I'm not the first name on the routing list for Information Today. That's a shame because it's worth the price of admission just for Barbara Quint and Steven Cohen's columns. January was a good month. Steven Cohen wrote about Jureeka, a wonderful little add-in for Firefox that identifies legal citations on a web page, any web page, and hyperlinks them to a free source for the full text.
In know, I know, there aren't very many firms that suport the use of Firefox. And that's a real shame, because Jureeka is a very handy little utility, and you can only get this kind of functionality in Firefox. In this time of cost-cutting, what could be better than an easy way to retrieve case law at no charge?
One reason Firefox may not be acceptable in your firm is because the Intranet is likely optimized for Internet Explorer. But Firefox can channel Internet Explorer, so it's not impossible to get by with Firefox in a Microsoft shop.....if you can stay under the IT radar...
Have you played with it much yet? I've found more than a few hitches myself. The most problematic one is that it overwrites links. For example, a coworker wrote a blog post and included links to the cited sections of the US Constitution at Cornell's LII. Jureeka recognized the citations and overwrote them, but since Jureeka had not yet found the Constitution at Cornell's site, clicking on the links produces a "Sorry we haven't found that yet!" page instead of my coworker's links. And I didn't find a way to turn it off and on, which would be fine if I was an IE fan who only used Firefox for Jureeka, but as a Firefox fan it's irksome.
Oh no, now you're giving out tips to sneak under the IT radar? : )
Since I don't know of any large firms with official support of anything other than IE, there hasn't been much development of law library add-ons (like LookUp Precision) on other browsers. Do you expect this to continue in the future, or is the tide turning?
Hi Devin!
Actually, I agree, I don't have much hope for Firefox in law firms. That's why it's frustrating to see tools like this and only be able to use them at home!
I would NEVER suggest sneaking under the IT radar as I wouldn't DREAM of doing anything like that myself...
Cindy