Free Laws
Delaware is still the go-to jurisdiction for many businesses to incorporate themselves, but lawyers there don’t take that position for granted. That’s why Scott Waxman, a partner at Potter Anderson & Corroon in Wilmington, Del., decided to get his law firm into the business of mobile computing.
“We want to make sure Delaware is the jurisdiction businesses and lawyers want to come to,” he says. “If we want more business to come here, we need to be convenient to work with.”
For today’s lawyers, convenient information must be accessible on mobile devices. Potter Anderson spent about a year developing a free mobile service that puts the full text of Delaware statutes and case summaries produced by the firm on mobile BlackBerry devices.
The service, called eDelaware, is updated nightly and is stored on a BlackBerry’s memory, so even lawyers stuck on a plane or without Internet access can search the Delaware statutes. Waxman says the content has been compressed so that any BlackBerry less than 5 years old should be able to easily carry the information in its built-in memory.
The firm is also planning to introduce more services, like Delaware bankruptcy codes and more searchable case summaries. Waxman says that while it might not make sense for every law firm to become a software provider, it is a great way to impress clients and interested parties.
“I wanted to make a tool that I would want to have on the road,” he says. “We’ve already got users in 22 states, so I think it’s clearly not just me who finds it useful.”
