I cannot believe that a year has already gone by! I have so enjoyed my time as a Writer in Residence, and I hope that you have enjoyed (or at least learned something from) reading my posts about legal research tips and tools. In some ways, I have made an effort to structure my posts such that, by the end of the year, we would have covered the research process from beginning to end. So for my final post, I’d like to briefly touch on resources to use to stay up-to-date on trends and tools in legal research.
Blogs
These days it seems like there are just as many legal blogs (blawgs) out there as there are lawyers! Blogs can be a great way to stay on top of the latest developments in an area of law or an aspect of law practice. (But then, as you’re already reading Ms. JD’s blog, you already knew that!) Because there are so many out there, it can be helpful to sort through them using tools such as the ABA Blawg Directory or Justia’s Blawg Search. As an educational technology librarian, I gravitate toward blogs about legal technology and legal research. Here are a few of my favorites:
Legal Research
Unsurprisingly, most legal research blogs are written by law libraries and law librarians. These can be great resources for research tips, new research platforms (or changes to existing platforms), and more.
Internet for Lawyers - Recent posts on this blog have covered topics such as changes to search functionality in research platforms and the recent saga of docket removal from PACER.
In Custodia Legis - Written by the Law Librarians of Congress, this blog is an excellent resource for research guides on a variety of legal topics, Law Library of Congress events, and more.
Legal Research Plus - Maintained by the librarians at the Stanford Law School, recent topics have included the European Union’s “Right to be Forgotten” guidelines, other topics in legal news, and featured legal research platforms.
Legal Technology
Legal technology blogs are written by all sorts of legal professionals, from companies, to law firms, to law libraries, and more. A sampling includes:
3 Geeks and a Law Blog – A self-proclaimed “eclectic” blog, 3 Geeks is written by professionals working in law libraries, law marketing, and knowledge management, so posts can vary in topic quite a bit. And, yes, sometimes they are quite geeky – their latest post discusses the pros and cons of artificial intelligence. Not only will you be entertained, but I’m betting you’ll learn quite a bit as well; for instance, another recent post discusses a relatively new legal analytics tool, Lex Machina.
Bose Law and Technology Blog – From the law firm of Bose, McKinney & Evans in Indianapolis, Indiana, this blog offers posts on a variety of research-and-technology topics. Most recently, they offered a series of posts on “Legal Research in Your Pocket,” featuring legal research apps.
iPhone J.D. - Written by attorney Jeff Richardson, this blog is chock-full of incredibly helpful tips and reviews of apps and other iProducts helpful to attorneys. As an example, his latest post discusses how to create the section symbol on your iPhone or iPad keyboard.
Apps
We know the world is an increasingly mobile place, and law practice is no exception. As you head into legal practice, or look for ways to reform your existing legal practice, you will find there really is an app for just about everything.
Legal Research? Check out the standards, such as the WestlawNext and Lexis Advance apps, and explore others, such as Fastcase, HeinOnline, FedCtRecords, and DroidLaw. Legal research apps can really make research on-the-go seamless, so that you don’t find yourself reinventing the wheel every time you try to work away from work.
Law Practice? It’s amazing how much of law practice can be assisted with apps. There are apps for tracking billable hours, for taking depositions, for displaying exhibits in court, and even for the jury selection process. And then of course there are the less law-specific tasks in legal practice, such as document storage. Here you might look at a resource such as Box or Dropbox. A caveat: apps and cloud storage are fantastic advances in law practice, no doubt; but any time you are going to be handling confidential files, it is critical that you do your homework and read up on the security of these programs to ensure that your files will be safe in their care.
To find out more about apps for the legal profession, you can certainly follow many of the legal technology blogs, but you might also want to check out any of a number of research guides that law libraries have created to highlight law apps. Examples include Mobile Applications for Law Students and Lawyers by UCLA's Law Library, or Apps for Law School and the Legal Profession by the Law Library at Indiana University Maurer School of Law (Full disclosure: this latter one I wrote!).
It truly has been a pleasure sharing my tips and tools for legal research with you. Legal research is one of those understated skills that is yet so critical to being an effective attorney. In the “information overload” era, researchers are tasked not only with knowing what they need to research to competently represent their client, but also with evaluating the reliability of the information they find. That’s why it’s important to know what resources are available and to keep up with developments in legal research. It’s been my tag line in several of my posts, but it bears repeating: If you ever find yourself struggling with a research problem, ask a law librarian.
Thanks for reading, everyone! Happy holidays!