One of the perks of living in 2017 is that there are mobile apps for virtually any task you can think of. Looking for a taxi? You’ve got Uber. Want some food delivered to your doorstep? There are Postmates and Foodler. Need some investment advice? Download Robinhood and get one. Can’t make it to the gym for the third week in a row? Asana Rebel or Fitbit can help you with workouts at home. Given all this diversity of applications for our personal life, it comes as no surprise that there are applications for different kinds of business too. In today’s article, we’re going to discuss the importance of legal apps and round up a list of the most popular and user-friendly mobile apps and chatbots for lawyers.
Important alert: by the end of this article, you’ll realize two things. The first is that you no longer need to pay for a lawyer if you’ve got some kind of a trivial legal problem. The second one is that it might be an exceptionally good idea to create a legal app of your own if you run a law firm.  Thus you’ll not only help people with legal advice, but also make money on that and improve your public image. Isn’t it enough motivation to read this article A to Z?
Legal apps market overview Â
For the starters, let’s take a look at the industry as a whole. How many legal apps and chatbots are now on the market? Which ones are considered especially successful? What makes these apps special? Answers to these and some other questions are as follows.
It is predicted that in less than 3 years, as much as 85 percent of all customer interactions will not include a human being, and there are grounds to assume this prediction is true for all services, including law practice. Between 2015 and 2016, the world saw the very first commercial chatbots created to provide legal support and advice. Today, less than one year later, there are dozens of similar chat bots out there. Not even to mention all those law-related mobile apps designed to improve the traditional legal practice. Given this, there’s no wonder that more and more businessmen and tech entrepreneurs start to seriously consider the idea of building their own mobile app solutions for lawyers.
Now let’s take a look at the most well-known mobile apps and chatbots for lawyers. It is said there are plenty of great options to choose from. But first, let’s make it clear why the world needs both – chatbots and legal mobile apps.
Generally speaking, each of these two technologies can serve the needs of lawyers and users having nothing to do with legal profession. However, as experience confirms times and times again, mobile apps are getting increasingly popular among lawyers, while legal chatbots gain the popularity of end customers. Depending on your business goal, you can choose to create one or another.
Most popular legal apps for lawyers
NotaryCam
A popular online notary service NotaryCam lets users get their documents legally and securely notarized in all 50 U.S. states. The app is currently available for iOS devices and provides notary services on demand, anytime and anywhere. Online notary services from NotaryCam are made through a professional network of certified notaries who create digital versions of documents that need to be notarized. Further by means of a webcam that’s connected to the app customers verify their identity and electronically sign the documents. NotaryCam is praised for its security, fraud prevention and convenience.
FastCase
Available for both Android and iOS users, FastCase is a popular legal app putting the entire American law library in your pocket. There are statutes and detailed cases from all 50 states. Users of this app can search by statute collection or keywords and citations. Thanks to the algorithm, the app suggests the most relevant results first and lets you jump right to the most relevant part of any case in only one click. The app if free, but there is an option of premium accounts with a full FastCase subscription. Thanks to this app, lawyers can now enjoy a last-minute legal research without the need of using a laptop or library.
iLegal Legislation
The founder of this app calls it the law in your pocket, and iLegal Legislation delivers on its promise. Thanks to this app, you can access the revised and updated texts of all British primary legislation and Acts of the Parliament of Great Britain. There is a 7-day trial period during which one can test the app and purchase either an annual or a lifetime subscription. The list of features includes but is not limited to on-the-fly updates, bookmarks, browser searching by title, year, and keywords, just to name a few.
On the Case
Another example of a great legal app is ‘On the Case’ by Lexis Library. This app works just great if one needs an immediate recap on a certain case or wants to browse it by topic. One of the best things about this application is that it guides users towards good law by indicating how the court has treated a certain case.
CamScanner
Although this app can be useful for many other categories of people apart from lawyers, it is especially popular among the latter. Thanks to CamScanner, one can scan documents or handwritten notes and convert them into PDF images. Given that legal professionals tend to make hundreds of written notes per day, this app can save them a lot of time.
Talks On Law
Available for iOS users for free, Talks On Law is exactly what it sounds like. The idea behind this app is to provide legal professionals with interesting content that is both educational and entertaining at the same time. So with plenty of great features such as filters by topic, credit category, and date or search by speakers and tags, it becomes possible to learn new things about law while having fun. After all, lawyers need some rest too.
Trending Legal Chatbots
Docubot
Generally speaking, Docubot is a chatbot that helps people generate legal documents. This chatbot works through plenty of legal websites to find and analyze all information that might be necessary for a certain document. Users can create custom folders, add descriptions and notes to documents, and keywords to tag documents, and many others. Unlike the majority of chatbots that work on Facebook messenger or Slack, one can integrate Docubot into any website via a WordPress plugin. Â
LawGeex LawBot
The major mission of this chatbot is to help people analyze legal contracts and documents. All it takes is to send a particular document to this bot, and it will provide a feedback regarding all the legal ins and outs of this document. This chatbot can explain what each part of a contract means and what details might be missing. As for now, it works in integration with Slack.
RentersUnion
The idea of this chatbot is to help Londoners better understand and deal with their rental agreements. RentersUnion is essentially a chatbot providing legal advice on housing-related issues. This chatbot is trained to analyze rental agreements and help users detect hidden pitfalls. Users don’t need to integrate this chatbot into any messenger since it works as an independent chat on the company’s website.
Legalibot
Those who need help in composing legal documents might benefit from using Legalibot. Developed in Spain, this chatbot can help one create and analyze legal contracts and documents. As for now, this chatbot can be integrated with Facebook Messenger only.
Lexi
An Australian legal company LawPath has created this chatbot. Lexi is legal chatbot that helps users generate contracts and documents like Privacy Policy and Non-Disclosure Agreements. To receive advice from this smart chatbot, you need to go to the Lexi’s website, choose your type of question and start your chat. No integration with messengers required.
Features to include in legal apps
The list of features in popular legal apps differs depending on specific purpose that developers have created those apps for. However, it is still possible to round up a list of features any killer legal app should include. Â Â
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Access to law library and specific cases
The majority of lawyers refer to law books when in doubt. That’s why it is important to give users access to all legislation and acts they might need.
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Search by keywords, dates, and cases
It’s safe to say that the more search criteria can be applied the better. Time is money, and it is especially true for lawyers, that’s why they would benefit from  a user-friendly and smart search tool.
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Scan of paper documents and handwritten notes
Any legal practice requires a lot of paperwork. It is important for users to be able to scan and convert documents into PDF via the smartphone camera.
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Create and manage folders
In nearly all the cases, circumstances force lawyers to work on a number of cases simultaneously. To help them keep things organized, it would be a smart idea to include a feature with tags and folders.
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Notes and highlights
It’s important for lawyers to be able to make notes and highlight certain paragraphs in legal texts. Make sure to include this simple feature in your legal app.
Wrapping up…
By now you know that legal apps and chatbots are already well-established and still on the rise in the legal industry. And you also know that there are plenty of companies offering high-quality legal apps and legally-educated chatbots. Nonetheless, it’s obvious that the niche is still growing and no single leader has been defined yet.
This fact points to one thing: there’s never been a better time to make a killer legal app that will disrupt the entire industry. In addition, take things one step further and think of a closed-loop app that will bring online alternatives to all possible legal tasks. And as soon as the idea is ready, hire the most professional mobile app developers to make it real.
With over 8 years of expertise in mobile app development Adoriasoft is able to create legal apps for both lawyers, law firms and their customers. Therefore, we have highly qualified Android and iOS developers, experts in data security and cryptographic algorithms to provide top-notch, secure and effective mobile apps. Contact Adoriasoft today to receive your legal app project estimation for free!