practicehacker

Reuters has been claiming that it’s “next gen” product WestlawNext will practically do your research for you, and as you know monopolies like Westlaw are famous for truthfulness so I don’t see why we shouldn’t trust them. Do you?

For instance, check out the above video. I couldn’t help noticing that there is nothing substantive in it, or in any of the company’s other marketing pieces for this product. Not the slightest attempt to tell me why this bill of goods is any better than the last one. Come on Westlaw. How do you look yourself in the eyes every morning? Fool me once, shame on me. Fool me twice … and I won’t buy your bullshit anymore. How about asking lawyers what they really need for a change instead of selling high-priced hot air? In short, I say #fail.

Posted via web from practice (redux)

“The practice of law is, has been, and will continue to be a collaborative process” according to Dennis Kennedy and Tom Mighell, authors of The Lawyer’s Guide to Collaboration Tools and Technologies: Smart Ways to Work Together. True enough. And collaboration in the Internet Age is not what it used to be. In their book, Dennis and Tom have compiled a guide for lawyers who want to keep up with current tools and methods of collaboration that take advantage of the technology. For example the book discusses

• Document collaboration in a lawsuit
• Internet meetings and file-sharing
• E-mail productivity including GTD
• An overview of the Web 2.0 phenomenon
• Strategic planning using technology

With an-easy-to read-format, short chapters, and full glossary and index, in addition to a complete list of tools and resources, The Lawyer’s Guide to Collaboration Tools and Technologies is exactly what it claims to be.

… websites that aggregate 3rd-party applications compete for your favor. Case in point,  the following 5 iPhone app aggregators are featured in this post on RWW

Chorus
AppsFire
Yappler
Appolicious
App Genius

This is where survival of the fittest takes on a whole new meaning. Even the folks at Read/Write/Web aren’t sure which one is the best of the best. Now, if only our industry inspired such creative aggregation, maybe someone would have a shot at unseating the Legal Research Duopoly that rules our lives.

Hey, a guy can dream …

Lawyers Jason and Geoff Anderman want to make online document automation simple. Easier said than done. Many have tried. None have succeeded.

Hotdocs is one option; as are Richard Granat’s DirectLaw and similar “virtual practice” applications such as VLO Tech. Over the years Ixio and other desktop software solutions have tried to deploy their systems to the Web with mixed results too.  But just being online isn’t the point. The question is whether an application can add value in this (over)crowded field.  Large firms have been doing this for 2 decades and can afford to make mistakes or even do things the hard way using a virtual private network (VPN). Smaller firms have done this for a good 5 years. And with the advent of DirectLaw, Advologix – which adapts Salesforce.com for lawyers – and the prevalence of SaaS, sole practitioners can now get in on the act.

So can WhichDraft get it right? Based on my interview with the founders … maybe. At least they have a better starting point than their predecessors who literally had to cover the cost of expensive legacy systems and weren’t native web-based solutions.  My advice is to try WhichDraft and voice your suggestions loudly. These guys seem smart enough to listen and give us what we want instead of making us take what they’re giving. Are you listening, Thomson West?

Making Pacer User Friendly

Friday I stumbled on Recap and was impressed.  How impressed? I downloaded it immediately and signed the online petition to make federal case-law available for free. Yeah – that impressed. Recap seems to have impressed some others as well; it has even enlisted top-shelf talent like the lawyer-activist-millionaires over at Justia (you might be more familiar with their last project, Findlaw).

How it works: Recap saves every document you view on PACER, adds meta-tags and other features, makes the item easier to find, and posts it to a central locale.  The next time a user goes to PACER and wants that document, if it’s already been “liberated” then the user can download it free of charge.

Granted, you end up paying the 8 cents per page, which means that someone else gets a free ride, but the idea is that someone else could be doing the same and so on.  Of course the fact that Recap exists begs the question of why we Americans must pay to view the fruits of our own justice system. Westlaw and Lexis figured out that answer a long time ago.

To use Recap you must use Firefox, the open-source alternative to Internet Explorer. But I suggest you download Firefox even if you don’t download Recap. It’s just a better browser.

Feedback:  If you’ve used Recap or have an opinion sound off in our comment section or contact me, Hacker in Chief, at mhedayat@mha-law.com

Thought I’d share some choice video from TechShow 2009 featuring all 4 of the Best of Show winners that I wrote up in TechnoLawyer, plus interviews with some of my heroes such as Bob Ambrogi, Jay Funeberg, and Kevin O’Keefe, as well as sightings of legal blogging all-stars like Dennis Kennedy and Tom Mighelle. I’m still excited.

See related videos here and find me on YouTube as practicehacker.