen. The people who are railing against it in this thread clearly have not been in Biglaw.

oh ok brb gotta let my group know we're not in biglaw

I’ll wake up and realize it was all a dream and my life hasn’t been a waste being a biglaw attorney

This forum is basically entirely devoted to biglaw, so you telling people to not do something that is widely practiced in biglaw is just strange and poor advice.

Track changes is the norm for anyone that isn't an old (or inefficient) fart. HTHXOXO

[Carl Carlson]

Lol hand markups in the corporate world, much less in a field as writing-intensive as law, is definitely not best practice. I'm not sure where you guys work, but in all of the corporate jobs I've had, if a bunch of us were handing around hand-marked documents all day we'd be fired. There are no good arguments for it when something like Microsoft Word exists. You can say it's a personal preference, but there isn't any other justification for it.

As for the people claiming junior staff ignore your changes: you can make comments. You can also notify them what the proper way to do it is and/or walk them through it. If they still ignore you, then they are bad at their jobs and you should fire them.

[LaLiLuLeLo]

Strange comments ITT. Agree with the above. Handmarking documents is totally the norm and is usually easier for reviewers to read/comment on paper as opposed to a computer screen. The people who are railing against it in this thread clearly have not been in Biglaw.

oh ok brb gotta let my group know we're not in biglaw

I’ll wake up and realize it was all a dream and my life hasn’t been a waste being a biglaw attorney

This forum is basically entirely devoted to biglaw, so you telling people to not do something that is widely practiced in biglaw is just strange and poor advice.

lol well if it’s widely practiced it must be the best way of doing things, no doubt

Having shitty juniors who hit ACCEPT ALL CHANGES AND STOP TRACKING is not the fault of track changes. It’s having shitty juniors. And stuff gets missed or misplaced in a sentence when you have 5 different lines pointing at the same sentence (or maybe it’s the next sentence down?).

[totesTheGoat]

Another one I see a lot is:

<<Date: ask/confirm with client>> or something similar gets accepted into doc without anyone noticing.

This is a basic misuse of track changes. Track changes should be used for quick fixes like typos and minor revisions. If you need to change "your" to "you're", track changes is your friend. The entire purpose of track changes is to, well, track the changes so that the next person (the junior) can see what was changed in the latest version.

If you need somebody to follow up on something or apply it throughout the document, use the commenting feature. Why? 1) It doesn't clutter the latest version of the draft with stuff that shouldn't be in the final version. 2) It's a completely different tool from track changes, so a lazy junior associate won't accidentally delete the comments while accepting all tracked changes. 3) It allows you to track the status of your requests. For example, the junior could reply to your comment of "Date: ask/confirm with client" with "Confirmed with Jerry on 7/17" and mark the comment completed. Then you know, unambiguously, that your junior wasn't being lazy, and actually picked up the phone to call the client.

I'll add that the most common issue seems to revolve around applying the same change 100 places throughout the document. This isn't unique to the track changes/comment paradigm in Word. It's just as prevalent in hand-written markup. If you circle something and write "fix it throughout the document", there's just as much of a chance of them screwing it up. The leg up that Word has is the find/replace functionality. If it's a simple enough issue (a word or phrase that needs to be changed), the reviewer or junior attorney shouldn't leave it to their own eyes to catch every instance. Find/replace plays nice with track changes, so as soon as you see that it's a repetitive issue, run a simple replace command and fix it. If it's more complex than a simple replace, spend the 45 seconds to teach your junior how to use the replace function to iterate through each match and determine whether the replacement applies in that context.

The newer way I see some firms switching to is using OneNote or an e-ink tablet to put handwritten markup directly in the source file. I haven't seen what the redlining workflow looks like for those people, though. For all I know, it could be a PITA to convert to a revised draft.

[UnfrozenCaveman]

ctrl-alt-m: behold, a comment!

[inter-associate]

Lol hand markups in the corporate world, much less in a field as writing-intensive as law, is definitely not best practice. I'm not sure where you guys work, but in all of the corporate jobs I've had, if a bunch of us were handing around hand-marked documents all day we'd be fired. There are no good arguments for it when something like Microsoft Word exists. You can say it's a personal preference, but there isn't any other justification for it.

As for the people claiming junior staff ignore your changes: you can make comments. You can also notify them what the proper way to do it is and/or walk them through it. If they still ignore you, then they are bad at their jobs and you should fire them.

If you have never worked on documents at a law firm then it is unlikely you will understand what the best practice is. Law firms don't function like the rest of the corporate world (sometimes to our detriment), and even investment bankers are just as likely to provide hand markups as they are to send tracked changes.

If you have worked at a firm for a few years then you are more than entitled to an opinion on what works best for you. If you like tracked changes - fine. If you prefer hand markups - also fine. Just don't expect to walk in on day one and expect those who supervise you to go out of their way to make your life easier. My only goal every day is to clear off the increasingly large pile of crap that I am personally responsible for while delivering perfect product for clients. I don't have time to cater my style to each person who works under me, and the saying you can't teach an old dog new tricks isn't untrue here. Downtime to learn new skills just doesn't exist for me anymore, and it exists even less for those senior to me.

I do agree that the problem with junior's accepting all changes without paying attention is not remedied by a hand markup. Unless I know the junior well I generally review all changes I have hand marked before the docs go out the door, and I expect most folks who do comments in tracked changes do the same. Takes a long time for a junior to get to the point when I can comfortably hand off a markup and say "I don't need to see this again." My view on this point is that it is my job to get a perfect doc out the door, not the junior's. But if the junior is getting in my way (by ignoring comments, being sloppy or, to bring this back to topic of this thread, not being physically present during normal working hours) then he is not going to work for me for long.

[Daboose]

I think it just comes down to the fact that it is much faster/easier for senior lawyers to do hand markups and firms value their time more than juniors. We are paid by the hour so firms are not incentivized to be hyper efficient. Sure, clients are becoming more and more fee sensitive but they understand that part of using big law services is having to pay for inefficient junior work. Firms make their money by having juniors bill a lot of hours and keeping senior lawyers available to take on more deals and never turn down new work. As long as the overall bill for each deal is reasonable, seems like clients (at least in my practice) don't really care. They like the partner and senior associate to be engaged but as long as the work gets done correctly at a reasonable price, I don't think clients sweat the details of how we delegate work.

I think my firm has above average IT but my computer is still bogged down by a lot of security and document management software running in the background. In theory, track changes should be pretty quick but in practice my computer holds me back. Much easier to flip through printed copies than click on each document and wait for it to load then attach the track changes to an email. If you are looking at a batch of ancillary documents, that time can really add up. A well organized junior who is closer to the docs will be more efficient at opening up the documents, incorporate the changes and generally giving the doc another look over/scrub as needed before saving it back to the system and sending it out to the client or whoever.

[objctnyrhnr]

I think it just comes down to the fact that it is much faster/easier for senior lawyers to do hand markups and firms value their time more than juniors. We are paid by the hour so firms are not incentivized to be hyper efficient. Sure, clients are becoming more and more fee sensitive but they understand that part of using big law services is having to pay for inefficient junior work. Firms make their money by having juniors bill a lot of hours and keeping senior lawyers available to take on more deals and never turn down new work. As long as the overall bill for each deal is reasonable, seems like clients (at least in my practice) don't really care. They like the partner and senior associate to be engaged but as long as the work gets done correctly at a reasonable price, I don't think clients sweat the details of how we delegate work.

I think my firm has above average IT but my computer is still bogged down by a lot of security and document management software running in the background. In theory, track changes should be pretty quick but in practice my computer holds me back. Much easier to flip through printed copies than click on each document and wait for it to load then attach the track changes to an email. If you are looking at a batch of ancillary documents, that time can really add up. A well organized junior who is closer to the docs will be more efficient at opening up the documents, incorporate the changes and generally giving the doc another look over/scrub as needed before saving it back to the system and sending it out to the client or whoever.

If you are working in non govt or non shitlaw (and frankly even if you are), and your computer, alone, literally makes it even a tad inefficient to use comments/tracked changes on your computer, then a mediocre junior associate is very far from your firm’s biggest problem.

I’d lose my mind if my computer slowed me down even for a quarter second while hanging out edits/comments. But maybe it’s just me and maybe I’m spoiled at my firm.

[totesTheGoat]

I think my firm has above average IT but my computer is still bogged down by a lot of security and document management software running in the background. In theory, track changes should be pretty quick but in practice my computer holds me back. Much easier to flip through printed copies than click on each document and wait for it to load then attach the track changes to an email.

If that's what above average IT looks like, then I don't want to see what below average IT looks like. Does the responsiveness change when you leave the office, or is it that bad all around? I could see that being a strike against working remotely if there was some locally hosted data server and working remotely significantly cut down on the responsiveness of documents.

Personally, I use a combo of OneDrive and our asset database to deal with documents. Both services are cloud hosted, so they're just as fast whether I'm at home or at the office. It's not ideal to have to mess with the asset db since it's a legacy black box system and we can't program it to do things like download all relevant documents into a shared OneDrive folder, but it would take longer for the printer to finish the job than it takes for me to pop open a set of short documents and review them.

I guess someday I should stop being shocked and appalled at the level of tech aversion in law. I came from the software engineering world where everything was a few lines of code away from being automated and/or streamlined. It blew my mind the first day in the firm when a partner dropped a stack of accordion folders on my desk. It also blew my mind how much importance lawyers place on facetime. I've been led by managers 3 time zones away and I've managed teams that were halfway around the world. There are some drawbacks (like 1am meetings), but it largely worked well. Anyway, I'll shut up before I get going too much with this rant.

[Carl Carlson]

Lol hand markups in the corporate world, much less in a field as writing-intensive as law, is definitely not best practice. I'm not sure where you guys work, but in all of the corporate jobs I've had, if a bunch of us were handing around hand-marked documents all day we'd be fired. There are no good arguments for it when something like Microsoft Word exists. You can say it's a personal preference, but there isn't any other justification for it.

As for the people claiming junior staff ignore your changes: you can make comments. You can also notify them what the proper way to do it is and/or walk them through it. If they still ignore you, then they are bad at their jobs and you should fire them.

If you have never worked on documents at a law firm then it is unlikely you will understand what the best practice is. Law firms don't function like the rest of the corporate world (sometimes to our detriment), and even investment bankers are just as likely to provide hand markups as they are to send tracked changes.

If you have worked at a firm for a few years then you are more than entitled to an opinion on what works best for you. If you like tracked changes - fine. If you prefer hand markups - also fine. Just don't expect to walk in on day one and expect those who supervise you to go out of their way to make your life easier. My only goal every day is to clear off the increasingly large pile of crap that I am personally responsible for while delivering perfect product for clients. I don't have time to cater my style to each person who works under me, and the saying you can't teach an old dog new tricks isn't untrue here. Downtime to learn new skills just doesn't exist for me anymore, and it exists even less for those senior to me.

I do agree that the problem with junior's accepting all changes without paying attention is not remedied by a hand markup. Unless I know the junior well I generally review all changes I have hand marked before the docs go out the door, and I expect most folks who do comments in tracked changes do the same. Takes a long time for a junior to get to the point when I can comfortably hand off a markup and say "I don't need to see this again." My view on this point is that it is my job to get a perfect doc out the door, not the junior's. But if the junior is getting in my way (by ignoring comments, being sloppy or, to bring this back to topic of this thread, not being physically present during normal working hours) then he is not going to work for me for long.

I don't think the process of drafting a document, reviewing a document, and editing a document is unique to the legal industry. I would venture to say 99% of any type of large business uses Microsoft Word and not handwriting as the standard. Unless you work in calligraphy or some other computer-free industry, handwriting is never more efficient. That increasingly large pile of crap on your desk is going to stay that way when you force inefficient processes in managing that pile to stay in place. Sorry to say, and I understand keeping with technology can be hard for anyone, but if you can't learn Microsoft Word, have you considered maybe it isn't the juniors that are the problem?

This isn't about catering to any one person's preference. It's what's best for the firm. As partners/senior management, I would think you have more stake in running a more competitive and efficient business. I actually doubt most junior-level employees care how the business is doing as long as they continue to get paid.

And no matter how slow your computer is, there is nothing slower than printing out a physical copy of a digital document, walking to the printers and picking it up, walking it to another person, and then having that person transcribe it back into a computer.

As an aside, most of the pro-hand markup comments in here could easily have been pulled from any generic MBA class/corporate seminar on what not to do as managers. I used to think a lot of that stuff was kumbaya bs, but I guess I've been fortunate enough to work in places to not have to deal with it.

[Daboose]

Our firm uses iManage, which I think it pretty standard in big law and is just clunky when combined with word. Our clients also keep demanding greater and greater security for their sensitive docs so we have a lot of security software running in the background that just generally slows things down even if I am working with a local copy of document. I've worked at three firms and the one I am at now is the best but still not great. From people that have lateraled from other firms, this seems par for the course.

What I've learned is that you have to leverage what your firm offers. We have 24/7 copy center and word processing. If I want to print a document, it takes 20 seconds to send a quick note forwarding the docs and asking the copy center to print and deliver to me. If I want to turn hand comments and dupe out 20 versions of a single form, I just take a couple minutes and write some instructions and send to word processing. I found my quality of life as a junior associate increased greatly when I started leveraging the admin services at my firm.

To take it back to OP's point, if you have great admin support, it also makes it much easier to work remotely. If I am working with a partner that likes to print out everything, I just ask the copy center to send a printed copy to him after I flip him the document via email - just a little extra effort to make their life easier to make up for any inconvenience of me working remotely. And I let my assistant know that if anyone is looking for me to pass along some hand written comments to just to take them and scan them and send to me and let whoever know that I will call them with any questions.

[Monochromatic Oeuvre]

Keep telling myself to leave this thread alone because I am contributing to it going off the rails, but why is it a problem that I do mark-ups by hand? No problem with folks using track changes, but for me it is so much easier to nail my review when I print out the doc and mark it up by hand. Don't think my way is the best approach, but it works for me and many others at my level of seniority so I don't see a need to change.

One thing that younger associates often fail to realize is that for the vast majority of them their time in biglaw is a very short stop in their legal career. They come and go and are really there for the convenience of the more senior folks. Not saying we shouldn't try to make a miserable profession more palatable, but my view is that new associates should first learn to succeed within the system. Once they have a few years under their belts they can (and do) help make changes based on their experiences/preferences/etc. Expecting the system to cater to the younger generation when they haven't even gotten their feet wet is backwards.

Again, apologies for taking this off the rails. I continue to stand by my view that working remotely is fine if it works for those you interact with. Just don't think there is necessarily going to be a dramatic cultural shift in the near term, and I don't feel obligated to make it happen.

LOL

Seniors: "Do everything my way; you're here for my convenience!"

Also seniors: "Why do juniors turn over at such a high rate?"

[Anonymous User]

I'm kind of surprised that no one has discussed in any level of detail the value of hand-markups on redlined corporate docs both for speed and for making clear what the changes actually are in a way that can be helpful for learning as a junior. I can't imagine a partner taking the time to copy and paste all the deleted text when they could just right STET or STET as marked and give on a few things. It's definitely not just the difference of typing speed vs handwriting.

Also most of the partners/seniors at my firm are doing the hand markups on iPad pros so don't really think it's a technology aversion. Am I alone in this experience?

[inter-associate]

Keep telling myself to leave this thread alone because I am contributing to it going off the rails, but why is it a problem that I do mark-ups by hand? No problem with folks using track changes, but for me it is so much easier to nail my review when I print out the doc and mark it up by hand. Don't think my way is the best approach, but it works for me and many others at my level of seniority so I don't see a need to change.

One thing that younger associates often fail to realize is that for the vast majority of them their time in biglaw is a very short stop in their legal career. They come and go and are really there for the convenience of the more senior folks. Not saying we shouldn't try to make a miserable profession more palatable, but my view is that new associates should first learn to succeed within the system. Once they have a few years under their belts they can (and do) help make changes based on their experiences/preferences/etc. Expecting the system to cater to the younger generation when they haven't even gotten their feet wet is backwards.

Again, apologies for taking this off the rails. I continue to stand by my view that working remotely is fine if it works for those you interact with. Just don't think there is necessarily going to be a dramatic cultural shift in the near term, and I don't feel obligated to make it happen.

LOL

Seniors: "Do everything my way; you're here for my convenience!"

Also seniors: "Why do juniors turn over at such a high rate?"

Only half right. I don’t think anyone cares that much about associate turnover. Most efforts to curb it are just for PR reasons. System only works when most folks leave by year 5, and there is no shortage of laterals waiting in line to take advantage of any immediate needs.

[inter-associate]

Lol hand markups in the corporate world, much less in a field as writing-intensive as law, is definitely not best practice. I'm not sure where you guys work, but in all of the corporate jobs I've had, if a bunch of us were handing around hand-marked documents all day we'd be fired. There are no good arguments for it when something like Microsoft Word exists. You can say it's a personal preference, but there isn't any other justification for it.

As for the people claiming junior staff ignore your changes: you can make comments. You can also notify them what the proper way to do it is and/or walk them through it. If they still ignore you, then they are bad at their jobs and you should fire them.

If you have never worked on documents at a law firm then it is unlikely you will understand what the best practice is. Law firms don't function like the rest of the corporate world (sometimes to our detriment), and even investment bankers are just as likely to provide hand markups as they are to send tracked changes.

If you have worked at a firm for a few years then you are more than entitled to an opinion on what works best for you. If you like tracked changes - fine. If you prefer hand markups - also fine. Just don't expect to walk in on day one and expect those who supervise you to go out of their way to make your life easier. My only goal every day is to clear off the increasingly large pile of crap that I am personally responsible for while delivering perfect product for clients. I don't have time to cater my style to each person who works under me, and the saying you can't teach an old dog new tricks isn't untrue here. Downtime to learn new skills just doesn't exist for me anymore, and it exists even less for those senior to me.

I do agree that the problem with junior's accepting all changes without paying attention is not remedied by a hand markup. Unless I know the junior well I generally review all changes I have hand marked before the docs go out the door, and I expect most folks who do comments in tracked changes do the same. Takes a long time for a junior to get to the point when I can comfortably hand off a markup and say "I don't need to see this again." My view on this point is that it is my job to get a perfect doc out the door, not the junior's. But if the junior is getting in my way (by ignoring comments, being sloppy or, to bring this back to topic of this thread, not being physically present during normal working hours) then he is not going to work for me for long.

I don't think the process of drafting a document, reviewing a document, and editing a document is unique to the legal industry. I would venture to say 99% of any type of large business uses Microsoft Word and not handwriting as the standard. Unless you work in calligraphy or some other computer-free industry, handwriting is never more efficient. That increasingly large pile of crap on your desk is going to stay that way when you force inefficient processes in managing that pile to stay in place. Sorry to say, and I understand keeping with technology can be hard for anyone, but if you can't learn Microsoft Word, have you considered maybe it isn't the juniors that are the problem?

This isn't about catering to any one person's preference. It's what's best for the firm. As partners/senior management, I would think you have more stake in running a more competitive and efficient business. I actually doubt most junior-level employees care how the business is doing as long as they continue to get paid.

And no matter how slow your computer is, there is nothing slower than printing out a physical copy of a digital document, walking to the printers and picking it up, walking it to another person, and then having that person transcribe it back into a computer.

As an aside, most of the pro-hand markup comments in here could easily have been pulled from any generic MBA class/corporate seminar on what not to do as managers. I used to think a lot of that stuff was kumbaya bs, but I guess I've been fortunate enough to work in places to not have to deal with it.

This is Exhibit A on why folks that haven't worked at law firms before should not be commenting on what works at law firms. It is just a different industry altogether, kind of like medicine. Processes are in place to address industry specific issues and risks. From the outside we all think that there are more efficient ways of doing things based on our perception of the world, but until you have functioned in that world it is hard to have a meaningful discussion about it. Not saying there aren't many things in the corporate world that would help law firms - just suggesting that you walk a few days in our shoes before you start throwing solutions around.

[totesTheGoat]

It is just a different industry altogether, kind of like medicine.

Last time I was in the emergency room, all of the nurses and the doctor had tablet computers with an electronic patient management system. I don't recall seeing a single strip of actual paper until they discharged us. I'm sure there are still some medical facilities operating with paper files, but I haven't encountered one in probably 5 years.

Processes are in place to address industry specific issues and risks.

Care to explain what issues and risks Word's track changes functionality brings? "The juniors are lazy and make mistakes" isn't a responsive answer, "it takes longer" isn't really true, and "the juniors won't learn from it" is laughable for a number of reasons.

[LaLiLuLeLo]

I still think the best part of this thread is condescending everyone who doesn’t like hand markups as not working in biglaw or juniors.

[Daboose]

It is just a different industry altogether, kind of like medicine.

Last time I was in the emergency room, all of the nurses and the doctor had tablet computers with an electronic patient management system. I don't recall seeing a single strip of actual paper until they discharged us. I'm sure there are still some medical facilities operating with paper files, but I haven't encountered one in probably 5 years.

Processes are in place to address industry specific issues and risks.

Care to explain what issues and risks Word's track changes functionality brings? "The juniors are lazy and make mistakes" isn't a responsive answer, "it takes longer" isn't really true, and "the juniors won't learn from it" is laughable for a number of reasons.

Interesting point. A lot of doctors will tell you that electronic medical records significantly slow them down and they can't see as many patients. No doubt it is the way of the future and has its own advantages but it's not like there are any drawbacks or quirks that need to be worked out. Doctors can check the boxes on a handwritten form much quicker and have better patient engagement versus just typing on a keyboard while they do the interview.

I know I've weighed in here as being pro handwritten markups but I don't feel that strongly about it. I just don't think track changes is some perfect solution.