Little helpers. — Court-Martial Trial Practice Blog

I have two little helpers useful to cutting and pasting.

Pure Text (Free-shareware). This little goodie allows you to copy text from the web, for example, and then paste to your document using your font, but without all of the formatting from the original text. If used in conjunction with WordPerfect 12 or WordPerfect X-4, with "reveal codes" set, you can save a lot of time cutting and pasting from all kinds of documents into your motion or brief. It works fine with Word, but Word is so stodgy on changing formatting.

CiteGenie (90 day trial, and then a small fee compared to value in time). This is a plug-in to Firefox, with Explorer on the way. This would be an opportune moment to shift to Firefox as your web-browser. I'm one of those who believe that any browser than Explorer is better. (Note: for those of us in Virginia who get FastCase free through the bar, CiteGenie is not yet compatible). The developer has this to say:

Cutting and pasting when doing legal research using your browser is simple. But having to construct the citation for what you pasted is not so simple. This is especially true with legal citations from sources like Westlaw. You have to stop and copy the case name separately, determine the pinpoint page numbers, and adjust the date and court name format.

So I decided to write a browser plugin that would automatically add a pinpoint citation to the text I copy and paste. Thus CiteGenie™ was born.

Clair S. Shuttz says:

February 9, 2009 at 6:47 pm

When it comes to “free” Fastcase, you do get what you pay for. I found Fastcase practically worthless for real research as its coverage of subsequent history is full of holes. You risk serious headaches as you won’t know that a case has been reversed using Fastcase. You still always have to go to Westlaw for decent subsequent history. It lacks pinpoints for state cases with parallel reporters. The supposed “citation” they give rarely has the party names correct or the court name correct. It is marginally useful to read cases outside my Westlaw plan, but Fastcase just isn’t reliable enough for me.
As for the Citegenie addin however, that is a really nice tool. I installed it yesterday and it is already saving me time and frustration. I’m using Word, and it works fine — even italicizing the case names in the citation.

PDC says:

February 9, 2009 at 7:51 pm

Thanks.
I don’t use FastCase for primary research. I appreciate the concerns you raise about it. Most cases I can get through my “military” module in Lexis. But every now and again I use FastCase just to see if there’s something in the “states” on a novel issue.
Glad you like the Genie.