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

  • US 9,466,048 B2
  • Filed: 05/16/2006
  • Issued: 10/11/2016
  • Est. Priority Date: 05/16/2005
  • Status: Active Grant
First Claim
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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 a second one of the independent applications,wherein the legal-research tool includes a uniform resource locator (URL) table with at least one URL entry for each legal workflow item in a set of legal workflow items, the at least one URL entry specifying a URL for accessing a resource, in the database, associated with the corresponding legal workflow item, the URL including at least one parameter field for holding a value configured to access the resource specified by the URL, and the corresponding legal workflow item being associated with at least one of a legal practice type and a jurisdiction of a user,wherein the legal-research tool is configured to;

    display the set of legal workflow items, the set of legal workflow items comprising at least one of the following items;

    investigation item, valuation item, drafting tools-pleadings item, drafting tools-arguments item, statues and regulations item, citation checker and dictionary;

    detect a selection of text and a selection of one of the legal workflow items, by the user, from within the second independent application;

    obtain, based on the selection of one of the legal workflow items, the URL for accessing the resource corresponding to the selected one of the legal workflow items, from the URL entry for the selected one of the legal workflow items in the URL table;

    obtain the value configured to access the resource specified by the URL based on the selected one of the legal workflow items and a user profile of the user;

    input the obtained value into the at least one parameter field of the URL;

    input at least a portion of the selected text into the URL;

    couple the client access device to the database to access the resource, corresponding to the selected one of the legal workflow items, specified by the URL, based on the obtained value configured to access the resource, and to obtain data corresponding to the URL; and

    present on the display the data corresponding to the URL; and

    wherein the legal-research tool is further configured to, in response to a selection by the user from among the data corresponding to the URL presented on the display and upon invoking an interactive command from within the first independent application, cause insertion of at least a portion of the data corresponding to the URL into the second independent application.

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