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.