SLAW Publishes Article On Concept Of Accessing Multi Jusrisdictional Legal Content Via Mobile Devices

This article entitled “Sensors and Legal Publishing: Making Quick Use Of ?Extended? Legal Content” and authored by Jason Wilson makes perfect sense to us…

Why shouldn’t one be able to walk into any court in North America or for that matter anywhere on the planet and have a GPS determine where you are and thus supply you with the information you might need at you fingertips…

Jason introduces his piece by saying..

Imagine this: You are a busy lawyer with a multi-jurisdictional practice, and frequently find yourself in different courtrooms or offices in various counties, states, provinces, etc. At each one of these locations, you need access to relevant, location-specific information, such as local rules of the court. Now let?s assume you carry a networked mobile device that has one or more ?apps? giving you access to primary and secondary source material. The portal, while very modern, is still dumb, and by that I mean it requires you to navigate?whether by search, facets, tables, or indicies?to the location where the relevant jurisdictional materials are located (assuming primary source information is what you?re after) or worse, to slog through secondary source content that explains specific jurisdictional requirements.

But what if all of that information was reactive, meaning it changed dynamically based on your location, with the content shifting with each crossing of a county line? What if we took that even further and said the content changed as you walked into each courtroom, with local local rules and general orders being pushed to the home screen of the app and important secondary practice guides morphing to reflect cases decided by that judge? What if instead of navigating to find the content, which already exists, it simply presented itself to you?

It has occurred to me that in an age of connected, location-aware mobile devices, we have a unique opportunity to improve the ?findability? of legal information. And while it may represent an incremental step, it is an enormous leap towards the idea of smart data, that is, data that changes as sensor information touches it.

http://www.slaw.ca/2011/02/03/sensors-and-legal-publishing-making-quick-use-of-?extended?-legal-content/