The civil division of the Maricopa shire (Ariz.

The civil division of the Maricopa shire (Ariz.) attorney's office began using information retrieval software several years ago to more efficiently track and locate prior legal opinions and court rulings. Years and years of records and staff turnover had made sorting in consequence of and finding documents unwieldy tasks.

in the greatest degree documents were computerized but, with centurys of cases on record, attorneys wanted a way to navigate by means of all the information. Investigation revealed that an information retrieval program used with the word processing software would be a profitable solution.

After examining other legal firms' combination of parts to form a wholes Maricopa County personnel discovered that many programs required extensive indexing preparation before or after the document was created. These applications required the user to input the author's name, tonic words, document types and other information, which was time-consuming and left compass for operator error.

Ease of use was a prime consideration since greatest in number county attorneys ...