Robert Ambrogi's LawSites

Lawyer-rating Site Avvo Raises $10 Million Financing

2010-03-18T09:48:00.000-04:00

Lawyer rating and directory site Avvo has received $10 million in a new round of financing, led by Silicon Valley venture capital firm DAG Ventures. Current Avvo investors, Benchmark Capital and Ignition Partners, also invested in this round. The funds will enable Avvo to further expand and enhance its products and services for consumers and lawyers.

Launched three years ago, Avvo has grown to become one of the largest lawyer directories on the Web and one of the most highly trafficked -- with some 2 million unique visitors a month. Its goal is to provide profiles and reviews of every lawyer in the United States. So far, it covers 41 states and the District of Columbia.

This latest investment brings the company's total financing to $23 million. Founder and CEO Mark Britton said the investment will be used to further expand and enhance Avvo's products and services for consumers and lawyers. "We remain supremely focused on building that win-win for consumers and lawyers."

The company's growth so far has been "planned and rational," Britton said, and its future development will continue along that course. "We have a number of initiatives that I feel are game changing. But to fund those initiatives is expensive." He declined to provide further information about the initiatives.

"We will continue to build out these win-win situations for consumers on the one hand and lawyers on the other," Britton said.

Britton credited the company's growth to its employees. "I am proud of the team. We've built something that works, and that works well, and we built it from scratch." Avvo currently has 35 employees and plans to add more.

Should I Shut Down LawSites and Start Anew?

2010-03-16T09:09:00.000-04:00

Could it be that Venkat Balasubramani can read my mind? In response to something I tweeted today, he quite lucidly set out the debate I've been having with myself. Turns out he's been having the same debate with himself.

The question for both of us is: Does it make sense to make a clean break from one blog and start anew with another? For both Venkat and me, the question is complicated by the fact that our blogs have achieved some degree of recognition and regular readerships. My blog has even won some awards, including twice being named one of the ABA Journal's Blawg 100.

My reasons for shutting this down would be very similar to Venkat's. I started this way back in 2002 as an adjunct to my book, The Essential Guide to the Best (and Worst) Legal Sites on the Web. Thus the name, LawSites. I intended to use it primarily to keep my readers informed of new and interesting Web sites. Over the years, however, my blogging interests have broaded -- to media law, technology law, social media and intellectual property. The name LawSites no longer reflects what I want my blog to be.

I addressed this in part by starting a second blog, Media Law. But it makes little sense for me to maintain two separate blogs when neither encompasses the range of topics that interest me.

My desire to decide this question is hastened by Blogger's decision to shut down FTP support. I have used Blogger as my platform since day one. I am thrilled that lawyer Rick Klau is at the helm of Blogger and is spearheading some exciting developments. I would stick with Blogger, but for the fact that I want my blog hosted on my own site, not on Google's servers.

So Wordpress here I come. I have set up and operated other blogs on Wordpress and I like the control it gives me. But that begs the question of whether to go through the process of importing this blog into Wordpress or simply start anew?

If I import this blog into Wordpress, I solve my immediate problem of maintaining its operation after Blogger's FTP shuts down. But I am left with the initial problem -- much like Venkat describes -- of being pigeonholed.

Also, I suspect that I will lose LawSites readers in any event. Even if I keep LawSites and simply move it to Wordpress, my RSS feed will change and the process of converting permalinks is anything but perfect.

So, my options as I see them are:

1. Shut down my two blogs, LawSites and Media Law, and start a new one from scratch. I would keep all the archives of both blogs online but would no longer be able to update either.

2. Move LawSites over to Wordpress and shut down Media Law but keep its archives.

3. Merge the content of LawSites and Media Law and import them into Wordpress, continuing to blog under the name LawSites.

What was most striking to me about Venkat's post was his comment that this question "literally weighed me down." I know precisely how he feels. It seems almost silly to spend so much time pondering the fate of a blog. Perhaps it shows that both Venkat and I remain passionate about blogging, if uncertain about our blogs.

So what advice do you have for Venkat and me? We would both appreciate your counsel.

Legal Project Management in the Cloud

2010-03-15T08:45:00.000-04:00

Introduced as a beta at LegalTech in February, Onit is a Web-based project management tool described as being for "anyone and everyone who manage projects � big, small, business, legal." It specifically includes a Legal Edition designed for legal matters and cases. During its beta period, the system is free for anyone to use. Even after its formal launch, slated for April, the basic legal edition will remain free.

Because Onit is Web based, there is no software to download or install and it can be deployed in just minutes. Sign up using an e-mail address and receive an activation code within seconds. Once you receive the code, it takes just a minute more to launch a project, requiring only that you give the project a name. From there, invite participants, create a project plan, establish a budget, and add documents, notes and updates.

The beauty of Onit is its simplicity. Use it to manage multiple projects and coordinate multiple participants. Each project gets a home page where participants can plan, collaborate, budget and share. Participants can provide status updates in the same way they would using Twitter or Facebook, or by sending an e-mail to a special e-mail address that Onit creates for each project.

The project home page provides an overview of the project's current status, upcoming tasks and events, and spending against budget. It also contains the project plan, all notes, all documents and financials, and a list of all participants. If a participant is overdue for a status update, one click sends the person a "nudge." The entire project is searchable.

Onit promises apps for iPhone and BlackBerry that will allow access to these same features. As of this writing, the apps had not been released.

The founders of Onit, Eric Elfman and Eric Smith, are no strangers to legal management technology. They were the co-founders of DataCert, a leading provider of matter management and legal and IP spend management software for corporate legal departments.

Given that Onit is free and simple to use, requires no special software, and can be used for any number of projects and with any number of participants, why wouldn't you get Onit?

Join Me This Week at the MBA Annual Conference

2010-03-10T19:56:00.000-05:00

Join me tomorrow and Friday at the Massachusetts Bar Association Annual Conference at the Westin Copley Place in Boston. Tomorrow, I am chairing a plenary session at 1 p.m., "Social Media for Lawyers: How to Boost Your Practice and Avoid Pitfalls." On Friday at 3:15, I will be on a Law Practice Management panel, "60 Sites in 60 Minutes."

The conference has a great line-up of programs both days and a stellar line-up of speakers on an array of substantive and practical topics. Capping it all off tomorrow night is a gala dinner featuring a keynote address by Morris Dees, founder of the Southern Poverty Law Center.

MoFo? Now There's an App Even for That

2010-03-10T12:18:00.000-05:00

Morrison & Foerster may be one of the largest law firms in the world, but now you can carry it in your pocket, thanks to an iPhone app the firm launched yesterday. The free app, MoFo2Go, provides information and news about the firm, its attorneys and its practice groups.

The app includes four functions:

People, where users can view short bios of the firm's attorneys. Browse a list of attorneys or search for them by name, practice, office location or law school.
News, which provides firm press releases, client alerts, newsletters and articles.
Locations, which provides information about any of MoFo's offices, including addresses, directions, and nearby transportation hubs, restaurants and hotels.
Play, which brings up a maze game. As you complete levels, you are rewarded with "MoFo Factoids."

This app will be most useful to lawyers, clients and others who regularly do business with MoFo.

More Evidence 'BestAttorneys' is Clueless about Attorneys

2010-03-10T08:48:00.000-05:00

I wrote here last week about BestAttorneysOnline.com, the dubious new lawyer-rating site that can't seem to get lawyers' practice areas or even their locations straight, listing lawyers as among the top 10 in practices they have nothing to do with and in states in which they have no ties. I followed that with a second post about legal reporter Caryn Tamber's adventures with the site. Now, I have even more to report that only underscores the conclusion that the people behind this site are the gang that couldn't shoot straight of lawyer ratings.

A woman who is an information-resources executive with a law-related company sent me her e-mail correspondence with Rick Jannings of the Indiana company responsible for the site, Best Attorneys Online LLC. (I could not find Jannings' title, but I did find a press release that identifies him as the company's contact.) The woman asked me not to identify her or her company.

It started innocently enough, with the woman sending a query to the company's generic e-mail address, info@bestattorneysonline.com:

So I was browsing your website to see if I felt it was worth registering for, but can't figure out how to do an attorney search. is there any way, if you have an attorney name and want to see where he/she is ranked in any of your lists or whatever, to do that?

In reply, Jannings sent her an e-mail that not only failed to respond to her question but that went on to rudely -- and cluelessly -- dress her down and brush her off:

Just go to the site and do a search. There is a search bar right in the middle of the home page. Click the practice area, state, and hit the button find an attorney.

That will show you a listing of attorneys.

If you want to see rankings click on attorney rankings at top of page.

Now, with all due respect, we do not consort with directors of information resources upon making decisions regarding whether we want to promote your firm or not. Our direct contact must come from the Attorney that runs the business. Period. If you choose to register for your firm, you will be eligible ONLY for a FREE listing. Which will garner you no clients. It will only serve as a means to send clients as a validating website that you�re a top firm. This site is for ONLY top law firms and in order to evaluate them properly we deal only DIRECTLY with the Lawyer who owns the firm. This is not meant to be offensive, that is just the way that it is. In order to be RANKED, and promoted as one of the very best firms out there we do an enormous amount of work for you, and that value and understanding of that value has to be directly understood by the man or woman writing the check for the service. We don�t allow for any �translations� of perceived value from any or all assistants, marketing directors, or any other said help.

If you are the head of marketing or something for a huge law firm and you actually write checks for marketing campaigns on behalf of your clients, fine. Otherwise, there is much more to our site and its methodologies than the �typical� let�s go spend some marketing dollars in certain areas that we might think are effective.

We need to do further evaluations if your firm fits our criteria as a firm that we would like to promote.

I was about to write, "The best line in that e-mail is ...," but there are so many good lines. The only messages this e-mail manages to convey are that this company knows nothing about customer service or about the legal industry.

Our correspondent capped this exchange with her own reply to Jannings (and with company and law firm names altered to protect the innocent):

I did that and all never get any results. I guess you just must not have the attorneys I'm looking up as examples, though I'm trying some of the largest rainmakers at the largest firms, but I guess you are not quite there yet. Thanks anyways.

As for the rest of your email, you may not intend to be "offensive," but your email certainly is rude and unexpected. I simply asked a question to verify I was using the search correctly. By register, I had no intention of registering my company has part of your database. I assumed register meant solely to get access to more advance searching to find attorneys. The company I currently work for is not a law firm and thus would not be in your market area although we might have used your site to find attorneys to work with since we do work with most of the AMLAW 200. However I recently left, on very good terms, LawFirm1 who I do not see in your list of top law firms (even though they are #2 in the country), and I will be sure to forward this email to their head of marketing/bd (as well as to my marketing friends at LawFirm2 ) so they can be aware of how you treat the people with whom they work and to recommend that they look for other "more effective" ways to spend their marketing dollars.

It's too bad that you felt the need to be so rude. While I may just be a "director of information resources" with whom you do not consort, I do have the ears of a lot of people with whom I suspect you would like to consort since generally it is the IR group the chooses the databases and even marketing databases and resources to use and support with in the firm s . But c'est la vie as they say.

Thank you for making it so clear that you do not wish any business.

In her note to me forwarding the e-mails, she describes Janning's reply as "perhaps the most arrogant and rude email I have ever received to such a simple question." What is surprising to me is that I see a number of law firm advertisements on the site. Is this questionable company actually able to convince lawyers to advertise on this joke of a site? As I said in my original post, when I look at this site, I don't know whether to laugh or cry.

Video Highlights the Work of the Mass. Bar Foundation

2010-03-09T14:49:00.000-05:00

As regular readers of this blog might know, I am a trustee of the Massachusetts Bar Foundation, the premiere legal charity in Massachusetts devoted to increasing access to justice for all, regardless of income or status. I also have had a long-standing relationship with the talented folks at the Legal Talk Network, who have produced my Lawyer2Lawyer podcast for close to five years.

So when the MBF was looking for help producing a video to commemorate its 45th anniversary, it made sense for me to introduce them to the LTN's founders, Lu Ann Reeb and Scott Hess. Lu Ann and Scott not only agreed to produce the video, but to do it for free! The result was outstanding. The video was overwhelmingly well received when it had its premiere at the MBF anniversary dinner in January. On Friday, the video will be shown again at the Access to Justice Awards Luncheon during the annual conference of the Massachusetts Bar Association.

Here is the video:

Massachusetts Bar Foundation Story from Legal Talk Network on Vimeo.

Podcast: The Google Books Settlement

2010-03-08T20:21:00.000-05:00

Is Google Books the greatest-ever collection of human knowledge or a massive infringer of copyrights? A lawsuit brought by authors and publishers said it is the latter. In 2008, the Authors Guild and Google reached a settlement of that lawsuit, but the settlement requires the approval of the court. Recently, U.S. District Judge Denny Chin in New York held a hearing on the proposed settlement, which has garnered voluminous feedback both pro and con.

This week on the legal-affairs podcast Lawyer2Lawyer, we discuss the Google Books litigation with two guests: James Grimmelmann, associate professor at New York Law School and a member of its Institute for Information Law and Policy, and Jonathan Band, a technology law and policy lawyer in Washington, D.C.

Also in this week's episode, we are joined by Lee Ann Enquist, vice president of West Professional Development, to discuss the new partnership between West LegalEdcenter and Legal Talk Network by which you can earn CLE credit for listening to Lawyer2Lawyer or any of the LTN podcasts.

Download or stream this week's Lawyer2Lawyer.

Listen to Lawyer2Lawyer, Earn CLE Credit

2010-03-08T10:00:00.000-05:00

I am pleased to announce that you can now earn CLE credit for listening to Lawyer2Lawyer, the weekly legal-affairs podcast I cohost with J. Craig Williams. Our podcast and all 15 of the podcasts produced by the Legal Talk Network are now available through the West LegalEdcenter. (Here is a direct link to the LTN programs.)

For more information about this, see the Legal Talk Network's announcement.

Planned Law and History School Launches Web Site

2010-03-05T11:49:00.000-05:00

A planned law and history college that is gearing up to open its doors to students in August has taken another step in that direction with the launch of its Web site. To be based in Salem, N.H., the American College of History and Legal Studies will be an undergraduate "completion college," offering only junior- and senior-year courses.

As I noted when I wrote about the planned college last June at Legal Blog Watch, the college is being launched by the Massachusetts School of Law at Andover. After students complete their junior year at the college, they will have the option of starting law school at MSL. They will receive their bachelor's degrees after the first year of law school.

The college's curriculum will focus exclusively on American history and legal history in the context of world history, the Web site says. MSL Dean Lawrence Velvel will also be the college's dean.

More on Dubious 'Best Attorneys' Site

2010-03-05T09:53:00.001-05:00

Caryn Tamber at The Daily Record in Baltimore picked up on my post yesterday, Beware New 'Best Attorneys' Site, and did some digging of her own. Like me, she found lawyers ranked as best in practice areas that they have nothing to do with. As one of those lawyers remarked, it would all be funny, but for the fact that there may be consumers out there who take the site seriously.

Tamber reached one of the people responsible for the site, Jeev Trika, for comment. His explanation, she writes, was confusing.

At first, he said the site takes its data from lawyers who set up profiles with the site. When I said it didn�t sound like the folks I spoke to had even heard of the site, he said his people also take data on practice areas from combing the Internet, such as lawyers� own Web sites and other lawyer-evaluation hubs like Avvo and Martindale. So if bestattorneysonline.com gets it wrong, �it would certainly be an indication that that information is incorrect on other sites as well; I can tell you that,� Trika said.

Remember, this is a site that bills itself as conducting independent evaluations of rated attorneys, using an "experienced research team." From what Tamber learned, it would appear that research includes random scraping of content off other sites. Additionally, she found, lawyers can pay to be considered for these prestigious rankings -- "just" $500 per practice area. Of course, even those who pay are still subject to the site's "rigorous evaluation process."

This is a site to be avoided by consumers and lawyers alike.

Dubious Achievement: Shorty Awards for Law

2010-03-04T13:08:00.000-05:00

The Shorty Awards have been announced. They honor the best Twitter-ers. Awards are given in a number of official categories. Users can also create their own award categories. Of those 2,714 user-created categories, there is one for law.

For the winners in the law category, the achievement is somewhat dubious. Of the 22 winners, only three received more than two votes. Four received just two votes. Fifteen had just one vote each. One of the winners, @nickiblack, has nothing to do with law. Rather, it appears her nomination was the result of a misdirected attempt to nominate @nikiblack, who managed to come in third despite the error.

For what they're worth, here are the results in the law category.
First place (53 votes):

jamesmb. Tech writer, co host of PhotoLegal podcast, Mac addict & social media type who hates writing one line biogs! Also doubles up as a solicitor and stuff like that.

Second place (53 votes):

James (Jim) Walker. Cruise safety advocate. Maritime lawyer helping cruise passengers and crew members worldwide. Green traveler. Partner to @MaritimeLawyers. Duke basketball fan.

Third place (11 votes):

Nicole Black. Lawyer, author, speaker, legal technology evangelist-dragging the legal profession into the 21st century while enjoying good food & wine.

Fourth place (tie with 2 votes each):

John Lichtenberger. I am the Publisher of Advertising Compliance Service, a vital advertising law reference service since 1981 for attorneys & advertisers. Social media enthusiast.
Alistair Gleave. multi skilled online project manager who works with clients developing a communication strategy and delivers solutions.
J Huggard. Reporting on incidents related to the cruise industry at CruiseBruise.com.

Fifth place (2 votes):

Brian Cuban. Dallas Lawyer, blogger, currently working on my 1st book, You Don't Say-Hate Speech On The Internet. Proud parent to a cat named Useless and my dog, Peanut.

Sixth place (tie with 1 vote each):

Cruise.
SmallBizLaw. Say hello to Gil, the top online resource for legal resources, advice and one-on-one legal services for small business owners in Florida.
Frank Adman. Ad guy. San Francisco, 1963. Purveyor of Fresh, Stimulating Propaganda. Winner of the 2010 Shorty Award in Advertising. Join me for a Twittertini.
rmontag
Dan Ballard. Intellectual property attorney, husband, Dad, sunset watcher. Know something about trademarks, copyrights, patents, e-commerce, and trade secrets.
ageorgialawyer/MarkZ. Lawyer in ATL/Brunswick, lic. in FL/GA Pharma, Ins. Claims; Runner, College Football Fan , Labs owner/lover, segeorgialaw.com
Arthur Catalanello. Marketing exec. actively looking for new employment opportunities in advertising & marketing with a focus on research, CRM, sales support and/or social media.
Monique. Uma mistura de cadeiras e ma��s!!!
Above the Law. Off-the-record updates from Above the Law
Bill Salvin. Communications, PR & Crisis Comms consultant, trainer, commentator.
Allen Green. Occasional tweets with liberal views on law and public debates. Allen writes the Jack of Kent Blog and is convenor of Westminster Skeptics.
LA VOCE DEI MARINAI. uomo di mare.
Michael McSunas. Advertising and Marketing Law Attorney -formerly in house counsel with a big city agency, now happy back home. Wish I were a Bollywood star-Maje mein rehne ka.
TweetLaw.com. Tweet with other legal professionals! Categorize your tweets. Create a free account with a profile.

Seventh place (1 vote):

twitteruser.

Beware New 'Best Attorneys' Site

2010-03-04T10:05:00.000-05:00

With all the lawyer-ranking sites already out there, I wasn't surprised to see yet another one make its debut. But as I looked under the skin of this latest entrant, I didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

Launched March 1, the new site is called BestAttorneysOnline.com. A press release described it as "an independent authority on the best attorneys at law," and went to say:

The independent authority evaluates each attorney at law based several identified factors depending on the field of expertise. An assigned experienced research team reviews case history and firm expertise on the targeted field of practice taking into account specialized state variances on the legal issues. The team analyzes information provided by each firm, and compares that against the market of lawyers throughout the state. Once the evaluation is complete, the team compiles the overall data, and assigns each firm a ranking.

So far so good. I decided to check my state, Massachusetts, and see who the site selected as the best attorneys here. I started with intellectual property, and came to a page titled, Top 10 Intellectual Property Lawyers in Massachusetts."

Imagine my surprise to see there, listed as the third best IP lawyer in all of Massachusetts, Susan Lillis. Now, I know Susan. As a matter of fact, she is a friend and neighbor. She is a very good lawyer. She is undoubtedly one of the very best in the state at what she does. But what she does is not IP. It is not now and never has been. As her Web site says, she practices family law and she has concentrated in family law since 1985.

Who else made the list of the top-10 IP lawyers in Mass.? Well, coming in at number six is Peter C. Hardy. According to his Web site, he practices real estate, probate law, wills, trusts, estates, estate planning, corporations, conveyancing, elder law, Medicaid planning and administration. Peter does a variety of things, it appears, but not IP.

Coming in at number nine is Richard A. Toelke, a partner with Bingham McCutchen. Oddly, even though he is, in fact, in Boston, the site lists him as located in Hartford, which, last time I checked, was not in Massachusetts. More to the point, Toelke does not practice IP law. Rather, he is co-chair of Bingham's real estate practice.

Ah, but we've saved the best of BestAttorneysOnline for last. Remember, this is a site that says it independently investigates and evaluates each ranked attorney using an experienced research team. So who did these diligent researchers rank as the 10th best IP attorney in Massachusetts? They gave that honor to Joseph H. Flom, name partner in Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom. No doubt, Flom merits inclusion on any number of top-lawyer lists. But not this one. Neither is he in Massachusetts nor does he practice IP law. Based in New York City, he is, as his bio says, "widely recognized as one of the leading attorneys practicing in the merger and acquisition area."

So there you have it. At least four of this site's picks for the top 10 IP lawyers in Mass. do not practice IP law or even dabble in it. One of the top 10 is not even in Mass.

Need I say more about this site? How about, buyer (and lawyer) beware!

The Indicted Executive's Guide to the Justice System

2010-03-03T21:41:00.000-05:00

The former founder and CEO of a biotechnology company who was indicted and convicted of federal criminal charges has written a 640-page guidebook to help others who face federal criminal charges. The book, The Federal Criminal Defendant's Guide, is billed as "a blueprint to guide you throughout the entire process from indictment to probable incarceration." It includes instructions for defendants "on how to calculate and reduce their sentences and obtain the best possible facilities."

The book's Web site provides little information about the author, T.C. Moses. I could find nothing about him on Google. The preface says this about him:

T.C. Moses is a former Chief Executive Officer and co-founder of a publicly-traded biotechnology company. After earning his degree in engineering and spending ten years in the biotechnology industry, he built his own company in the early 1990s. Later -- after his own unsuccessful fight for justice -- he set out to help others who, one day, may find themselves facing federal indictment. Currently he is writing �Behind the Fence: An insider�s perspective,� an insider�s take on how to survive pre- and post incarceration.

A clear theme of the book is that it is the foolish defendant who leaves the defense entirely to the lawyers. In the book's introduction, the author says that he interviewed hundreds of current and former federal inmates.

Most of those interviewed acknowledged that the worst decision they had made was in "just letting the lawyers handle it." The overwhelming majority said they would have received a shorter sentence had they been more knowledgeable of what it was going to take to survive the indictment. Many inmates felt their attorneys had either done a poor job or had been negligent when informing them of their indictments and subsequent prosecutions.

The book sells for the princely sum of $189, which its Web site points out is "less than the cost of an hour with an attorney."

Site Provides Photos of Any Intersection

2010-03-02T16:55:00.000-05:00

Imagine this scenario: You are a motor vehicle accident lawyer. You have a conference tomorrow involving an accident that took place at an intersection clear across the state. You realize you need photos of the intersection. What can you do?

One option is to track down and hire a photographer and pay for a rush job to get the photo shot and sent to you. The better option might be to use StreetDelivery, a Web site that provides access to a database of nearly 10 million digital photographs of intersections throughout the United States.

All of these photographs are shot at ground level from a driver's perspective. Each high-resolution photograph is stamped with the specific location, showing the direction and the names of the intersecting streets. Photographs are delivered either in JPG or PDF format. Customers can save the photographs to their computers and e-mail, print and enlarge them.

If the site does not have photos of the intersection, parking lot, driveway or roadway you need, you can submit a request for the photo and have it delivered to you by the next business day. The only limit to this is that the request must be within the site's coverage area.

Currently, the database of intersection photos covers most of the East Coast from Florida to Maine, all of Arizona, California and Texas, and the Chicago metropolitan area. Over the coming months, additional locations will be added, including Las Vegas and Reno in Nevada and all of Tennessee and Kentucky.

The site also includes a diagramming tool (see picture) that replicates any requested intersection. Use drag-and-drop icons to diagram the accident scene. You can then print or e-mail the diagram along with the photos.

The site employs a special pricing format for solo and small-firm lawyers of $109 per request. For that price, you get the high-resolution photo and use of the diagramming tool. But here is an added benefit: If the company's response to a request is insufficient -- either because it does not have the precise location or because it does not have the precise view -- it will send someone out to take the photo you need and deliver it the next day, for no extra cost.

For this price, the company does not permit lawyers to directly search its database. Instead, they must log-in to the company's site and fill out a data request. The company then sends the photograph by e-mail. A company representative told me that the e-mail is usually sent within minutes of the request, provided the requested photo is in the database.

For institutional clients -- primarily insurance companies and some larger law firms -- the company does provide direct Web access on a subscription basis. These institutional clients can log in and directly search for and select photographs. The company would not tell me its pricing for these institutional plans.

Compared to what it would cost for a lawyer to get these photos through an investigator or photographer and the time it would take, this strikes me as a good value at $109.

Mass. Seeks Someone to Run Bar Exam

2010-03-02T12:27:00.000-05:00

An interesting job opportunity has been posted by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court: executive director of the Board of Bar Examiners. This, of course, is the board that is responsible for conducting the bar exam and reviewing the qualifications of bar applicants.

The executive director provides management and support for all aspects of the bar admissions process, according to the job posting. That includes administering the twice-yearly bar exam and directing the day-to-day operations of the board.

Applicants for the job must be lawyers admitted to the Massachusetts bar and must have at least five years experience with management-level responsibilities. The job pays between $74,666 and $112,986. Deadline for applications is March 22.

New Blog Tracks Religious Land Use Law

2010-03-01T10:40:00.000-05:00

A blog launched this month by a Michigan law firm may be the first devoted exclusively to the federal Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, a 2000 law designed to prevent local governments from making land-use decisions that disfavor religious groups, which are exempt from paying property taxes.

The RLUIPA Blog is written by lawyers from Tomkiw Dalton, a Royal Oak firm that concentrates in land use law. In an introductory post, partner Daniel P. Dalton, said, "My objective is to provide regular updates of cases and commentaries that address RLUIPA and related land use cases, both from the perspective of a religious entity, as well as a local community. I will also comment on religious governance issues, with an emphasis on current challenges being faced in the operation and structure of a church."

Upcoming Speaking Engagements

2010-02-28T15:17:00.000-05:00

Here are some of the events at which I will be speaking in the coming months:

March 11 and 12, 2010, Boston: Massachusetts Bar Association Annual Conference 2010. I am speaking two days. On Thursday, March 11, I will chair a plenary session, "Social Media for Lawyers: How to Boost Your Practice and Avoid Pitfalls." On Friday, I will be on the panel, "60 Sites in 60 Minutes."

April 9, 2010, Hartford: Connecticut Bar Foundation Symposium, "Flash Forward or Lost: How Technology is Changing the Practice of Law, and What's Next?" I will participate in a luncheon panel entitled, "Would Lincoln Get LinkedIn? Or Would He Tweet? Technology, Then and Now."

April 23, 2010, Portsmouth, N.H.: Law Librarians of New England Spring Meeting. I will speak on, "Web 2.0 and Social Media Applications in the Practice of Law: New, Nifty and Thought Provoking."

July 26 and 27, New York City: Association for Continuing Legal Education Annual Meeting. I am speaking twice here. On Tuesday, I will present a plenary session, "How Technology is Changing the Practice of Law and CLE." I will also be on a panel, "30 Web Sites and Blogs You Ignore at Your Peril."

Blawg Briefs Upcoming SJC Arguments

2010-02-28T12:12:00.000-05:00

A new legal blog, Mass. Appellate Briefs, provides an advance look at cases accepted for argument by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. "The goal," says author Jack Cushman, "is to tell you not just what the court is doing, but what it will be doing, while there�s still time to respond � whether by helping clients prepare for changes in the law, filing an amicus brief, or sharpening your own applications for review."

For upcoming SJC cases, Cushman reviews the questions presented, the facts and the issues in each case. He then provides his analysis of how the case might turn out. He also provides links to the case docket and the appellate briefs and notes whether the court has requested amicus briefs.

Cushman is a lawyer who recently served as a law clerk to SJC Justice Margot Botsford. His law practice focuses on providing legal research and writing services and case evaluations for lawyers.

Bloomberg Law: Can it be a Contender?

2010-02-27T20:52:00.000-05:00

[The following column originally appeared in print in January 2010. I am republishing it as part of my continuing effort to maintain an archive of my published columns. Important note: I have not updated this since its original publication. While most of the sites remain as described, some may have changed. All information was current as of the date of original publication.]

Is there room in the legal market for a third high-end legal research service? That is the question as Bloomberg, a company known for its financial news, attempts to muscle in on the turf now occupied by Westlaw and LexisNexis. In December, it officially launched its comprehensive, Web-based service, Bloomberg Law.

For Bloomberg, it is a radical move. It is the first time the company has untethered a major information product from its trademark terminals. The terminals are ubiquitous in financial firms but have never achieved significant presence in law firms. This Web-based product represents Bloomberg's concession to the legal market's lack of interest in its terminal-based services.

For the legal market, the move is brazen. Bloomberg seeks to stake out a claim on terrain where West and Lexis have had years to shore up fortifications. In taking on these services mano-a-mano, Bloomberg differentiates itself as the only one that integrates legal content with proprietary news and business intelligence.

Bloomberg's biggest challenge may lie in convincing the legal market that it needs another high-end research service. The trend in research is towards lower cost services and more open access to legal materials. Bloomberg would seem to be swimming against the tide.

One way Bloomberg will compete is by offering a uniform, fixed price as a counterpoint to the cryptic and confusing pricing plans of West and Lexis. A Bloomberg subscription is $450 per user per month. That is not cheap, but it covers all usage and is less than firms would generally pay to West or Lexis. It also offers a floating license for $1,250 a month that covers five users, but allows only one to log in at a time.

Swagger and Substance

Price aside, the bigger question is how Bloomberg measures up as a legal research service. This much is clear: Bloomberg is getting into the game with swagger. Not only is it loading up on primary legal content, but it is also creating reams of editorial enhancements. It has developed its own citator to rival Shepard's and KeyCite, its own headnotes, and its own numbering system to rival West's key numbers.

To accomplish all this and bring itself up to competitive speed, Bloomberg hired an army of lawyers � some 500 now on the payroll, I was told � and has them nose to the grindstone writing headnotes, tagging cases and readying a law digest.

One of those lawyers recently gave me a tour of Bloomberg Law and then gave me a trial account so that I could explore it on my own. (I cannot tell you his title because Bloomberg's egalitarian structure does not allow job titles.)

A Work in Progress

My overall impression of Bloomberg Law was of a luxury yacht only partially constructed. It looks impressive and many parts of it are fitted out with top-of-the-line features. But as you wander around its decks, many doorways open to unfinished, empty rooms. It is seaworthy, one assumes, but still has a lengthy punch list.

This is ambition exceeding execution, perhaps. Take the Bloomberg Law Digest, for example. It is touted as a detailed index of legal topics collecting key cases, statutes, regulations and other materials. So far, however, many of the topic headings lead only to blank pages, still awaiting content from that army of lawyers.

Cases are another example. Bloomberg's library of cases is complete, in that it has full collections of all federal and state appellate decisions and trial-court libraries on a par with those offered by West and Lexis. The cases include pagination.

However, Bloomberg Law's reference guide and marketing materials say that cases include staff-written headnotes and points of law. Some do, but in my trials, the majority of the cases still do not have headnotes. Click the button that is supposed to display the headnotes and instead you get a message, "No headnotes available."

One strong and fully executed feature is the Bloomberg Law Citator, Bloomberg's answer to Shepard's from LexisNexis and KeyCite from West. As you view a case, an icon alerts you to its status and a panel to the right shows a graphical summary of subsequent citations. A click of a button opens an in-depth analysis showing the case's direct history, citation history and a list of the cases it cited.

A nice feature of Bloomberg is docket searching, covering federal dockets and selected state and international dockets. It is the only legal research service that has complete U.K. dockets, I was told. It also provides tracking and alert services for federal legislation and regulations.

A Marriage of Law and News

A key emphasis of Bloomberg Law is the marriage of legal research and current awareness. The idea is to provide lawyers with primary legal content while also enabling them to monitor their clients' industries and businesses. It does this well, integrating law and news seamlessly in a number of ways.

To this end, the home page replicates a news terminal. The lead legal news story tops the page and legal headlines appear in a box to the right. The page's lower half has tabs allowing you to choose among Morning Legal Briefings, daily reports of top news in various practice areas; Law Reports, more in-depth stories covering court and legal developments; and top news from around the world or filtered by topic or region.

The front page also has a watchlist where you can track company stocks and click through to in-depth information and news about the company. Every public company has a page. Among other things, the pages list all recent filings in which a company is named, including from court dockets and SEC filings.

A Design that Shines

One aspect in which Bloomberg Law shines is its design. It is fast, intuitive and thoughtfully arranged. I especially like that � as do most modern browsers � it uses tabs, opening new documents in separate tabs so that you never lose your research trail or have to backtrack through it.

Searching on Bloomberg Law is quick and uses either Boolean or plain-language queries. A search can be run broadly across a range of content types (e.g., court opinions, dockets and statutes) or more narrowly by jurisdiction, practice area or industry. Filters allow easy refinement of search results by topic and industry.

The Research Trail feature automatically saves all research and documents and stores them indefinitely for later retrieval. Another feature, Workspace, allows you to save research and documents in folders and share them with colleagues. Sharing can be done only within your own firm.

Tabs across the top of the screen provide ready access to a user's Workspace and Research Trail, as well as to saved searches and alerts. Users can set alerts for virtually any type of content on Bloomberg Law.

The left-hand navigation pane collapses with a click to provide more viewing space on the screen. The pane provides links to all of the main sections of Bloomberg Law and also to a collection of practice-area pages. These pages highlight recent court opinions and articles related to the practice area, link to key resources for the area (including blogs), and provide shortcuts to search core libraries related to the practice.

Bloomberg offers a telephone and e-mail help desk staffed 24/7 by lawyers, law librarians and paralegals. I e-mailed the help desk at nearly midnight about a log-in problem and received an answer within minutes, much to my surprise.

Will it Float?

For now, Bloomberg Law is a work in progress. It remains to be seen whether, once construction is completed, there will be sufficient demand for it in the legal market.

The product is targeted at larger firms, but also at smaller firms with a need for robust docket searching and financial intelligence. Few large firms are likely to dump West or Lexis and switch solely to Bloomberg Law. That means they are likely to buy this only if they see it as a necessary add-on to their research arsenal or a partial substitute for higher-priced services.

Law firms heavily involved in securities and finance are most likely to buy Bloomberg Law, given its melding of law and financial news. For the broader legal market, Bloomberg Law has a tough sell ahead and a lot of work to complete in the meantime.

Copyright 2010 Robert J. Ambrogi

Google Gets Into Case Law Search

2010-02-27T20:47:00.000-05:00

[The following column originally appeared in print in December 2009. I am republishing it as part of my continuing effort to maintain an archive of my published columns. Important note: I have not updated this since its original publication. While most of the sites remain as described, some may have changed. All information was current as of the date of original publication.]

Ken Auletta's new book, Googled: The End of the World as We Know It, ponders the mission of the Web's 800-pound Gorilla. Is Google's purpose altruistic, to offer free and easy access to all the world's information, or is it a marauding monster out to dominate the media and information landscape?

With Google in command of my e-mail platform, my blogging platform, my search platform, my RSS reader, my photo-storage platform and even my document collaboration platform, I certainly should be worried that Google could become the Big Brother I never wanted.

Even so, I am lulled into complacency by the simple fact that Google does what it does so well. So it is with Google's entry into case law research with its recent announcement that Google Scholar now allows users to search full-text legal opinions from U.S. federal and state appellate and trial courts.

Even before the cases were added, Google Scholar was a useful research tool for lawyers. It allows researchers to search a broad selection of scholarly books and articles, including law journals, drawn from the Web and from academic and library collections.

But case law takes Scholar to a whole new level of usefulness. As you would expect from Google, the search interface is simple and familiar. Enter any name, word or phrase and hit "search." The default search covers all of Scholar's collection of federal and state cases and law review articles.

An advanced search page lets you tailor your search more precisely. You can specify words and phrases to include and exclude and set a date range. You can choose to search just federal cases, just a single state's cases, or across multiple states. Searching multiple states requires you to check a box for each state, so if you want to search a significant number of states, you'll have a lot of checking to do.

You can also search by citation, but be careful to put the citation in quotes. If you search 794 F.2d 915, the results will include cases that have "794," "F.2d" and "915" anywhere in them. But if your query encloses the citation in quotes, "794 F.2d 915", you get the cited case plus any others that cite it.

Other Features, Other Questions

Scholar has no Shepard's or KeyCite for flagging the status of a case, but it does have a nice feature for showing a case's subsequent citation history. As you view a case, a tab on the top of the screen lets you switch to a second screen showing how it was cited.

This second tab shows a list of cases and articles that cite your case. It also includes a separate list of cites showing a quote extracted from the case at the point of the citation. The quote helps you see the proposition for which your case is cited. Click on any of these quotes and jump right to that point in the citing case.

I could not find within Google Scholar a description of the scope of the case law database. According to a post by Tim Stanley at Justia's Law, Technology & Legal Marketing Blog, http://onward.justia.com, it includes all Supreme Court opinions since the start of U.S. Reports, federal circuit opinions since 1 F 2d 1 (1924), and many federal district court opinions.

Scholar also has opinions from all 50 state supreme courts dating back to 1950. I was able to determine that intermediate appellate courts are included for some states, but I could not tell whether they are included to the same extent as state supreme courts.

There remain many questions about Google Scholar's case law search. Google offers sparse documentation so answers are hard to come by. Besides not knowing the precise parameters of the database, we also do not know how often new cases are added. Google has not disclosed where it got the cases but has said the supplier will continue to provide new cases as they are released. We also do not know what kind of quality control, if any, Google has in place to ensure the cases are checked for typographical, scanning and coding errors.

Still, putting the power of Google search behind a comprehensive database of federal and state cases is more than just a good start. Google's engineers clearly put a lot of thought and effort into this and I expect there will be further refinements and enhancements to come.

Whither Wexis?

Inevitably, Google's announcement leads to another round of predictions that 2012 has arrived for Westlaw and LexisNexis. Legal blogs have been abuzz with speculation about this.

Both LexisNexis and Thomson Reuters issued statements saying, in so many words, that they are not worried about Google's entry into case law research.

"Free case law is not new to the Internet and is included on some of our own sites like lexisONE, LexisWeb and lawyers.com," the LexisNexis statement said. "However, our legal customers generally require more than raw, unfiltered content to inform their business decisions. They look to LexisNexis to find needles in the ever-growing information haystack, not the haystack itself."

Thomson Reuters said: "Google has shared with us their plans to expand Google Scholar to include the search of publicly available case law and some legal journals. We believe that government-authored information should be accessible to the public, and Google joins existing sites such as FindLaw, the Legal Information Institute at Cornell University Law School and scores of others as sites that offer this information free of charge."

"Our customers rely on us for very specialized information and legal insight, and use Westlaw to find exactly the right answer on very specific points of law."

My belief is that LexisNexis and Thomson Reuters will continue to remain healthy and profitable for many years to come. I'm not privy to their finances, but I suspect that case law research has become a less-important source of revenue for them.

What they have that others do not are significant databases of secondary legal-research materials. These include treatises, specialized legal-research products in particular areas of concentration, and ever-growing collections of public-records data, court and deposition transcripts, docket information, and all sorts of other information that remains largely unavailable or inaccessible elsewhere online.

A Game Changer

Even so, there is no ignoring an 800-pound gorilla. Google's entry into the field of legal research is definitely a game changer for the entire legal industry. More than that, it is without doubt a turning point.

In announcing the new feature, the Google engineer who spearheaded this project, Anurag Acharya, acknowledged the prior efforts of the "pioneers who have worked on making it possible for an average citizen to educate herself about the laws of the land."

He mentioned such trailblazers as Tom Bruce of Cornell's Legal Information Institute, Jerry Dupont of the Law Library Microform Consortium, Graham Greenleaf and Andrew Mowbray of the Australasian Legal Information Institute, Carl Malamud of Public.Resource.Org, Daniel Poulin of LexUM, Tim Stanley of Justia, Joe Ury of the British and Irish Legal Information Institute, and Tim Wu of AltLaw.

Acharya is right to credit all the pioneers who blazed this trail. But where they yielded machetes, Google drives a bulldozer. If this is progress -- and I believe it is -- its pace is about to accelerate.

Copyright 2009 Robert J. Ambrogi

New Sites for Documents, Research and More

2010-02-27T20:42:00.000-05:00

[The following column originally appeared in print in September 2009. I am republishing it as part of my continuing effort to maintain an archive of my published columns. Important note: I have not updated this since its original publication. While most of the sites remain as described, some may have changed. All information was current as of the date of original publication.]

There are a number of new legal sites to bring you this month. They range in focus from enhancing legal research to simplifying document assembly to facilitating pro bono volunteerism.

We start with two legal-document sites, one for sharing and one for assembly. The document-sharing site, ExampleMotion, is a place where lawyers can share pleadings, motions and other legal documents. But it adds a unique twist. Rather than just share documents, lawyers can sell them.

While some documents are free to download, others must be purchased, generally at a cost of between $10 and $50. Lawyers who upload a document get to set its sales price and receive half of any purchases, with the site taking the other half.

Documents can be searched by jurisdiction, type of law, stage of proceedings, and document type. If the document you seek is not there, you can post a document request anonymously. If another user posts it, an e-mail notifies you.

Initially, the site is focusing on building a collection of California legal documents. It plans to expand into other states and welcomes attorneys from any state to upload documents now. The site also allows users to store and organize documents without sharing them.

Easy Document Assembly

The document-assembly site, WhichDraft.com, enables automatic assembly of contracts and other legal documents. Users start by finding the type of document they want and then they fill them out by answering a series of simple questions. The site provides its own collection of documents and also allows users to post documents.

Attorneys are sometimes reluctant to rely on form documents. A feature of WhichDraft is that lawyers can also use it to automate assembly of their own documents. The site allows users to upload their own documents and build their own sets of questions and answers for completing them. Lawyers can keep these documents private or opt to share them.

The site also includes simple collaboration tools. These include the ability to share documents with others by e-mail, to track multiple versions of a document, and to compare versions with red-lining. All the site's features are provided without cost.

In Search of Better Search

Different methods of searching each have their limits. Keyword searching can be too literal. Boolean searching can be too formalistic. Mark Johns, president of a U.S. company called Littlearth believes there is a better way. For certain types of document collections � such as cases and codes � a "discovery engine" is the better search tool, he says.

His company hosts three free legal-research sites that employ his DocumentDiscovery technology: PatentSurf, USCodeSurf, and Case-Law. The sites operate on the ideas that the best form of search is natural language, that the more natural language used in a search the better the results, and that the best natural language to use is that of a relevant document.

While a query could begin with just a few keywords, a researcher could also opt to input an entire document as a query. As the search proceeds and finds other relevant documents, it can be refined based on the text of these documents.

Quick Case Digests

The legal research service Casemaker has launched a new case-digest service providing summaries of the most recent cases decided by the courts. Called CASEMAKERdigest, the initial roll-out covered only state and federal courts in Texas. As of this writing, it had added Oregon and planned eventually to cover all 50 states.

The service provides summaries of cases soon after the cases become available. Summaries are listed by date and can be sorted by area of practice, court, judge and jurisdiction. They can also be searched by key word. Additionally, a user can subscribe to an RSS feed that shows the 50 most recent cases published on the site.
The service is offered free for a trial period of 30 days. After the trial runs out, the service will be offered for a subscription price of $39.95 a year.

Casemaker General Manager Steven Newsom says that the company is investing heavily to hire highly experienced staff to write the summaries. The company also plans to launch a citator product to flag whether cases in its legal research database remain good law.

Legal Scholarship

Harvard University launched a Web site in September, DASH, devoted to providing access to scholarly articles written by faculty and students. While articles on the site cover a range of topics, Harvard Law School was a key contributor to the site's launch.

As of this writing, the site's law collection includes 64 faculty articles and one student paper. An announcement said that Harvard expects the collection to grow significantly over the next few months. Articles can be searched by keyword or browsed by topic. The full text of an article is provided in PDF format.

Domestic Violence Directory

The American Bar Association launched a site in August that is intended to serve as a comprehensive resource for lawyers who want to volunteer their services to assist victims of domestic violence. The National Domestic Violence Pro Bono Directory, features a database of programs nationwide that provide pro bono legal services in these cases.

The database entries describe the various programs and tell how attorneys can become involved in them. The site also provides a calendar of training programs throughout the country and has a collection of articles, links and other materials for attorneys to use as resources in handling these cases.

The ABA's Commission on Domestic Violence created the directory in partnership with Pro Bono Net, a national organization that works to increase access to justice. Development of the site was funded through a grant from the Avon Foundation.

Resources on Capital Cases

As part of its programming to help judges better manage death-penalty cases, the National Judicial College has developed a Web site, Capital Cases Resources. The site provides resources for state trial judges who sit on capital cases, but one need not be a judge to find it useful.

A featured resource is an overview of Supreme Court jurisprudence regarding capital punishment. Written by Indiana University criminal law professor Joseph L. Hoffmann, it provides a case-by-case walk-through of the substantive and procedural issues decided by the court.

Other sections provide links to circuit- and state-specific case law and legal materials. Another compiles articles and publications on key topics, such as jury selection.

Copyright 2009 Robert J. Ambrogi

A Legal Publisher's New Life

2010-02-24T10:54:00.000-05:00

Sam Spencer was once one of the most prominent leaders in legal publishing. For many years, he was publisher and CEO of the Lawyers Weekly chain of publications, based in Boston. Then he became a senior vice president of Dolan Media, helping drive that company's further expansion into legal publishing. In fact, Dolan eventually turned around and bought Lawyers Weekly. From his home outside Boston, Sam seemed to spend more time on airplanes than anywhere else, traveling the country to Dolan's newspapers, corporate headquarters and elsewhere.

All that came to a screeching halt five years ago, when Sam suffered a stroke. But Sam is not one to sit on the sidelines for long. He has more energy than the Energizer Bunny. Unable to continue his newspaper career, he took up a new career as a full-time volunteer for his local Council on Aging, delivering meals, driving elders to appointments, and "dispensing kindness and the gift of gab," as Sue Scheible writes in this profile of Sam's new life in The Patriot Ledger.

Sam was also my boss a couple times over. More years ago than I care to admit, he lured me away from my law practice in the Virgin Islands to become editor-in-chief of Lawyers Weekly in Boston. Several years later, after he joined Dolan, he brought me in to serve as temporary publisher of the Idaho Business Review just after Dolan bought it.

Scheible's profile also included this video about Sam's new life:

Here's a Lawyer Who Thinks Small

2010-02-22T18:00:00.000-05:00

Some people think big. Not Toronto lawyer Jordan Farkas. He prefers to think small, as in small claims court. As a matter of fact, he calls himself
Mr. Small Claims Court and has created a Web site where he markets himself as "the recognized authority on the Ontario Small Claims Court." As his LinkedIn profile explains:

I have practised exclusively as a commercial litigation lawyer since 2004. In 2008 I founded www.MrSmallClaimsCourt.ca which offers Ontario-wide small claims court consultation services at affordable rates. It has created a niche in Ontario legal services and has attracted media attention. In addition to small claims court, I also consult for self-represented litigants in higher courts across Ontario.

His Web site offers reasonable flat fees and includes a page of testimonials from satisfied clients. You can also find him on Twitter as MrSmallClaims.

Enterprise-level Document Assembly for Small Firms

2010-02-22T10:10:00.000-05:00

A new cloud-based document assembly system aims to offer solo and smaller-firm lawyers a tool on a par with the enterprise-level system the company already markets to large firms and corporate legal departments. Called ContractExpress.com, the new Web-based software-as-a-service was launched this month by the London-based company Business Integrity, which modeled it on its enterprise-level document assembly program ContractExpress DealBuilder.

ContractExpress.com is notable for its simplicity. Templates for various types of documents -- leases, contracts or any standardized legal document -- are stored in workspaces accessible through a Web browser. To create a document, simply choose a template. A series of questions will prompt you for the information needed to fill in each of the template's fields. Workspaces and templates can be shared with other users.

The templates can be set up so that fields are filled in by specific answers to questions (such as a party's name) or by alternative blocks of text depending on the answer given. Fields can be made compulsory or optional. Once you've completed the questions, the document is generated and appears in your workspace. Click its name to download and open it in Microsoft Word.

You create these document-assembly templates within Microsoft Word and then upload them to the site. When you first register for ContractExpress, you are prompted to download a Word add-on called ContractExpress Author. This is the tool you use to create templates using a simple menu that lets you choose and insert fields. You can also insert fields manually simply by enclosing them in curly brackets.

One limitation of ContractExpress.com is that this authoring tool only works in Word 2007 and only on Windows computers. If you have an older version of Word or if you are a Mac user, you are out of luck.

The site offers a 60-day free trial, so you can try it and judge for yourself. Once the trial expires, the cost to use the service is $195 per user per month.

For smaller-firm lawyers, ContractExpress has two obvious advantages. One, it is easy to use and makes it easy to create templates. Two, because it is based in the cloud, there is no software to install and maintain. For a lawyer who generates even a modest number of standardized documents, this is a system that could pay for itself.