Introducing LegalPad

I’m thrilled to officially announce something we’ve been working on behind the scenes here at Casetext: LegalPad. It’s live on the site right now: you can use it, for free, and without registering. So before reading about it from me, I recommend checking it out for yourself!

A rethought writing experience

LegalPad is designed to be the best way to write commentary about the law.

This means a few things. First, we created a clean writing experience, easier to use than traditional blogging platforms. Editing is done through a simplified editor bar that is there only when you need it so you can stay focused on your writing.

Second, the writing experience is especially tailored towards legal writing in particular. Legal writing is hard. Because law is based on precedent and authority, you need to juggle dozens of primary sources and documents. And as you write, you're constantly formatting, cite-checking, BlueBooking, editing, emailing versions for comments, and researching. All of this overhead distracts from the one thing you really want to focus on: perfecting your argument.

LegalPad was designed to help you focus on what matters and avoid unnecessary distractions. A sidebar enables you to quickly pull up bookmarks collected while doing research on Casetext. You can add a reference to the cases, statutes, regulations, or other posts you bookmarked, which are added with the correct citation and a hyperlink to the original source.

You can also pull up the full text of the items you've bookmarked in what we are calling the PocketCase. Not only does the PocketCase enable you to read the full text of the case you are writing about while you're writing, you can also drop in quotes directly into the text. They'll be correctly formatted, have the right citation, and even include the pincite to the page you've copied from.

And we're just getting started. Imagine if you never had to BlueBook again, if tables of contents were created automatically for you, if drafts were automatically saved for you and backed up in the cloud, if you could draft collaboratively and in real time with co-authors instead of emailing drafts back and forth, or if you were recommended citations to authority as you typed. We're building all of that. Stay tuned.

Simple and beautiful published posts

It was also exceptionally important to us that your finished, published work would be presented cleanly and professionally. This also doesn't mean you have to be an expert in design and web coding (or hire an expert) to publish your views in a well-designed environment.

But don't take my word for it -- check out an example of what your commentary could look like here.

Interwoven into the law and the legal community

LegalPad also has one final, very special feature. If your post cites to legal authority, it will be connected to the case, statute, or regulation you referenced such that next time someone reads the authority, they'll be alerted to your commentary. This makes the world's best free legal research platform an even better resource. It also helps you reach an audience of over 350,000 attorneys, in-house counsel, professors, law students, other legal professionals, and business leaders who use Casetext as a resource every month.

Another way to connect with the right people is by sharing your post with Casetext's communities. Over 50,000 people subscribe to get updates through Casetext communities; by sharing your analysis with them, you can have a wide reach without having to worry about SEO and paid advertising.

An unbeatable price

Did I mention the price? LegalPad is 100% free. You don't even need to sign up to try it out. And posting on Casetext using this nifty editor will always be free.

So what are you waiting for? You can start working with LegalPad right now by clicking here.

Have any suggestions for ways we can improve LegalPad? Don't be shy -- reach out to me at jake@casetext.com!