08 | September | 2011 | Advocate's Studio

Trying to print out one of your cloud-scriven Google Doc(ument) without an attached printer? Looking at that Airprint button with frustration because you can’t get your docs from your phone to your hands? Well, fret no more – if you are a Google Docs user that needs to kill a tree, then FedEx has your back. Called Office Print OnLine, FedEx will enable you to either upload from your computer or share a Doc from Google Docs (after giving FedEx access to your Docs account). You can then either pick the doc up at your local FedEx location, or have it delivered to you at extra charge. The extra extra that your own printer can’t match is the ability to order folding, laminating or binding along with your printing. And the costs appear somewhat reasonable, with a couple bucks for a couple pages for pick up.

When it absolutely, positively, has to be printed in ink on pulp, then consider Google Docs and FedEx – you can have your doc and print it too.

Hat tip to MakeUseOf – the images are theirs too.

Whew! Gone for a few days as I dug myself out from a pile of work (the paying kind). Perhaps if I had a software tool that combined my legal research efforts and results with a simple, effective sharing and composition tool, I could whip out those opinion letters and research projects faster and more efficiently. Wait – you say there is something like that out there? Have you heard of Tabulaw?

Tabulaw is a web-based service that combines all of the tasks of researching and communicating a point of law into a simple copy / drag / drop interface. Tabulaw is the glue for your other resources and tasks – it appears that it will work with Google, Westlaw, Lexis/Nexis, and perhaps other databases (here’s hoping for Fastcase), allow you to copy and save sections of research, along with their appropriate citations, which are then available to you to drag and drop into your final document. I really like the idea of aggregating from different sources into one, citable “notebook” of content that can then be manipulated and shared. As far as the collaboration element, I am not sure how they intend to implement this – it would be uber cool to make these research folders open to multiple contributors, along with traditional social sharing or direct links to Scribd or Slideshare.

Tabulaw is in private beta and I don’t have an invite so I haven’t yet tested it myself. But you can bet that I signed up for the beta. If I get in, I will get back with more info on this promising tool. In the meantime, check out their promo video below.