Category Archives: iPhone

Free Westlaw News App Has Legal Content

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Posted in Apps, Business Information, iPad, iPhone, News, U.S., Westlaw | Tagged , , ,

The major legal publishers do not seem to have much vision when it comes to their legal research apps (here and here) but there are some gems in their news tools.  The free Thomson Reuters News Pro tool is mostly just press releases and I didn’t think it is particularly helpful, although it was nice to see an app that had been developed for Android as well as for the Apple products.

One iPhone only app that is legal specific (and not listed on the list of Westlaw-related apps and mobile sites on the Westlaw Web site, above) is the Westlaw News and Insight app for iPhone and iPad, powered by Reuters Legal.  It has national (US) legal news, bankruptcy news, and California and securities litigation updates.  It is full content, without needing a password, and is a great resource if you practice in the areas covered.  The national news section actually covers many practice areas, so there is likely to be some relevant content for just about any lawyer.

Westlaw US News and Insights: National Legal Newsq

Westlaw US News and Insights: National Legal News

Some of the content has hyperlinks, outside the app and to public Web sites.  Funnily enough, Westlaw hasn’t bothered to include links to its own content, like a case mentioned in the text.  This would seem to be an obvious opportunity to get people to access content within their proprietary environment.

Case Citation in Westlaw News and Insights App Not Hyperlinked

Case Citation in Westlaw News and Insights App Not Hyperlinked

The app is not limited to news, however, and I was impressed by their inclusion of court documents.  These are provided as full text, scanned PDFs so that you can get directly to the source after reading about a case.

Westlaw News and Insight Case Document PDF with Magnifying Glass

Westlaw News and Insight Case Document PDF with Magnifying Glass

All in all, a good app to add to your Apple portable device and see if it becomes a part of your research toolkit.  It takes advantage of browsing, which is a nice change to the rather limited search on other legal research apps.

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LexisNexis Canada Adds Quicklaw iPhone App

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Posted in Apps, Canada, Case Law, iPhone, LexisNexis | Tagged

Update:  The following review was done using an iPod Touch 2G.  LexisNexis Canada has confirmed that it was designed for Apple 3G and 4G products, which explains some of the results outlined below.

Legal publishers continue to lag in getting mobile apps to their users.  Fastcase.com was first out the door over a year ago with an iPhone app which has garnered a lot of praise from users.  WestlawNext has an iPad app but otherwise the Thomson Reuters approach seems to be mobile Web sites, rather than apps, although their presentation of mobile offerings doesn’t appear to actually show all of their options.  Apparently, you can still rock it old school with Westlaw’s Palm OS clipping tool!  Blackberry and Android users are still relying on mobile Web sites.

This is the environment into which LexisNexis Canada releases its brand new iPhone app for its legal research service Quicklaw.  It follows the lead of the US LexisNexis app, which offers case name and citation look up. I was able to log in with my personalized LexisNexis profile as well as with a typical LexisNexis username and password.

As an app goes, it is pretty straight forward.  You can either select to search by a case name or search by a citation.  When you type in your search, it retrieves a document.  Wait, did I say A?  That was the odd thing.  I tried a couple of searches based on a single party name (try Strother, for example) and retrieved one document.  The case was formatted cleanly but I know that there are more results.  In fact, when I received an error message that the document I requested was too large and I should retry my search on Quicklaw, I did retry the search at the full Web site.  I retrieved 30+ hits using the same search-by-name form.

Once you have retrieved a document, you can share it (e-mail, etc.) or you can run it through LexisNexis’ citator, Quickcite.  The screen automatically rotates to landscape mode and the results are displayed in a clean version of the full Quickcite screen.

LexisNexis Canada Quicklaw iPhone App Quickcite Results

LexisNexis Canada Quicklaw iPhone App Quickcite Results

And that’s it.  It is a very basic app and, based on the single document retrieval, not a very useful one.  The citation search may be more useful if you are pulling up a case and you know the cite, but I don’t see any value in the case name search.

It also seems to have time out issues.  I was testing the app on an iPod Touch with a WiFi connection and expected it to come along pretty quickly.  But I had a half dozen error messages, most of which seemed to be time out errors rather than the reasons included in the error (document too big, etc.).  If I reran the search, I often was able to get the final result.

LexisNexis Canada Qucklaw iPhone App Error Message

LexisNexis Canada Qucklaw iPhone App Error Message

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Print Off Your Research Through the Cloud

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Posted in Android, Apps, BlackBerry, iPad, iPhone, Macintosh, Windows | Tagged , ,

One of the challenges lawyers will face as they become more mobile is how to manage their information. There are obvious ways if you can keep it electronic: print to PDF or save it in its native format and upload it your cloud-based storage or e-mail it as an attachment. There are some documents that you may need to save in print and we are starting to see some interesting options developing for printing from anywhere. While Google Cloud Print is getting a lot of press, it is not the only game in town.

Let’s look at Google Cloud Print first.  When it was initially released, it would only find locally-connected printers.  So despite leveraging the Internet, networked printers weren’t available.  That’s changed and – once you’ve configured it through Google Chrome – I can now see both my networked laser printer as well as my locally installed printers, both physical and virtual, like PDF printers.  It’s free but it’s usefulness is limited.  It will only work from Cloud Print enabled resources, and there aren’t many.  It’s obviously early days, though, and this is going to have a big impact for mobile researchers.

Printershare is an alternative and it has a free version that is essentially a trial.  You can print 20 pages and then you need to upgrade. Mobile users may be particularly interested in Printershare because you can print from just about anything and it will find nearby printers using WiFi and bluetooth networks.  Using the Printershare Android app, I could locate nearby printers as well as printing back to my own, remotely shared printer.  Printershare is available for Windows, Mac, iPhone, and Android.

PrinterOn is another print-via-the-Internet resource, based here in Canada.  You can download and install your own free version of their PrintWhere software.  They also offer an iPhone/iPad app as well as one for Blackberry.  Once installed, the PrintWhere software discovers available printers.  When you send a print job, it is encrypted and sent from PrinterOn’s servers to your printer.  I wasn’t successful at getting their software to run, but I’m inclined to see it as a problem with my machine (and perhaps Windows’ firewall) in light of the success they’re having bringing PrintSpot (printing hot spots) online.

There are other ways to print remotely by configuring your network to allow Internet-based print requests to come in and find your printer.  That’s great if you’re comfortable managing that set up, but I’m going to keep my eyes on cloud-based printing as it seems to be the easier way to have printer access when I’m away from my network.

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Mobile Lawyers Can Take Note of Catch

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Posted in Android, Evernote, iPhone, Iterasi, Mobile, Research Notebooks, Social media | Tagged

There are a number of online research notebook tools, including Evernote and Iterasi, but these can sometimes be overwhelming.  Mobile users have an alternative for grabbing information while on the go in Catch.com.  It is a note-taking tool that is available on Android devices, the iPhone, and iPad.  As you grab images, Web addresses, and type notes, it can save and synchronize them out to the Catch.com site.  You can also work directly at Catch.com to type in your notes.

Like many new Web sites providing information management tools, Catch utilizes tags to help you organize your notes.  Unlike a lot of sites, where the tags are distinct from the content – you usually click on a list of words after creating your content – the tags are built into your content.  As you type, you place a hash tag (or shebang) # in front of the word, and it becomes a tag.  All subsequent notes can adopt the same tag, giving you a controlled vocabulary so that you can reuse the same keywords – same spelling, etc. – and connect up related notes.  Each tagged word becomes a clickable link, so you can retrieve all related notes by clicking on the tagged word and, if you want to retrieve a different group, just click on a new keyword.

Catch also has a sharing feature, where you can send out a Twitter message or Facebook post with a link to your online note.  I’m not sure lawyers would want to share in such a broadcast manner, but it’s an interesting idea that you could send a link to someone by e-mail and they could view the item.

I’m not a heavy mobile device user but I can see how this would be great for spontaneous information capture, as opposed to research requiring notebooks.

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