Until very recently, every time someone new tried Spindle Law, we sent a personal introduction by e-mail, explaining something about our aspirations for the site as well as its current limitations—basically, what should and shouldn’t be expected of it for the time being.  Now that you don’t have to communicate with us personally in order to use our site, I thought I’d say something general on these subjects.

First, our aspirations:   We hope that eventually Spindle Law will become a comprehensive legal research site, with depth and breadth in every area of law.  While we don’t expect to eliminate lawyers’ need to search the text of cases, we do hope to make that kind of research less important than it is now.  We also hope that lawyers of all sorts will share their expertise on the site, through comments and contributions of rules, authorities, and links, opening up a new kind of discussion of the law that is centered on, and organized by, legal issues.

Next, what Spindle Law has to offer legal researchers right now:  Within the areas that Spindle Law covers so far—evidence, the Clean Air Act, and securities fraud liability under SEC Rule 10b-5—you can very quickly find the answers to many of the legal questions you may be researching, together with supporting authorities, and, sometimes, helpful commentary.  We’re just getting started, so of course we don’t have an answer to every question, and we don’t have every authority supporting the propositions we do have.  Until we’ve got a lot more law, you’ll almost always have to use a traditional service as well.  Even now, though, Spindle Law cuts down your total research time, by helping you get some of your work done much faster than you could without us.  What you find on Spindle Law can then improve your efficiency on your traditional research service by improving your starting point.  In that sense, Spindle Law serves something of the purpose of a treatise.  Exactly what’s in the site differs depending on the section, and, of course, it’s all growing.  I plan to post something in our securities blog that’s more specific about what’s in the 10b-5 section.

Spindle Law also makes it easy to incorporate what you find into your writing, which also saves you time and makes your life easier.  (If you’re a registered user or decide to become one, I’m talking about your SpinDoc, which I know Joel plans to post something about soon, on the occasion of updating it with couple of great new features.  In the meantime you may want to check out the SpinDoc tutorial video (click SpinDoc) or SpinDoc help material.)

Finally, as you use the site, you can customize it, so to speak, by vouching for authorities you read that support rules you’ve found, and by adding additional authorities.  Whenever you return to an authority you’ve vouched for, a will appear above it, so you will know you’ve already read it and determined that it does say what it’s said there to say, and you don’t have to recheck it.  When you add an authority, it will be there for you next time, with “YOU” below it (and a above it if you vouch for it).  Other researchers will benefit, too, of course.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 9th, 2009 at 9:43 am . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.