Systems, methods, software and interfaces for integration of online research tasks into law firm workflow

• US 20070174338A1
• Filed: 05/16/2006
• Published: 07/26/2007
• Est. Priority Date: 05/16/2005
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Thomson Reuters Enterprise Centre GmbH (The Woodbridge Co. Ltd.)
• Original Assignee: Thomson Reuters Global Resources Unlimited Company (The Woodbridge Co. Ltd.)
• Inventors: Liggett, Trace
• Granted Patent: US 9,466,048 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/248 Presentation of query results
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/93 Document management systems
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/951 Indexing; Web crawling techniques
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/166 Editing, e.g. inserting or deleting
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/06 Resources, workflows, human or project management; Enterprise or organisation planning; Enterprise or organisation modelling
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/0633 Workflow analysis
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/10 Office automation; Time management
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 50/18 Legal services

Abstract

Legal professionals often conduct online research as part of their efforts to produce documents, such as legal briefs. The present inventor recognized that online research tools and desktop applications, such as word processors, are functionally isolated from each other, forcing users to awkwardly switch between them as they work. Accordingly, the inventor devised, among other things, an exemplary toolbar that resides adjacent an active application window, such as a word processor. In operation, a user selects one or portions of text, such as a name or fact pattern, in the window, and activates the toolbar using a right-click command. Upon activation, a customizable menu is displayed, enabling the user to select from one or more listed workflow tasks and ultimately to cause an online research system to return search results based on the task and text selections.

Claims

1. A system comprising:

a database of legal information, including case law documents, law review articles, and statutes; and

at least one client access device having a display operatively coupled to a processing unit, and a memory operatively coupled to the processing unit, the memory including two or more independent applications and a legal-research tool accessible in a context of a first one of the independent applications and accessible in a context of second one of the independent applications, wherein accessing the tool includes a user selecting text, right-clicking a selection device coupled to the client access device and in response to the right-clicking, the tool defines a URL containing at least a portion of the selected text, initiates coupling of the client access device to the database, and if coupling is successful, presents on the display a set of search results based on the selected text.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein the first one of the independent applications is a browsing application and the second one of the applications is a word processing application.

3. The system of claim 1, wherein the graphical user interface is a Windows-type interface.

4. The system of claim 1, including one or more machine-readable medium storing one or more of components of the server, client access device, or graphical user interface.