Twice, I’ve reviewedPocketJustice by our friends at Oyez: a great app for the iPhone, iPad, and Android devices for researching US Supreme Court Cases. Despite the strengths of PocketJustice, it lacked an easy way to follow current Supreme Court developments. It seems our friends at Oyez were aware of that, and have decided to release another app called OyezToday. This app for the iPhone and iPod touch is completely free through a sponsorship from IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law.
Much of the app works just like PocketJustice in that it shares the same features: bios of Supreme Court Judges, an archive of cases, and oral arguments with transcripts that follow along with playback. Unlike PocketJustice, however, this app is limited to much more current cases.
Friday, they released both PocketJustice and PocketJustice Full for the Android Marketplace. The Android version is much like the iPhone version, although thanks to Android phones having dedicated search and menu buttons, the Android version doesn’t waste as much screen real estate for a menu on the bottom of the screen.
Legal researchers in a hurry are also benefitted on the Android version by having access to Android’s voice search which allows you to say the name of a case and have your phone do the typing for you.
Sometimes people mistake Justia’s mission, “To advance the availability of legal resources for the benefit of society,” as being only about advancing the availability of legal resources for lawyers, but society is much larger then the legal community. This week’s App of the week is free for the iPhone and iPad from our friends at Nolo, and it’s geared at making the often confusing landscape of legal terms easier to understand for everyone.
I am not a lawyer myself, nor have I gone to law school. I came to Justia as a programmer. While I have learned much about the law since I started working here in 2006, I still find myself constantly coming up against legal terms that I don’t know. There are a fewplaces I turn to find out what those words and phrases mean discreetly so when the lawyers in my midst say them I can pretend I knew what it was all along, and one of the best sources I’ve found is Nolo’s Plain English Legal Dictionary available for free at nolo.com/dictionary.
Today, the Justia Law, Technology & Legal Marketing Blog will begin a new series of articles focused on useful legal-related smartphone applications. As my colleagueshavementioned, the United States Supreme Court is back in session this week, and as such it seems fitting to begin our App of the Week series with an application that’s all about the Supreme Court: PocketJustice by our friends at Oyez.
Twice, I’ve reviewed PocketJustice by our friends at Oyez: a great app for the iPhone, iPad, and Android devices for researching US Supreme Court Cases. Despite the strengths of PocketJustice, it lacked an easy way to follow current Supreme Court developments. It seems our friends at Oyez were aware of that, and have decided to release another app called OyezToday. This app for the iPhone and iPod touch is completely free through a sponsorship from IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law.
