Partner-Proof Legal Tech
The legal industry is not known for its quick or seamless adoption of technology. An impediment to individual user adoption is the team-centric nature of the work: if one team member does not or cannot use the technology, the rest can be thrown off and give up trying to adopt solutions that would make their work easier. This is even more of an obstacle when the person refusing to adopt the new technology is a superior. Many new legal solutions, especially if they relate to case management or require partner review, get shelved because they are not adopted by the law firm partners themselves. Seeing many such solutions fail at the whim of partner adoption, we built LitKit to be partner-proof so that tired, overworked associates can still reap the benefits even if adoption is slower up the ranks.
Take the Exhibit Tool for example. As you add exhibits and cite to them in your brief, the exhibits are automatically numbered based on where they first appear in the document; short-cites and "id." citations are linked to the initial cite. So, dear associate, using the Exhibit Tool, you finally build a wonderful brief, supported by clean and correct factual citations.
But then it is time for partner (or maybe client) review. Let's say the partner is reviewing off of a computer that does not have LitKit. She then goes ahead and deletes an initial cite, one that was followed by an "id." citation. When you receive the updated brief, refreshing the exhibits will make sure that none of your work is lost: exhibits will be renumbered if needed, and any subsequent citations to that exhibit will be updated.
Even if the subsequent cite to an exhibit is further down in the brief, the short-cite will transform into a long-cite if the initial cite is deleted (if you chose to distinguish between short and long cites, of course).
Indeed, the partner can move entire pieces of the brief around without using LitKit or even thinking about the numbering of the exhibits. With the click of a button, once you have the pen back, you can have LitKit renumber the exhibits and keep order in your document.
It's truly a miracle. Now, if the partner decides to add a new exhibit, she will not be able to add it to the LitKit list without using the software, but let's be honest, the note to add an exhibit will probably look something like this rather than an actual factual citation:
...and unfortunately no tech can help you decipher that yet.