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| CiteIt Version 3.0 | |
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CiteIt Version 3 from Sidebar Software helps you organize all the little bits and pieces of research that eventually go into a brief or motion — quotations from cases with pinpoint citations, references to statutes, notes from hornbooks, ideas, sections from other briefs and so forth. The program is able to do this by importing legal citations from word processing documents (both Microsoft Word and Corel WordPerfect) and online legal databases such as Westlaw, LexisNexis and FindLaw. It then creates a database that includes the text you select from your source document, properly formatted citations (Bluebook and the Association of Legal Writing Directors Citation Manual), including citations for subsequent references, and notes you enter yourself. You can enter information manually if you are doing research from paper sources. You can then assign multiple keywords to each research clip, and sort the information by the keywords. The program allows you to create a separate database for each research project. The database is stored in a proprietary “.cit” format, and you can re-use it for a new project. A “Find” command makes the databases fully searchable. Once you have entered a citation into the database, either automatically from a source document or manually, you can go to the text of the case in Westlaw or LexisNexis by simply clicking a button. Selecting text in the case and using Web capture transfers the selected text instantly into the program. When you are ready to write your brief, CiteIt inserts properly formatted citations into your document. It even enters subsequent references, correctly formatted. You can customize the citation style to use either underlining or italics, but you can’t change the position of the case’s date. This means if you are drafting for a court that places the date right after the case title (e.g., California), you will have to correct each citation manually. When you are ready to create a table of authorities, CiteIt searches your document, finds the citations it has inserted in the document and creates the table. It will even include citations you have inserted manually or copied into the document. Finally, you can produce what the company calls a brief outline, which is a list of all the citations grouped by keywords, together with your notes and Web captures. You can insert this outline into any document. This creates a handy summary of all the law you reviewed. It sure beats having to keep all those scribbled notes in the file to remind you of what you researched. The brief outline also is useful to document your work product. There were very few areas that needed improvement. In addition to the citation formatting problem, I had difficulty creating custom research sources, but that just might require more work on my part. Overall, I liked CiteIt very much. I especially liked that it works equally well with Word, WordPerfect (versions 9 and 10), LexisNexis and Westlaw. The program has a handy online tutorial, good help features and is easy to learn. Keeping legal research organized is a difficult task. Even if you use the computer for all your research, you end up with the digital equivalent of little scraps of paper. CiteIt is a nifty way to organize those digital scraps into useful resources. It’s definitely worth trying, especially with the free 30-day trial period. |
Sidebar Software Price:
$200 per seat for one to nine users (Professional Edition); $185 per seat
for Windows 98/Me/2000/XP Reviewed by Grace Suarez, a sole practitioner and knowledge management consultant based in San Francisco. PROS CONS VERDICT |
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