Every year, barely after the New Year, the consumer technology industry comes together in Las Vegas for the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) - the world's largest consumer technology tradeshow. There they introduce and celebrate the latest products and technological innovations in consumer electronics, including office productivity tools - the gadgets many of us love and can't manage to work without - and this year even promises the flying car we've all been waiting for. This year, the International CES runs from January 8-11, 2019. The following is a preview of some of the gadgets and apps expected to be unveiled at the show.

Blitztek

ProxyPics

ProxyPics describes itself as an "online marketplace, matching users needing geographic-based content with users near to the location ready to take your photo." Simply put, if you need current, external photos of a particular location, whether to document current conditions, or some other reason, ProxyPics might be for you. While similar to other apps/services, like GigWalk, where users can sign up to do to jobs posted by other users, ProxyPics is different in that it is limited to only providing photos and the price for each photo is set at a flat $5.00. (Other services like Gigwalk allow the poster to set a price, which might be higher than ProxyPics' flat $5.00.) You can also give specific instructions for the picture taker (e.g., view from across the street, showing property next door). Whether the places you need pictures of are far-flung or nearby, you'd be hard-pressed to find a more cost-effective way to get that picture than ProxyPics' $5.00 per picture cost.

Table 4 One

Table 4 One is a matchmaking app that pairs business travelers with similar interests for meals when they are located in the same city while traveling. The app goes out of its way to stress that it is not a dating app, but rather, a way for business professionals to make the most of their time on the road and potentially expand their professional network by meeting other professionals who would otherwise also be dining alone.

LG

Home appliance manufacturer LG is introducing as 65 inch high-definition (4K) TV whose screen rolls down like a poster into a rectangular metal enclosure. The device boasts blacker blacks, whiter whites, and an expected $20,000+ price tag.

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With cost-conscious clients scrutinizing legal bills, lawyers cannot afford to depend on fee-based resources the way they used to, especially if reliable free resources are available. That said, sometimes it makes sense to pay for data—especially if the pay databases have something the free ones are lacking (content or functionality) or when using the pay databases can save you time and money.

This article will highlight some of the most reliable free (or low-cost) online resources and give you some tips on how to use them. However, we don’t have the space to go into as great as detail as we’d like, so you’ll need to attend ABA TECHSHOW 2014 to hear us speak and ask us your questions or read our upcoming ABA LP book, Internet Legal Research On a Budget.

To begin with, every legal researcher should bookmark a few free legal portals. A good portal includes links arranged by topics and jurisdictions so you can quickly get to a useful site. But, a good portal should go a step further and provide “added value,” such as a full-text keyword searchable database of court cases or subject-specific articles about an area of law.

The most useful general legal portals are: Justia and FindLaw. [Note: FindLaw is undergoing some database changes and is not functioning as it should. We presume proper functioning will resume.]

For government portals, we’d choose a newer site that you might not be familiar with: the Government Printing Office’s Federal Digital System (FDsys), which provides free online access to official publications from all three branches of the federal government. Another choice would be USA.gov, not only useful for retrieving federal governmental agency documents, but also state, local, territorial, and tribal government documents.

Cornell’s Legal Information Institute (LII) is a portal that has some unique databases such as Wex, a free legal dictionary/encyclopedia sponsored and hosted by the LII, and its version of the U.S. Code, which provides links to the rules and regulations in the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) that relate to the U.S. Code section being viewed. This feature, which saves you from having to run a separate search at the CFR, is activated by clicking on the “Authorities (CFR)” tab.

The last legal portal you should bookmark is one that will assist you with your state and local research needs. Look at each of your state’s law school law library’s portals and decide which one suits that need.

Case law research is probably what most legal researchers do more than any other kind of research. One of the most overlooked “free” places for conducting case law research is your state bar association. Forty-seven state bar associations (plus some local bars and other legal professional associations) subscribe to legal research databases on behalf of their members. In turn, they provide their members with free access as a “member benefit.” These “member benefit to lawyers” legal research databases offer more sophisticated search options and broader date coverage than most other free case law databases, including Google Scholar. Typically, these “member benefit to lawyers” legal research databases include all federal and state (and D.C.) cases, codes and regulations. And, for some jurisdictions, you might find law reviews, attorney general opinions, and more. The state bar associations of California, Delaware, and Montana do not yet offer this member benefit.  Of the 47 state bar associations that do offer this member benefit, 46 subscribe either to Casemaker or Fastcase. The other state bar association, the Pennsylvania Bar Association (PBA), offers access to InCite, a customized LexisNexis database created for the PBA. Be sure to visit your bar association’s website and look for a link to one of these databases.

Turning away from “traditional” websites, let’s take a look at other places where lawyers are finding useful legal research, such as blogs/blawgs, Twitter accounts, and apps.

Following the “right” blawgger or tweeter can help you keep up with your area of law without expending much of your own research time. To find a blawgger in your practice area, you can visit Justia’s BlawgSearch site, scan the list of categories, and choose one that fits your practice area or enter keywords into the search box at the top. After you review the list of blawgger results, subscribe to a few and then take some time to decide which ones are worthwhile. Another source for locating useful blawgs is The ABA Journal’s Blawg Directory, arranged by topic, author type (e.g., consultant, judge…), region (by court, state, or country), and law school.

To figure out the best people to follow on Twitter who write about your practice area, visit http://twitter.com/#!/search-home. You can conduct searches there even if you don’t have a Twitter account. Enter keywords describing your practice area (e.g., ski accidents) into the search box to locate millions of individual tweets—from (roughly) the last two weeks. You can also use Twitter’s Advanced Search page to create more sophisticated searches.

Useful legal apps range in price from free (e.g., Nolo's Plain English Law Dictionary for iOS is free but the Droid version is $16.19) to $54.99 (e.g., Black's Law Dictionary). To locate legal apps, review ones recommended in:

• UCLA Law Library’s free Mobile Applications for Law Students and Lawyers: This is an alphabetical-by-title, annotated list of law apps. You can scan the list or better yet, keyword search the list with your Find function (control F for P.C.s or command F for Apple devices) and enter your keywords (e.g., court rules) into the Find search box.
• Tom Mighell’s book, iPad Apps in One Hour for Lawyers (ABA LPD, 2012). Visit http://linkon.in/ipadappslaw for the print version and http://linkon.in/ipadappslawebook for the e-book.
• Daniel J. Siegel’s book, Android Apps in One Hour for Lawyers (ABA LPD, 2013). ). Visit http://linkon.in/androidappdan  for the print version and http://linkon.in/androidappebook for the e-book.

By taking the time to read this article, you have made a great start at learning about some of the best free and low-cost legal research sources available on the Internet. To learn about many other sites and how to become a sophisticated researcher of those sites, look for our upcoming book, Internet Legal Research on a Budget. Our book will provide you with a high level of control over your searching and lead to better and quicker results.

This article was adapted from the book, “Internet Legal Research on a Budget” by Carole Levitt and Judy Davis (ABA LPD 2014). Reprinted with permission of the American Bar Association. All rights reserved. It also originally appeared on the ABA LP Division Law Practice Today Webzine.

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You can associate a custom tag or caller ID to each of your virtual numbers so you’ll know who’s calling (e.g.,”my job listing on Craigslist” or “my contact number on LinkedIn”). “This is the first time users are provided with total anonymity and the context of who’s calling them,” explained Alex Botteri, the founder of yourVirtualSIM, the company behind RingMeMaybe, in a press release announcing the app. “With RingMeMaybe, you will never have to give away your real phone number.”

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Wolfram Alpha has announced its Lawyer's Professional Assistant app for the iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch. The app is $4.99 in the Apple iTunes App Store.

Features include:

• A dictionary of legal terms; statutes of limitations for each US state; and information about visa types, including requirements, common issues, and extensions and limits
• Calendar computations to quickly determine the end date of a specific term
• Financial computations, including fee calculations, settlement calculations, current interest rates, historical value of money, and federal US tax rates
• Crime rates and histories for specific crimes, as well as state and national average comparisons
• Demographics of population and economy for specific cities and international information about currency, country economies, and languages spoken, as well as time zone conversions
• Investigative information, including weather, company information, IP lookup, and blood alcohol calculator
• Damages and estate-planning computations for occupational salaries, costs of living, life expectancies, and present or future values
• Real estate law, including mortgage calculations, closing cost estimation, information on square footage, home sales price, and utility prices

 

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