PDFs seem to be underutilized in the legal profession. But while lawyers are not flocking to PDFs in the way that they should, perhaps law students will start the trend. One way this might happen is if the students start using a product called ecasebriefs, which provides digital briefs (e.g. PDF files) of cases in popular legal text books.
Let's say you are taking Civil Procedure and the professor has assigned Friedenthal, Miller, Sexton & Hershkoff as your textbook. For $27 a student can download a PDF set of all the cases in the textbook, highlighted and with commentary balloon notes inserted by attorneys. Since most law students have laptop computers these days this product can be a great convenience. And law students love to buy stuff like this, or at least they did when I was in law school.
Ecasebriefs has PDF briefs for every legal textbook used in the core curriculum of law schools, and I'm betting that with low printing costs (PDF) and cheap distribution (Internet), the company will be aroudn for a long while.
I haven't seen the product firsthand, but from looking at the screenshot it seems like someone might be able to avoid buying the more expensive textbook by getting this product. In any event, the ecasebrief has a number of useful features that printed textbooks can't offer. And if the student had the full version of Acrobat they could add their own notes and highlighting on top of the pooped out notes by the ecasebrief authors. If many law students get used to using PDFs as part of their workflow then it will be a lot more natural for them to use PDFs in their workflow when they practice law.
This is an idea whose time has come!
Imagine just lugging your laptop home over the hollidays and not opening it, instead of all your books!
Now, we already graduated attorneys need a notarial manual, civil code, criminal code, evidence code, juvenile code, Maybe Revised Statutes for the State (we already have FRCP in .pdf) all in searchable, bookmarked .pdf. Imagine having all that stuff available at your fingertips, in one laptop, on Rule Day. . .
I have long held that hyperlinked documents either an .html ( then later, .pdf) version should have been available for the last 15 years or so for cases, statutes, BRIEFS, MEMORANDA, or anything else that required footnotes, citations, cross-references, etc.
What I ESPECIALLY like about the 'book' idea is that you are not tethered to an internet connection.
Posted by: Tom Stirewalt | October 16, 2007 at 11:36 AM