Tools for Legal Research
I don’t consider my setup that “unique” in that it would differ greatly from what I would regularly use. But there are nuances that help me with my legal work that I’d like to document.
You *should* use Google as your first step in researching an issue. It’s fast, free, and helps you get background and narrow your research tasks. And as you use Google, you run across web pages that need to be bookmarked for later reference (or citation). You need a bookmark manager that you can access across computer (at work, school, and home) that allows you to describe, tag, and find your saved bookmarks. That’s what del.icio.us is for. You can see an example of how I used it for some of my corporate research.
The problems with del.icio.us are numerous, though. The tagging functionality is too basic: you can’t have multiple words in a tag (e.g., “Rule of Law” has to be RuleofLaw or ruleoflaw), you can’t browse on multiple tags (e.g., I want all bookmarks tagged “work” and “afghanistan” because I have bookmarks tagged “education” and “afghanistan” that I don’t want to see). It also can be slow. And it’s not private in that I can’t tag my bookmarks with a client name.
Also, I should note that Zotero (a free Firefox plugin) has awesome capabilities for this type of thing. It’s specifically made for academic and legal on-line research. I’d use it more, but for me, right now, it’s a overload. Del.icio.us, while technically and functionally lacking, does what I need simply and fast.
Tabbing in Firefox is crucial. Tabs are the step before bookmarking—you “save” searches and web pages as tabs in the background while you’re browsing other branches of your thought-process. The plugins and bookmarklet support are crucial (see Zotero and del.icio.us above). Also, it “works around” some of the little things that Westlaw and LexisNexis do with Internet Explorer that can slow down your research and make it more expensive. (I don’t know 100% because I pretty much use Firefox all the time, and the few times I have used IE I’ve experienced frustration with what I can’t do.) You can open up multiple Results from searches in multiple tabs and browse them all at once, instead of one at a time. You can background Results pop-up windows. I think you can print from the browser in some instances where you can’t with IE.
Launchy replicates the functionality of Mac’s Quicksilver or Spotlight onto the PC. I hit alt-space and a translucent box appears in the middle of my screen. I start typing the name of an application I want to launch (e.g., f-i-r, and it finds Firefox, and I hit enter to launch it), or a Firefox bookmark (e.g., w-e-s and I get my Westlaw bookmark), or a filename or folder, or I start typing in a math calculation (e.g., 162/6, and I get the my billable hours for a project), and Launchy finds and executes it for me.
Freemind is a mind-mapping tool that makes nice charts and graphs easy to make, but it’s also great for note-taking. Let me tell you, it’s a lot better than Microsoft Word for outlining your ideas. And when you create presentations with this people always ask, “Does PowerPoint do that? How’d you make it look like that?” To which you answer, “No, and I can’t tell you.”
Here’s a mind-map that I just created about Demand Resources in energy auction markets:
Use a Wiki
I use my own personal installation of MediaWiki, but I have used hosted services like the excellent PBWiki. It basically use it for to-do lists and for notes that I want to access and edit anywhere in the world. They’re not super-fancy, but they’re functional and fast and easy to use. You can collaborate via them, but I don’t.
Google Desktop Search
I save nearly all my cases as PDFs onto my hard drive for later reference. With Google Desktop Search, you can search all these PDFs. Very useful.
Energy, Internet, Law School, Technology | paul | 
July 5, 2007 9:03 am
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