In today's issue of TechnoLawyer NewsWire, lawyer and legal technology legend Dennis Kennedy covers an online legal research citation tool designed to save time, an online case management and time-billing application, and a new laser printer tailor-made for law firms. Don't miss the next issue.
Below you'll find one of the three articles from today's edition:
Better, Faster, Smarter Citations
By Dennis Kennedy
Lawyers have used "hyperlinks" before hyperlinks even existed. In our vernacular, we called them citations. When we found a good case, we would then review the citations to that case, often finding even better cases and sometimes finding reversals, statutory supersession, etc. Nowadays, of course, online research services provide real hyperlinks to related cases. But even so, the number of citations listed can be overwhelming to review.
Wolters Kluwer's Loislaw, a leading provider of online legal research, has updated its GlobalCite feature to address this and other issues based on feedback from its customers. The result is a more powerful citation research tool designed to help lawyers find relevant cases, statutes, and secondary sources more efficiently than ever before. Specifically, Loislaw has added two major features to GlobalCite, each of which saves time and takes advantage of modern Web technologies.
First, GlobalCite now offers a pop-up box within the document you are viewing that summarizes the GlobalCite results and provides links to the types of sources that you want to explore further. The pop-up box arranges the results by category. For example, you can view all sources, cases only, statutes only, treatises only, or other documents only. GlobalCite also displays the number of links within each category. You can click directly in the pop-up box to move to exactly the set of results you want, saving an extra step or two and valuable time. If no citations exist, you'll also know that at a glance without having to click further.
Second, GlobalCite enables you to search directly within your set of citations. With this feature, you can narrow your search quickly, thus eliminating the all-too-common problem of "noise" or "clutter" of unrelated documents. You can conduct full Boolean searches within this pool of citations. For example, you might search for a statutory section, case name, "reversed" or other terms, or keywords. Lawyers have become comfortable with this search within a search paradigm thanks to Web search engines.
As an added benefit, subscribers get the full text of every document they find via GlobalCite at no additional charge no matter what their subscription level. GlobalCite works across Loislaw's entire collection. GlobalCite is included with the purchase of any Loislaw package that includes primary law. Learn more about GlobalCite.
How to Receive this Newsletter
Published on Wednesdays, TechnoLawyer NewsWire is a weekly newsletter that enables you to learn about new technology products and services of interest to legal professionals. Like all of our newsletters, it's free. Please subscribe now.
