Like a good Shepard, your iPhone can now tend your flock of cases and ensure their safety! LexisNexis announced Thursday its new iPhone application devoted to this higher purpose. The app itself is free, but don’t be silly – you must have a valid Lexis account and password to use it. So it “ain’t” really free. You also need the iPhone 3.1 firmware.
Per the release, the app, “Get Cases and Shepardize” allows users to:
- Find and review a case instantly by reading the Case Brief – an overview of the issues, rules, and reasoning (written by LexisNexis experts) just by entering its citation.
- Get an at-a-glance indication of how closely they need to evaluate the case with Shepard’s Signal™ Indicators.
- Get an overview of a case’s legal treatment up front by viewing the Shepard’s Summary, right at the top of your Shepard’s reports.
Reading the comments on the release clarifies the “cost” issue, but Lexis suggests that they may consider linking to the free LexisONE, which would be a welcome update in my opinion. Nifty idea that needs a little shine.
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Advocate's Studio 
This is a very interesting foray into the new world for Lexis Nexis. We have been working on an iPhone App that would allow lawyers or non-lawyers to create certain legal agreements such as NDAs, Non-Competes, Employment Agreements, Sales Contracts, etc by just answering questions on the iPhone. Do you think that there would be demand for this type of application? What kind of demand in general do you see from lawyers for mobile technologies?
It is interesting and I am heartened to see them moving this way. I don’t usually think of Westlaw and LexisNexis as innovators. This app gives me a glimmer of hope that they are waking up to the Brave New Tech World.
I think there is a keen interest among lawyers for any new technology that makes their jobs easier. It is hard for anyone to ignore the lure of the current crop of smartphones and other tech. I love the idea of having real tools at my fingertips and I am certainly not alone. It is pretty clear that most lawyers have some sort of smartphone in their kit and are looking more and more to the phone as a real computing tool.
An iPhone app that offers the create legal docs is certainly interesting, but I am curious about how you would implement it. I would suggest that you not limit the app to the iPhone. Are you considering applications for Blackberry and Android OS? There are still many professional devotees in the former category and I foresee a growing number of converts to the latter category.
Cheers,
Martha