An incomplete, evolving and not comprehensive list of tools and resources for various areas of legal practice that I have come across. Use this list as a jumping off point for your own research and use the more comprehensive legaltech directories below. Email me if you have suggestions for inclusions or corrections.

Inclusion of a resource in this list does not mean that I have verfied the vendor’s claims and I do not endorse use of any particular solution. You should make your own assessment of whether they are suitable for your situation and your needs.


 

Looking for the worksheets referred to in Tech enabled lawyer book?

People to follow

The 2023 Legaltech Evangelist list is a list of people to follow on Linkedin to hear about Legal tech and innovation.

In Australia, Terri Mottershead regularly shares interesting news and shares developments for legal businesses. ALTA - Australian Legal Technology Association hosts regular showcases and meetups for the legal tech community.

Subscribe to In-counsel weekly where David Busby curates a collection of interesting and always useful tips, tools and reports on developments in legal tech (last updated April 2023).

The Legal Evolution blog is edited by William Henderson and is a collection of deep long form pieces on legal innovation. Well worth the time.

American Bar Association publishes an annual list of Women in Legaltech.

List of US and UK based lawtech blogs, podcasts, social media accounts and newsletters.


Handy resources

Bucerius Law School runs a free online series of Legal Tech Essentials every summer covering topics like innovation, computation, legal operations and data science. The lecturers are global leaders and bring a variety of perspectives. You can view the lectures on this Youtube channel.

Dennis Kennedy is a well-known legal tech and innovation advisor, law professor, infotech lawyer, professional speaker, author, and podcaster. He has 57 Tips for Successful Innovation Outcomes in Law (free PDF download).

LegalTechTrends tracks legal tech mentions across thousands of sites. You can subscribe to a weekly newsletter that focuses on top picks for the week.


Podcasts

Doing law differently podcast hosted by Lucy Dickens takes a practical look at the behind-the-scenes of progressive law companies who are reinventing legal practice and transforming the profession for the better.  We interview leaders in the profession who are walking the talk of NewLaw and who are willing to share not just what they’re doing differently, but how they’re doing it.

The legalpreneurs sandbox podcast is a huge collection of useful resources about all sorts of innovation and tech related topics.

The Legal Ops Podcast is about all things legal operations, legal business and legal technology. It's hosted by Alex Rosenrauch and Elliot Leibu.

Black business with Dixie Crawford is a podcast that shares conversations with change-makers in our communities who are working in collaboration and with impact to deliver transformational change with First Nations peoples and communities.

Reimaging justice podcast hosted by Andrea Perry Peterson speaks with a broad range of lawyers using innovative ideas and technology to improve access to justice.

For a more comprehensive list of legaltech podcasts (you can search by topic, guest and creator) try the LegalTechTrends podcast feed


Working with PDFs

GoodReader lets you view and annotate PDF files on your iPad. You can connect it to document management systems like OneDrive, Dropbox, Google Drive and Box so that you can sync the documents you need to be able to access from anywhere.

Macro (formerly CoParse) is a brilliant tool for breaking down big PDF documents. You can click on any section or defined term to have it appear in a pop up box so you can see the context while you read the document. It will also handle comparisions of multiple PDFs and detect errors like missing definitions.


Working with Word

The Effectiveness Project offers document competency best practice guides which link to instructions on common functionality for working with legal documents.

Wordrake offers a series of free training videos for functions that are often underused like track changes, compare, automated numbering and styles.


practice management software

Denim Consulting has a comparision of the practice management software available in Australia. Another comparision table is offered by Next Legal

ALMPA held a Practice Management Solution Showcase in 2022. The demonstrations from 11 different solutions are available to be viewed by ALMPA members.

In 2011 QLD Law Society put out a comprehensive review of legal practice software - which although out of date now - has some good tips on how to get started.

Filepro has a ready useful checklist of questions to ask when you are looking at getting new software. You can download it here.


search engines

Fee Fie Foe Firm is a search engine for Australian law firm websites.

Foolkit is an website with a collection of frequently used legal resources - there is a page for lawyers and for the public. It is no longer updated so check the currency of any resources.


scheduling

A number of apps will allow you to automate clients booking time to see you and avoid a scheduling bottleneck. 

Calendly and Accuity enable you to email, text, or add your availability to your website. This Zapier blog post is a comparision of their features as at 2023.

If you already have Microsoft 365 you can use Bookings which offers similar functionality.


Project management

 

I'm a big fan of Trello for keeping track of projects where many people are working on different tasks.  You can keep track of progress, set due dates for tasks, get notified by email when tasks are completed and reassign tasks if there is a roadblock or change in priority.   But it is not perfect and this is a good summary of the alternatives. 

This is a good quick overview of agile project management methodology and an explanation of the scrum and kanban frameworks.  In the legal context, G+T and Accenture published a best practice guide to going agile. Seyfarth Shaw published a description of how they use agile project management.

Some examples of people using agile in legal services include:


SMS messages and chats

If your clients are contacting you by text message, What’s app and direct messages (DMs) in your social media channels, you need to capture those communications and save them on your file. Taking a screenshot is fine for one off but if this is a constant issue, there are tools can can help capture them in bulk.

Export SMS, iMessage and WhatsApp chats from iPhone with iMazing or Touch copy.

Export SMS and MMS from Android phones with Droid Transfer.

Microsoft Phone Link enables you to send and receive text messages on your PC (requires Windows 11 for iPhone)

Send and receive SMS messages from your email using SMS Broadcast

To download text messages from an Android phone you can use Legal Text Collector app (free to preview, one time purchase to use the share feature)


Writing

More than a spellcheck, Hemingway app takes any piece of text and makes suggestions to make it clearer, less full of jargon and easier to read.  There is also a plug-in for Microsoft office and outlook called Wordrake which does the same thing.  Wordrake is available for a free trial.

Use the readability statistics in Word to check whether your writing is clear and consise.

Read Writing at Work by Neil James for practical guidance on making your writing more effective.

US based Ken Adams wrote A manual of style for Contract Drafting which is an in-depth survey of the building blocks of contract language.


Dictation

Dictation is 3x faster than typing, so even if you are used to typing, it is worth giving dictation a try. You no longer have to send work away to be typed, you can dictate right onto the screen and edit straight away.

Dragon dictation will enable you to dictate and have your document appear right on the screen.  It works on all programs, you can even dictate your itemised time entries.  If you tried voice recognition a few years ago and were not impressed, it is worth trying it out again.

Dictate is included in Microsoft 365 and you can use it to dictate by speaking to any device with a microphone - your laptop, your phone or your tablet. You can use it in Word, Outlook, OneNote and PowerPoint. If you don’t have a microphone you will need a headset or connected earphones. There is no set up and the accurately is good enough to be useful. You can’t train it or give complex instructions, but it is an excellent way to give dictation a try.

Otter.ai uses AI and machine learning to transcribe voice conversations in real time.

Rev offers transcription of audio and video. It also offers captioning and subtitling video services. You can chose digital transcription or to have the transcription performed by a human.


Apps

A comprehensive list of apps you can use to actually work with long word documents on your ipad.


Referencing

You can mark up text, like case names and citations, in your Word document to create a short and long form citation. You can create a list of authorities in your document. This can be a good solution if you aren’t dealing with too many authorities. Instructions are here.

Quillbot citation generator is a free tool that will reference sources on websites, books and journal articles. It is easy to use.

Cite this for me is another free tool that will create references for various source types and produce them in different styles. The free account will store references for only 7 days.


Electronic bundles

If you are sending large documents by email, or in paper, you should assess whether this is the best practice. Using electronic portals is more secure than email and enables the quick transmission of large volumes without needing to seperate into many files (which can easily create errors). There are a number of good solutions that allow you to easy collate a PDF bundle. If the files are appropriately named, the bundle can be quickly paginated, bookmarked and a hyperlinked index created automatically.

These are some of the options - check which ones integrate with your document management system and meet your budget.

Acrobat Pro DC allows you to combine documents into a single pdf file. You can organise the order of the documents but the functionality is basic and not as flexible as some of the other tools. For beginners this video demonstrates of how to combine a number of different documents saved in a folder in Windows into a single pdf file, paginate the brief and create hyperlinks to documents in the bundle.

Bundledocs does one thing but does it really well. It makes it easy to create electronic bundles, briefs or document binders from your document management system or electronic folders. You have flexibility around the formating of numbering, indexing and sections. You can save, share or print the completed bundle.

eBrief ready enables you to create a court bundle with automatic compilation, indexing and numbering of document bundles for briefs, tender bundles and court books. It allows its users to annotate directly on documents and search for information instantly — on any device, in any location. Your eBriefs are all hosted on Australian servers, boasting enterprise-grade security and encryption. You can share a bundle with anyone, they do not need to be a subscriber.

pdfDocs enables you to automate the conversion and assembly of documents into a PDF binder, generating an interactive Table of Contents, bookmarks, and links for easy navigation. 

Check what your practice management software can do. For instance, Smokeball offers the ability to combine multiple files within a matter into one PDF and automatically add pagination, bookmarks and a table of contents. Practice Evolve also has a brief editor function.


clausebanks

An increasing number of tools offer sophisticated clausebank functionality - either as a stand alone tool or as part of a document automation tool.


Legal tech directories

 


A selection of tools that you can investigate to see if they suit your needs.


A selection of tools that you can investigate to see if they suit your needs


A selection of tools that you can investigate to see if they suit your needs.


A selection of tools that you can investigate to see if they suit your needs.


A selection of tools that you can investigate to see if they suit your needs.


A selection of tools you can investigate to see if they meet your needs.


Some resources that help with the challenges of practicing law in a VUCA world:


websites

The Reslient Lawyer: a manual for staying well at work

An ebook by Robyn Bradey of RB Counselling & Consultancy Services is a useful reference available to download for free from Lawcover’s website.

Tips for lawyers

Chris Hargreaves  created this website to help professionals take their legal knowledge, add some legal skills, and turn that into a fantastic legal career.  Full of very sensible tips Chris generously shares his experience and knowledge of social media.  

Aimed at junior lawyers working in law firms but a good resource if you are starting out building a personal profile at any age or stage.

How to help a colleague

The UK Bar wellbeing at the bar site has a helpful section on how to have a conversation with a colleague if you are worried about their mental health. It can be confronting to have these conversations but these sensible suggestions about what to say, and what not to say, are very useful.

The South Australian Law Society has put together a wellbeing and resilience guide (which has a list of other useful resources).

Minds Count Foundation

The Minds Count Foundation is an independent, charitable organisation with the objective of decreasing work-related psychological ill-health in the legal community and promoting workplace psychological health and safety. It has created Guidelines which are a free and comprehensive set of resources designed to protect and promote psychological health and safety in the legal workplace. The site has links to research, online forums and stories shared by members of the profession.


Books

Getting to yes offers a straightforward, universally applicable method for negotiating personal and professional disputes without getting taken and without getting angry.

Susan Cain’s Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking shows how dramatically we undervalue introverts and how much we lose in doing so.

Shawn Achor's The Happiness Advantage explains why happiness fuels success, not the other way around.

In The Sleep Diet Dr Carmel Harrington demonstrates the link between the prevalence of lack of sleep and obesity in our society and offers some practical solutions.

Happy Lawyer Happy Life written by family lawyer Clarissa Rayward to give you the tools you need to make the best of your career in the law and, perhaps more importantly, find happiness in your life.

The Wellness doctrines: for law students and young lawyers written by Jerome Doraisamy provides the inspiration a young legal professional needs to take charge of his or her health and wellbeing.


Founded by Dr. Louise Newson, balance app is the only menopause app certified by ORCHA and recognised as safe, accredited, compliant, and trusted to feature in digital health libraries for the NHS and other national health bodies around the world.

Created with a single mission in mind, to make menopause support inclusive and accessible to all, balance app provides evidence-based information to help you become better informed, prepared and empowered during the perimenopause and menopause.

Apps

 Download a pack with all the worksheets you need to complete the 5 step process in my book tech enabled lawyer

The information provided on this page (and this Site) is general in nature and is not professional advice. It is not intended to provide specific guidance for particular circumstances and it should not be relied upon when deciding how to proceed. You should obtain professional advice where appropriate before making a decision.