The second edition is almost here! I have rewritten and expanded the original text – about 20% longer as well as significantly updated to reflect changes since the first edition came out in 2010 – and have been reviewing the final galley proofs as we move towards publishing in February. As we get closer to releasing the new edition, look for updates here.
The proprietary legal research databases LexisNexis and Westlaw have structured their case law content so that you can easily dig into select parts of a court’s opinion. One frequently sought piece of information is to find in which cases your opposing counsel has appeared. This is a straightforward search, focusing on the counsel segment or field (more on LexisNexis segments, and Westlaw segments).
But what if you are searching other case law sites, particularly the free Legal Information Institutes? Sometimes the data is not as well structured, so you can’t search just on the counsel or judges segment of the opinions. Here’s a quick overview on searching using the counsel segment on LexisOne, and then how to craft a text search on CanLII to accomplish nearly the same result.
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 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
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
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.
There are a number of citation tools available for online legal researchers but none of them are particularly good at handling the U.S. citation format known as “The Bluebook”, a fond name for the blue cover of The Uniform System of Citation. Two Web browser extensions, one for Mozilla Firefox and one for Google Chrome, offer a step forward and it may be that support for the Bluebook will be more common for legal researchers. Continue reading