Legal Research: Rated M for Mature

Legal Apps

The Law Librarians of Puget Sound have put together a list of nine essential apps for legal practitioners.  I like this list because it sticks to the essentials: four productivity apps and five legal research apps.  

Most of these would be useful for Canadian legal research, apart from Fastcase and LawStack. I haven’t been able to find all-in-one Canadian alternatives to those products—seems like this area is ripe for innovation.  Is this something CanLII might be able to take the lead on?

If an Employer Asks You to Use Your Westlaw or Lexis Student Passwords...

You’re a recent law grad and a new hire at a small firm. A partner asks you to use your Westlaw or Lexis student account to get your research done for free. What do you do?  What do you do?

In this post, Jason Potter offers two irrefutable reasons for avoiding any sort of unauthorized use (i.e., it’s unethical and Westlaw/Lexis will recover from you).  He also gives students a great solution: offer to leverage all available free legal research tools to get the job done.  

Make sure you know how much time you can spend on something, and how much Westlaw or Lexis money you can burn…you’re going to be the one who gets yelled at when the client balks at the $30,000 research bill you ran up on a fairly minor point of law. If you’re not sure how much time something should take, ask. If you don’t know how much time you can spend on Westlaw or Lexis, ask. Even, “Hey, do you have a ballpark idea of how long this should take?” can save you from a very unpleasant situation down the road. (Oh, and make sure you know how to research cost-effectively. When in doubt, ask.)
10 Things Your Law Firm Boss Wants You To Know, but Isn’t Going to Tell You | The Girl’s Guide to Law School

Research Freedom

Jason Potter, a legal research and writing professor at the University of San Diego School of Law, is curating and blogging/tweeting about free legal research tools at researchfreedom.com and @researchfreedom.

I’m really jazzed about this project. On the surface, the delivery is so simple and straightforward—but the implications for access to justice? To help legal professionals and law students be more cost-effective in their work? It makes me want to shout and point: “Yes! This!”