What is Legal Brief Writing Software?
The legal brief writing software is a type of word processing software designed specifically for legal professionals. Its objective is to simplify and streamline the process of drafting, editing, and formatting legal documents such as pleadings, motions, and memoranda. Legal brief writing software typically comes with features and tools that cater to the specific needs of legal professionals, such as legal word processors, templates for various types of briefs, citation management, and grammatical and semantic checks tailored to legal writing .
By eliminating tedious formatting tasks and helping to ensure legal citations are accurate, legal brief writing software can free up time and allow legal professionals to focus on their work more efficiently. In addition, these programs can provide quick definitions of legal terms and allow users to search legal databases across multiple jurisdictions for research purposes.
Features of Legal Brief Writing Software
When searching for legal brief writing software, it’s essential to consider the features that the software offers. The focus should be on features that support efficiency, accuracy, and seamless collaboration. Common features among legal brief writing software include the following:
Citation tools: Legal brief writing software should simplify the process of citing cases and legal documents. This typically includes a citation database, which allows users to quickly look up case citations and insert them into their briefs. Furthermore, the software should be able to automatically format citations in accordance with formal requirements, such as The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation, and different court rules.
Templates: Templates are a valuable feature that can save time and eliminate the need to reformat or discover and correct typographical errors from one brief to the next. In addition, templates help attorneys maintain consistency across all of a firm’s briefs. Many software programs come with a library of template briefs, or allow attorneys to create their own. The ability to create a template of your most-used briefs, or to upload your past briefs, is important to enabling efficiency.
Formatting options: Formatting options enable you to adjust font sizes and styles, line spacing, indentation, page breaks and numbering, and other important layout features. It’s essential that legal brief writing software allows you to customize these formatting features, as well as make automatic adjustments to font and page breaks as you type.
Collaboration capabilities: Legal brief writing software should have streamlined collaborative features that make it easier to work within your firm. Look for collaboration tools that support shared access and automatic updates, and that allow users to comment on work directly.
Advantages of Legal Brief Writing Software
The era of faster, more efficient legal brief writing is upon us. Legal brief writing software empowers lawyers to optimize their efforts and time with efficient tools that maximize workflow while preserving the highest level of quality.
Savings in Time: The technology associated with legal brief writing has improved so significantly over the past decade or so that the work of writing briefs has been substantially simplified. A legal brief writing service can now be accomplished with speed and precise attention to the most exacting details. The improvements in technology allow for drafting, editing, and saving drafts and re-writing in mere moments compared to the lengthy time that was once necessary to create a legal brief.
Savings in Accuracy: Legal brief writing software allows a level of accuracy and detail that was never possible before. Spelling and grammar checks are immediate, and the ability to sift through complicated rules and regulations for a specific court or jurisdiction is now much easier. The software can be customized to meet a lawyer’s particular specifications to allow for precision in every single detail of a brief.
Compliance with Procedural Requirements: Every single court and jurisdiction has detailed rules and regulations relating to the filing of briefs and related documents. The hidden pitfalls with so many deadlines, filing and formatting requirements can often lead to failure to comply with even the simplest of the requirements, which can cause delays and even filing of papers out of time. The use of a legal brief writing service makes compliance with these complicated requirements easier and virtually painless.
An Easier Workflow: The laborious process of drafting legal briefs can now be a straightforward process that will streamline workflow. That allows lawyers and their staff to now focus on the primary tasks associated with a case without the confusion and frustration of creating briefs that might not be complete or accurate. A streamlined workflow allows the other legal staff members to now focus on legal research and live client support.
Best Legal Brief Writing Software
Several legal brief and document writing software programs have gained popularity for their unique features and ease of use. Here are a few of the most popular ones for law firms and solo practitioners.
PerfectIt
This program is known for its ability to check for consistency, which will help you ensure that you do not use the same word in two different ways in a single document. It also looks at grammar and punctuation, which is nice for less experienced attorneys who may struggle with these specific items or even for more experienced attorneys who may overlook small mistakes after hours of writing.
PerfectIt has versions that work with Word, Word for Mac, PowerPoint and for InDesign. The software is not free, but there is a 30-day free trial available to help you determine if it will work for your needs. Your law firm can purchase a single license or multiple licenses that will lower the cost per license.
Hyperwriter
Hyperwriter is one of the more expensive options on the market at $1.99 a page. This software gives you the ability to store boilerplate language, which allows you to quickly insert it into other briefs or motions you work on. This saves time and keeps you on task. It also includes a spell-checker, grammar checker and the ability to check for incomplete sentences. This is a fairly simple program, but it is popular because it is a single program that handles multiple aspects of legal documents.
BriefCatch
BriefCatch is a legal writing program that uses AI to evaluate the writing in your documents and helps you with improvements in real-time. It is one of the most expensive options on the market, costing about $149 per year, though some discounts are available for bigger purchases. There is no free trial available, but you can schedule a free demo of the software. The program claims that when cases are using BriefCatch, they increase their chances of winning by an average of 30 percent.
Lawyaw
Lawyaw helps you format briefs as part of the program. It does not have a lot of the bells and whistles of some other offerings, so it is good for those who do not need a lot of extra features. You can schedule a demo to see if it works for you.
How to Select Legal Brief Writing Software for Your Practice
When selecting the right software program for your law practice, consider the cost of the program, how user-friendly it is, how easily it can be integrated into your existing systems, and what types of customer support options it offers for when you need assistance.
Cost
Cost considerations should include not just the purchase price of the software, but whether there are other charges associated with the program, such as installation fees or maintenance costs. If the program is subscription-based, is it charged per user? What is the total cost for your practice?
User-friendliness
Another very important factor to consider is how user-friendly the program is. The last thing you need is for a complex program to slow down your draft preparation. Improvements in technology should help you write briefs more quickly, not at a snails pace. Be sure to read the reviews of the software to determine how quickly, intuitively, and easily you will be able to prepare briefs with it. If possible , get a demo of the program so you can evaluate how easily you learn to use the software.
Compatibility and Integration
Another very important consideration is whether the program will work seamlessly with the other systems you already have in place. This includes synergy with your law practice management program, so that you can move between them without any glitches. In addition, find out how well that particular program integrates with document management systems, billing applications, and other software programs you have implemented in your law practice.
Customer Service
You also want to know what type of customer service and technical support is provided by the company that developed the software program you are considering. You want to know you will be well-supported if you run into problems. Likewise, you need to know if the tech support included is 24/7 or only during regular business hours. In addition, you want to know if tech support is available by phone or via email, and how quickly you can expect responses when you have an inquiry or are experiencing a problem.
Using Legal Brief Software in Your Practice
Incorporating new software requires thoughtful change management and the legal brief writing software is no different. Training programs and ongoing support are essential. Given that most legal brief programs are relatively easy to learn, getting lawyers up to speed should not take an excessive amount of time or resources. However, lawyers are typically resistant to change. Their reasons for resistance vary from personal software preference to perceived time constraints. Lawyers need to understand that the cost of learning new technology far outweighs the costs of inefficiencies. Resistances should be viewed as an opportunity to demonstrate the efficiency gains attainable with the best legal writing software.
When you have decided to implement legal briefs software, you need to dedicate time to the training program. You should contact the vendor and ask for a location to deliver the training. Some vendors may even offer online training. Where the training is delivered will be a key consideration. In my experience for any new technology, it is always better to conduct the training in-house. You can divide the training into two parts by group. Training within groups will build team spirit. The trainer can review the features and functionality of the legal briefs software. The next part of the training can be held as a roundtable discussion. You can invite partners from your law firm and any other colleagues who have an interest in improving the efficiency of the enterprise. Having the partners participate and putting them on board will help to accept input on integrating technology in the law firm.
After the training, you can incentivize your colleagues to adopt the legal briefs writing software. Offer prizes to the most productive users. You can offer one tablet to the most active user. You can organize a basketball game after work and give stacks to the winners. You can reward excellence in integrating technology in the law firm.
After the training, you should identify a small group of your colleagues and create a familiarity group. This group should involve lawyers and support staff that express support for change in the law firm. Having early success will motivate the rest of the team. As a long-term strategy, you should add legal briefs software training as a part of the curriculum for incoming associates.
You should measure productivity improvements after several months of using legal briefs writing software. For each legal brief that was prepared, compare the time to delivery without software assistance and the time to delivery with the legal briefs writing software. You can compare the time difference with other law firm metrics to gauge productivity.
Future Developments in Legal Brief Writing Software
For the future, it’s likely that we will see further enhancements in the areas of artificial intelligence, machine learning, and predictive analytics, all of which carry the ability to change the way legal professionals think about legal brief preparation.
Artificial Intelligence (AI): AI-powered legal brief writing can save the attorneys significant time by allowing them to simply dictate their thoughts into a machine, and have the resulting dictation intelligently transcribed, tagged for accuracy, analyzed for relevance, and organized in proper order.
Predictive Analytics: By capturing the data submitted through the use of document templates , predictive analytics can ultimately enhance the quality of evidence presented in a brief by highlighting missing arguments or citation patterns. It also enables legal professionals to quickly identify and address limitations or deficiencies in their existing legal documents such as briefs, motions, and pleadings.
Machine Learning: Even now, machine learning algorithms are capable of "learning" based on the manner in which users format or structure their briefs, and can begin to suggest relevant arguments or citation patterns based on this previously unrecognized data. In the future, machine learning may be able to cross-reference this information with the formats of winning briefs in determining how to structure an existing legal document.
Ultimately, looking to these developments will further transform the use of legal research and writing software, bringing advanced legal brief writing to attorneys’ fingertips.