{"id":39,"date":"2010-03-10T15:32:21","date_gmt":"2010-03-10T20:32:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.law.cornell.edu\/library\/2010\/03\/10\/blacks-law-dictionary-theres-an-app-for-that\/"},"modified":"2010-03-15T11:04:46","modified_gmt":"2010-03-15T16:04:46","slug":"blacks-law-dictionary-theres-an-app-for-that","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.law.cornell.edu\/library\/2010\/03\/10\/blacks-law-dictionary-theres-an-app-for-that\/","title":{"rendered":"Black&#8217;s Law Dictionary: There&#8217;s an app for that"},"content":{"rendered":"<p align=\"left\"><a href=\"http:\/\/blog.law.cornell.edu\/library\/files\/2010\/03\/blacks_law-app.jpg\" title=\"Black\u2019s Law Dictionary 8th Edition iPhone app\"><img loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/blog.law.cornell.edu\/library\/files\/2010\/03\/blacks_law-app.jpg\" alt=\"Black\u2019s Law Dictionary 8th Edition iPhone app\" align=\"left\" height=\"145\" width=\"104\" \/><\/a><a href=\"http:\/\/www.apple.com\/iphone\/\" title=\"iPhone\">iPhone<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.apple.com\/ipodtouch\/\" title=\"iPod Touch\">iPod touch<\/a>, and now <a href=\"http:\/\/www.apple.com\/ipad\/\" title=\"iPad\">iPad<\/a> apps for legal research have been picking up steam, and a small variety of apps are currently available. Of course, none of these are useful to you if you have a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.motorola.com\/Consumers\/US-EN\/Consumer-Product-and-Services\/Mobile-Phones\/Motorola-DROID-US-EN\" title=\"Droid\">Droid<\/a>, a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.blackberry.com\/\" title=\"Blackberry.com\">Blackberry<\/a>, or a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.palm.com\/us\/products\/phones\/pre\/\" title=\"Palm Pre\">Palm Pre<\/a>. Also how useful these are depends on how mobile you are and whether you want\/need\/like access to resources that your laptop with Wi-Fi can&#8217;t provide.<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">One prominent app is <a href=\"http:\/\/itunes.apple.com\/us\/app\/blacks-law-dictionary-8th\/id312542731?mt=8\" title=\"Black's Law Dictionary app\">Black&#8217;s Law Dictionary<\/a>, which West released in April 2009. The upsides include:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Speed-it&#8217;s fast<\/li>\n<li>\u00a0Auto-complete feature helps you find the words you&#8217;re looking for<\/li>\n<li>Audio pronunciation for 7,000 words, so you will never embarrass yourself again by mispronouncing a term<\/li>\n<li>You don&#8217;t need the Internet to access<\/li>\n<li>Links to other words and resources in Westlaw (e.g., Corpus Juris Secundum) if you have an account (but you may have to pay to use them, depending on your plan)<\/li>\n<li>Portability, of course!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The downsides:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The price is steep for an app&#8211;$49.99&#8211;which won&#8217;t be worth it for many who already have access to Black&#8217;s through Westlaw or in print<\/li>\n<li>App is for the 8th edition of Black&#8217;s, but West published the <a href=\"http:\/\/west.thomson.com\/productdetail\/148307\/40776543\/productdetail.aspx\" title=\"Black's Law Dictionary 9th Edition\">9th edition<\/a> last summer (no word yet on if and when West will release an app for the 9th edition)<\/li>\n<li>Text does not resize itself when you zoom in<\/li>\n<li>No browsing words alphabetically<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>By the way, don&#8217;t confuse the iPhone app with <a href=\"http:\/\/www.blackslawdictionary.com\/\" title=\"Black's Law Dictionary Digital\">Black&#8217;s Law Dictionary Digital<\/a>. The Digital version consists of a toolbar you download to your computer to use in Microsoft Word, Internet Explorer, and Mozilla Firefox. The toolbar links you to the online version of Black&#8217;s in Westlaw, and will provide spell-checking of legal terms in Word. This tool is not something I find useful since I can add legal terms to the spell checker the first time it finds them and the toolbar does not make it much faster or easier to retrieve Black&#8217;s in Westlaw or from my bookshelf.<\/p>\n<p>For a more detailed review of the Black&#8217;s app, see Jeff Richardson&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.iphonejd.com\/iphone_jd\/2009\/04\/review-blacks-law-dictionary-for-iphone.html\" title=\"Link to Jeff Richard's review of Black's Law Dictionary\">Review: Black&#8217;s Law Dictionary for iPhone<\/a> on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.iphonejd.com\/iphone_jd\/\" title=\"iphonejd.com\">iphonejd.com<\/a>; also see the <a href=\"http:\/\/itunes.apple.com\/us\/app\/blacks-law-dictionary-8th\/id312542731?mt=8\" title=\"iTune user reviews for Black's Law Dictionary app\">reviews<\/a> from users in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.apple.com\/itunes\/\" title=\"iTunes\">iTunes<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>If you don&#8217;t want to pony up $50 for Black&#8217;s Dictionary, never fear: free law dictionary apps are also available and will be the subject of a future post.<\/p>\n<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>iPhone, iPod touch, and now iPad apps for legal research have been picking up steam, and a small variety of apps are currently available. Of course, none of these are useful to you if you have a Droid, a Blackberry, or a Palm Pre. Also how useful these are depends on how mobile you are <a href='https:\/\/blog.law.cornell.edu\/library\/2010\/03\/10\/blacks-law-dictionary-theres-an-app-for-that\/'>[&#8230;]<\/a><!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[302],"tags":[335,337,336,305],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.law.cornell.edu\/library\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.law.cornell.edu\/library\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.law.cornell.edu\/library\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.law.cornell.edu\/library\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/32"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.law.cornell.edu\/library\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.law.cornell.edu\/library\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.law.cornell.edu\/library\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.law.cornell.edu\/library\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.law.cornell.edu\/library\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}