Tag Archives: Fastcase

Top Software for Lawyers in 2013

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An astronomical clock.

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Sales guru and motivational speaker Michael Althsuler has said, “The bad news is, time flies. The good news is you’re the pilot.”

For busy attorneys with growing workloads, time management continues to be a major challenge.  Fortunately there are ways to help reduce the stress. One is by using technology and software that can maximize down time when you are remote, waiting in courtroom corridors or just simply out of your office.

Here are five key applications that can start helping you now.

  1. TrialPad for the iPad – This application helps organize your case presentations and is specifically designed for lawyers in the courtroom. The application allows you to easily organize, annotate and manage files for hearings, jury trials, mediation presentations, and other settings. You can add PDF documents and photos and are able to highlight, redline or redact.
  2. FastCase – This application gives you access to the entire FastCase law library that includes state and federal cases from across the country. You can conduct searches right from your iPad in court. In a survey conducted by ALM at Law.com, FastCase was recommended by 50% of the respondents as opposed to larger, more expensive competitors LexisNexis (26.5%) and Westlaw (20.5%).
  3. Readdle – This document manager for iPad allows you to save and access documents in PDF, MS Office and Apple iWorks among others. You can also highlight in multiple colors in PDF documents, which is a huge plus. You are also able to tab pages and add reference notes.
  4. Google Docs – This online file sharing application allows you to place documents securely in the cloud and permits access to only those who need it. This allows you to create, collaborate and share presentations, word documents and spreadsheets with your staff regardless of time or location.  A key differentiator for Google Docs is the ability of two or more people to collaborate on a document in real time.
  5. Voice Memo – This app is resident on iPhones and allows you to dictate memos and documents for later transcription. The memo is saved as a digital file that can be easily emailed back to your office. You can get the same functionality from your Android smartphone by downloading applications like VoiceMemo or Tape-a-Track.

Time does indeed fly, but with these applications, you can start taking control.

–Matt Spiegel

Free Online Legal Research Tips and Tricks

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Legal research(Photo credit: gwilmore)

Last week I showed you how to use Google Scholar to conduct free online legal research, including how to search Google’s entire case law data base and cite check the cases, too.

The good news is that Google Scholar isn’t the only free online resource for lawyers–there are plenty of others, too. Today, I’m going to discuss a few of the most useful and user-friendly online and mobile resources that make it easier than ever to conduct legal research for free.

First, if you don’t have a copy of the latest edition of “The Cybersleuth’s Guide to the Internet,” written by Carole Levitt, a lawyer and law librarian, and Mark E. Rosch, long time legal technology author and speaker, I highly recommend you pick one up. This book is perfect for the lawyer seeking to conduct research a dime and take advantage of all the information that the Internet has to offer. It provides a vast array of information and guidance for lawyers seeking to use the Internet to conduct investigative and legal research. For more information about this book, you can read my full review of here and can learn about what I consider to be a few of the book’s most useful tips in this blog post.

Next, if you have a smart phone or a tablet computer, download the Fastcase app.  This free app is available for iPhones, iPads and Android devices and allows you to conduct free legal research on the fly, even if you don’t have a Fastcase subscription. You can learn more about the app from an earlier post on this blog.

Recently, Fastcase also announced its release of yet another free legal resource: Advance Sheets are now available in e-book format for free. So, now you no longer have to pay $850 for an annual subscription to Advance Sheets in paper format. Instead, you can now receive the same information in e-book format for free.

For free access to vast amounts of federal and state case law, statutes and regulations, you need look no further than Cornell’s Legal Information Institute and Justia. Both sites provides access to a tremendous amount of legal information, including the most recent decisions, legal forms, and more.

For example, the Cornell’s LII provides access to a fully searchable archive of federal court opinions,  a topical index of state statutes by topic, and access to a comprehensive legal encyclopedia.

Much of Justia’s case law and statutory offerings overlap with that of Cornell’s LII, so both are great resources for that type of information. In addition, Justia also offers an extensive legal blog directory, a directory of interesting and relevant legal podcasts, and a free daily newsletter which includes weekly practice area opinion summaries newsletters and opinion summaries for all US Federal Appellate Courts, all 50 US State Supreme Courts, and the United States Supreme Court.

Speaking of the US Supreme Court, the SCOTUS blog is the go-to source for information about past and pending SCOTUS cases. It provides in depth analysis of Supreme Court cases and arguments, access to an assortment of Supreme Court Petitions, and statistics about the court, among other things.

Another great online resource is the individual state court websites. Many provide free online access to their opinions. The National Center for State Courts provides a thorough list of state court websites and is a great place to begin your research.

State bar associations can also be a good resource for online legal research. For example, the New York State Bar Association offers a fully searchable database of ethics opinions, which can also be accessed and searched via a free mobile app, available for iPhones, Android phones and Blackberry phones.

Finally, Lawline, a long-time provider of reasonably priced online CLEs, now offers its online content for free. That means that you can now watch hundreds of hours of video CLEs on just about every conceivable topic, ranging from criminal law and bankruptcy law to corporate law, education law, and more. Keep in mind, however, that CLE credits aren’t available unless you pay a fee.

So as you can see, the Internet has truly been the great leveler, making it easier than ever for lawyers to obtain free access to vast amounts of legal information. The sites and apps listed above are a great place to start your legal research. Are there any others that you use often that I’ve left out? Let me know in the comments!

–Niki Black

App Check: Fastcase [legal][research]

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Image representing Fastcase as depicted in Cru...

Image via CrunchBase

A few times each month I highlight web or mobile apps that are useful to lawyers. Sometimes the apps are developed specifically for lawyers and other times they are non-legal apps but are nevertheless useful for lawyers.

Today’s app is Fastcase. Fastcase is a company that offers lawyers an affordable online legal research alternative to the traditional mainstays of legal research, Lexis and Westlaw. But the focus of this post isn’t Fastcase’s traditional legal research plans–it’s the mobile app.

Why you want it: This is a can’t-miss app–not only because it allows you to conduct legal research on the go using your iPad or iPhone–but because the app is free. And you don’t even need a subscription to Fastcase to use it.

The reviews:

The good: This app is easy to use and allows you to conduct legal research on the fly–for free. You can’t beat that.

The bad:  This app is free and thus isn’t intended to be a full fledged research solution, so you’re not able to print or email cases via the app. If you have a Fastcase subscription, you can sync documents from the app to your desktop, at which point you can then print the documents. But if you’re not a FastCase subscriber, then you’re out of luck in that regard.

The nitty gritty:

-Niki Black