Sunday, October 12, 2008

Tagging legal source material

I thought that I'd make Jureeka a little more fun - and useful - by adding a feature that lets users create tags for legal sources found on the web. The idea is to channel the power of the masses, aka you, to label all of the delicious material that's just sitting out there.

When you're at a page that you want to label, all you need to do is press the "TAG" button on the toolbar. A dialog box will pop up in which you can write your tag:



Once I amass enough tags, I'll work on a search/recommendation feature to give you a new way to forge ahead with your legal research. Maybe I'll even release the data to the programmers out there and have a contest to see who can create the best recommendation engine.

(Note: you can enter multiple tags in the dialog box; you just need to separate them with commas or semicolons.)

Monday, October 6, 2008

The Federal Reporter, volumes 1-281

I just uploaded Jureeka version 1.4, which includes links to around 275 volumes from the Federal Reporter. These volumes cover U.S. federal circuit court cases from 1880 to around 1922.

The cases are hosted at:
The cases are in PDF form but both of these sites let you view an HTML version of each case, so Jureeka can work its magic on them.

This material is probably of little interest to John Q. Lawyer, let alone John Q. Public. But I'm compulsive about hyperlinking the legal web - knitting together legal source material from a variety of publishers and making it all accessible by legal citation. Even if few people reach these cases, I like knowing that it's reachable.

And who knows, maybe the authority you're looking for is in there...though I highly doubt it.

Saturday, October 4, 2008

Version 1.3

I just uploaded version 1.3, which doesn't have any major new features but corrects a number of small errors and annoyances. Thanks to everyone who reported bugs and contacted me to give feedback.

Contrary to the post below, Jureeka currently does not automatically update itself. You have to come back here (or to Mozilla) periodically to get the most recent version.

Once Jureeka gets out of the "sandbox" at Mozilla -- in other words, when people no longer have to register at Mozilla in order to download it -- automatic updates will be enabled. I'm awaiting word on when it can be released from the sandbox, and I'm hopeful that it will be soon.