[jaredchung]

Well yes, if you constrain the solution set to satisfy "requires no additional software to learn" then you'll end up with the status quo solution.

One thing I've always been concerned about when negotiating a legal agreement is how I verify that the tracked changes actually track every change. Because Word lets the user decide which changes to track, I'm always reading the untracked sections as well to confirm that no other changes were sneakily introduced. That's something that git addresses well. Does Word have a solution there? If not, does that ever concern you?

[citizenkeen]

As a former attorney, I'd just do a diff. Save a copy, reject all changes, then do a diff and compare side by side. As a current software engineer, Word is definitely sufficient (and understood, which sf good) for two small adversarial teams. Key words being small (two huge firms negotiating a huge deal should not be using Word) and adversarial: I think a lot of times when tech-people suggest lawyers could do a better job they forget the other side isn't trying to be helpful.

[sjy]

Two huge firms negotiating a huge deal probably are in fact using Word, right?

[ska]

This is why you always do a diff.

In my limited experience, Word is used for the early back and forth, but final stages are done and reviewed in PDFs, and PDF diff tools used to identify any changes. No reason you couldn't do the same thing all in Word.

It does have such a tool, you would have rev A (old one) then collapse all the tracked changes in rev B and diff with A.

[loteck]

There is a Compare feature in Word exactly for use in these cases.