What’s in a Name? On AALL’s Potential Name Change

AALL has begun the process to potentially change its name to the Association for Legal Information. Of course, the key change is the subtraction of the word “libraries”.

Motivating this change, AALL reports “today, 51 percent of AALL members do not have ‘librarian’ in their titles, and 57 percent work in an organization that does not have ‘library’ in the name”.

The potential name change was announced in the November 12^th, AALL E-Briefing. The membership will be able to vote on this initiative on January 12^th, with results to be announced February 11^th. Continue reading “What’s in a Name? On AALL’s Potential Name Change” →

Legal Intelligencer Releases “Best of” Survey; Jenkins Law Library Takes Second for “Online Research Provider”

The Legal Intelligencer’s annual “Best of” survey was released today; as usual, the latest edition shines a light on what legal resources attorneys in the Keystone State are using. The survey’s respondents are readers of The Legal Intelligencer, the Philadelphia-based daily law journal that has been operating for more than 150 years. Continue reading “Legal Intelligencer Releases “Best of” Survey; Jenkins Law Library Takes Second for “Online Research Provider”” →

AALL Business Skills Clinic

AALL has put together a great professional development opportunity for law librarians with the 2015 Business Skills Clinic. Just for full disclosure’s sake—I serve on the taskforce to put the event together. The clinic is designed to give you an opportunity to “learn core business skills” . From my experience it seems law librarians are tasked with learning core business skills while on the job—i.e., learning-by-doing. There certainly are pros to this—the skills are engaged with and partially learned in a practical setting, but, in my opinion, immediate goal-oriented learning leaves blind spots, a lack of nuance, and definitely not expertise. The huge benefit of this clinic is the depth in which core business skills will be examined, and by a faculty of experts. Moreover, attendees will learn these skills outside of the work environment and in a context that isn’t focused on accomplishing a specific, immediate task, but rather on the tools to accomplish future, myriad tasks. Come and learn the skills the greatly affect your career. Continue reading “AALL Business Skills Clinic” →

Fixing the Law School Debtors’ Prison

Steven J. Harper, in Too Many Law Students, Too Few Legal Jobs, presented some disheartening statistics concerning current law school cost and the current legal job market. Granted, the preposterous cost of law school is not new news–it has been spiraling to absurd levels for years. The tuition of private law schools has, according to University of Colorado Law Professor Paul Campos, “doubled over the past 20 years, tripled over the past 30, and quadrupled over the past 40”. But, what is shocking about Harper’s article is law schools are still raising tuition, because, essentially, there are no disincentives to do so. Continue reading “Fixing the Law School Debtors’ Prison” →

New Survey States Associates Lack Advanced Research Skills

Back from an admittedly ongoing baby detail, I was greeted by a press release in my inbox decrying the state of new attorney readiness. LexisNexis’s Legal & Professional conducted a survey entitled Hiring Partners Reveal New Attorney Readiness for Real World Practice, which found 95 percent of “hiring partners and associates believe law school graduates lack practical skills related to legal research, litigation and transactional practice”. Beyond practical skills, the survey respondents stated young associates especially lacked advanced research skills. Continue reading “New Survey States Associates Lack Advanced Research Skills” →

Law Firm Library Marketing: Taking Advantage of Existing Opportunities | Part 2

Welcome to Part 2 of this series, where we will cover specific marketing opportunities that currently exist for the law firm library. Most of these examples are opportunities hiding in plain sight and already part of a law librarian’s current day-to-day responsibilities. The key is to shift our perspective to recognize and take advantage of the marketing value of these responsibilities. Continue reading “Law Firm Library Marketing: Taking Advantage of Existing Opportunities | Part 2” →

Law Firm Library Marketing: Taking Advantage of Existing Opportunities | Part 1

Unfortunately, good researching alone does not make a law firm library. Though the importance of the library may seem obvious to us librarians, we still must value continually marketing ourselves in the law firm setting. Fortunately, if we recognize them as such, our common day-to-day responsibilities offer ample opportunities to market ourselves. In Part 2 of this series, we will dive deeper into specific examples of existing marketing opportunities, while this Part 1 takes a general perspective towards examining the importance of marketing the law firm library. Continue reading “Law Firm Library Marketing: Taking Advantage of Existing Opportunities | Part 1” →

Judicial Profiles Show Judges are Humans Too

“Is this guy the second coming of Benjamin Cardozo, or is he a blithering idiot?”

The above quote may or may not be an actual line of dialogue spoken to me by an attorney during a recent judicial profile request. Though typically not as colorfully submitted, requests for judicial profile searches are ubiquitous. This is logical: there are 600+ federal judges swinging gavels around out there, way too many for a single attorney to become familiar with. And, each one of these individual appointments has his or her own personality quirks and idiosyncrasies (they are humans after all), variables that can easily play a role in a case’s proceedings. This creates a need for descriptive information about a judge’s judicial temperament, procedure, and–to take the above example, intelligence. And, the ideal source for this specific information has to be supplied by people attorneys can trust. Isn’t it shocking to find out this source may be…other attorneys? Continue reading “Judicial Profiles Show Judges are Humans Too” →

Predicting the Future with Analytics

“3D Bar Graph Meeting”, (c) Scott Maxwell

The term “jargon” has complicated social meanings. Jargon primarily refers to specialized language used by a specific group of individuals; conversely, this means individuals outside of the in-crowd don’t know what the heck is being talked about when jargon starts to be tossed around. Secondary dictionary definitions attribute vaguely morally-loaded values on the term, as per dictionary.com: “unintelligible or meaningless talk or writing; gibberish”, “language that is characterized by uncommon or pretentious vocabulary and convoluted syntax and is often vague in meaning”. These negative connotations suggest people don’t like or trust jargon, presumably because of its ability to exclude. But, we have a productive option: to find out what the jargon being used actually means. Continue reading “Predicting the Future with Analytics” →

How Legal Apps Rank: Part 2, the Success Stories

In Part 1 of How Legal Apps Rank, available here, I examined the Apple App store category rankings of the WestlawNext and Lexis Advance apps. In this post, I will examine the legal apps we should all be paying attention to: the success stories.

In searching for as many legal apps as I could find, I stumbled across many legal app pathfinders, bibliographies, and “best of” lists, but a special thanks goes out to the two lists that especially stood out: the often-updated libguide created by University of Wisconsin-Madison Law School Reference Librarian Jenny Zook and UCLA School of Law Reference Librarian Vicki Steiner’s guide. Also, I tried to be as inclusive and search for as many apps as possible–from apps produced by the big publishers, to those put together by the start-ups and the little guys.

My methodology was to, again, plug the apps into App Annie, and examine the apps’ historical, categorical rankings. Again, I have limited myself to the Apple App store/apps designed for the iPhone or iPad.

Time for the big reveal–here are the apps that surprised and stood out:

trialpad

TrialPad, published, in name, by Saurian Communications, Inc., though really by Lit Software, is an award-winning trial presentation app. To simplify its features: while users are at trial or mediation TrialPad easily connects to TVs and enables attorneys to display documents, play videos, and more, all with a host of great annotation tools. TrialPad is for the iPad only, and costs $89.99. Here’s its “Grossing Ranks” chart:

First, we can see this app has hit the #1 position in the “Business” category on a number of occasions (note that the y-axis on this chart has been reduced to 1-30, showing how frequently this app ranks highly). The “Business” category in the app store is generally the domain of scanning apps, .pdf readers, invoice/timesheet creation apps, and other esoterica–TrialPad genuinely sticks out for having such a specifically defined audience. Also notable, this is the “Grossing Ranks” chart, as opposed to the “Download Ranks” chart. TrialPad, again, costs $89.99 which is higher than most apps and means less downloads are required to lead to higher grosses and therefore a higher ranking in the “Grossing Ranks” chart.

With all of this said, here is the “Download Ranks” chart:

On this chart, I have extended the y-axis values to 1-100; we can see TrialPad is not consistently in the top 30 like it is in the Grossing Ranks, but it still is a very high-performing app, and one that law librarians and information professionals need to have on the radar (as an aside, it appears this app has been on our radar as, beyond the times I saw it in app patherfinders and guides, I also recall this app being demo’ed at the 2014 AALL Annual Meeting Cool Tools Cafe by Debbie Ginsberg, Educational Technology Librarian from the IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law Library).

Turns out TrialPad isn’t the only Saurian Communications, Inc./Lit Software, app to have on the radar–the other?:

transcriptpad

TranscriptPad provides attorneys with a bevy of annotation and review tools for use with legal transcripts. TranscriptPad, too, is only for the iPad and costs $89.99. Below, I have pulled TranscriptPad’s “Grossing Ranks” chart:

Though slightly outperformed by its brethren TrialPad, TranscriptPad still exhibits stellar results. I reduced the y-axis to 1-30 in the above “Grossing Ranks” chart, which shows how often TranscriptPad is located near the top of the “Business” category. TranscriptPad even hit the #1 ranking on July 17, 2014. TranscriptPad’s “Grossing Ranks” positions are aided by the fact this app also costs $89.99, meaning the grossing rank can be accentuated with less downloads. To that end, here is the download chart with the y-axis extended to 1-250:

All in all Lit Software must be commended for producing two of the most successful legal apps on the market, even more impressive that this coming from a start-up and not one of the big legal publishers.

ijuror

Our next success story app is also another victory for the little guys, or in this case, guy. iJuror is published by the prolific Scott Falbo, who has 86 other app credits to his name. iJuror helps in the process of jury selection, enabling attorneys to quickly appoint characteristics and notes to potential jurors, as well as compile reports they can easily share with colleagues, among other features. Below is the “Grossing Ranks” chart for iJuror:

This app is ranked in the “Business” category (same as TrialPad and TranscriptPad), and is available for the iPad only. The y-axis is reduced to 1-250 in the above, which shows a consistent placement around the #100 rank. This particular app does cost $24.99, which is more than what usually dots the “Business” category in the app store, and means less downloads equal a higher bump in the “Grossing Ranks” chart. This is an older app, introduced in 2010, and still able to remain relevant, as per the above chart.

Practical Law The Journal – Litigation

Now, to deviate, the next two apps display the importance of current awareness materials. The first is the Thomson Reuters published Practical Law The Journal – Litigation app, which offers a convenient way for subscribers to read this publication on-the-go. Below is the “Download Ranks” chart:

The above, with the y-axis filtered to 1-250, shows the app’s “Professional & Trade” category rankings; the app hit #1 on January 30, 2014. And, similarly, let’s look at another current awareness app:

ABA Journal magazine

ABA Journal Magazine is the mobile extension of the American Bar Journal’s magazine, ABA Journal. The app is simple, designed to enable on-the-go attorneys the ability to read the contents of the print magazine (subscription required). Below is the all-time “Download Ranks” chart for the iPhone delivery of this app; the y-axis set to 1-50, and this is the “Professional & Trade” category:

ABA Journal Magazine has broached the top ten in “Professional & Trade” a few times, even hitting #1 early in its deployment, on Feb. 13th, 2014.

Both Practical Law The Journal – Litigation and ABA Journal Magazine exemplify that iPads (in particular) do an excellent job of displaying the content of serials. Not only are they visually appealing in app form, more than just the current issue is accessible, and navigation is not restricted to leafing through pages. The lesson: current awareness materials translate to tablets really well.

In summation, those are the legal app success stories–thanks for reading!