It is becoming clear to me that I really need to switch to Firefox. If I were to switch, I would then be able to take advantage of CiteGenie – a Firefox extension that converts Westlaw citations to proper Blue Book format. Marc Hershovitz reports on the tool at LLRX.com. Taken from CiteGenie’s website:

When CiteGenie is installed, it adds a new option to the browser’s right-click menu to “Copy with CiteGenie.”  To use CiteGenie, simply highlight the text in the court opinion, right-click and select the “Copy with CiteGenie” option (or just press Ctrl-Shift-C).  Then you can paste the text into any other program, such as your word processor, and the text will be pasted, along with the pinpoint citation for the selected text from the court opinion.

CiteGenie can format in Bluebook, MLA, APA, Chicago and Wikipedia forms. While it currently works with Firefox, the “genie”-uses are now developing a version for Internet Explorer 6. Way to go!

A few posts back, I reported on Chief Justice John Robert’s heavy critique regarding the adverse impact of modern technology on legal research before a Drake University audience. For those who would rather absorb the information through their ears, Radio Iowa News has an audio recording of the 30 minute speech here.

A few posts back, I reported on Chief Justice John Robert’s heavy critique regarding the adverse impact of modern technology on legal research before a Drake University audience. For those who would rather absorb the information through their ears, Radio Iowa News has an audio recording of the 30 minute speech here.

Sure, the internet is fast. Sure the courts never sleep (well, at least when they are in session, hopefully). You are a modern lawyer – you want your breaking opinions and you want them FAST.

Enter FindLaw via RSS. While you won’t necessarily get the whole opinion, you can view summaries written by attorneys / editors tagged by jurisdiction and topic sent by RSS feed through your RSS reader. You can find a list of feeds at the link above. The summaries may be available within hours or within the same day of the issuance of the opinion. You can get all of the federal courts and select state courts in California, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, New York and Texas.

Check out this article by Carol Ebbinghouse about the new FindLaw feed and how to put it to best use in your research and marketing endeavors.