© 2015 The Texas Lawbook.
By Janet Elliott
(Jan. 26) – When Sutherland enlisted his help in developing a mobile app specific to Texas, David Baay thought about his own experience as a litigator traveling to courthouses around the state.
Baay, a partner and co-head of the energy litigation section in the Houston office of Sutherland Asbill & Brennan, helped develop Texas openCourts, an app that allows users to locate state and federal courts, learn about the background of judges and access local federal court rules.
“Picture a litigator driving to a courthouse and wanting to look up a discrete rule. This could be done quickly by using the app,” says Baay. “A lot of my clients like to know the backgrounds of judges and the app provides a way to quickly access that information on their smartphones.”
Baay worked with internal marketing and technical staff and an outside developer to fine-tune the app, which launched in late 2015 and has been downloaded more than 200 times. Baay estimates the cost in firm staff time and vendor expenses reaching $100,000.
“It came out better than I envisioned in terms of ease of use and overall appearance,” he says.
The app provides information, including judicial biographies, for federal and state civil district courts in Texas, state appellate courts and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Users can access information through interactive maps or search by judge, court or location.
Users can collect information, place it into a “Briefcase” folder, and then share that data via email with one click. A “Favorites” section also is available for storing frequently needed content.
The free app is available through the Apple App Store, Google Play and the Amazon Appstore.
From a marketing perspective, the app is a way to increase brand awareness in Texas for Sutherland, an Atlanta firm that has 31 lawyers in Texas – 22 in Houston and nine in Austin. The Houston office opened in 2002 and the Austin office opened in 1993.
The firm previously developed an app that provides legal alerts on tax laws.
Baay hopes the Texas openCourts app eventually will feature legal alerts on interesting court decisions and relevant legal news that firm clients could access through a password. The firm currently provides such alerts to clients by email.
“Once we add the functionality of legal alerts it will increase the app’s attractiveness to our in-house clients,” says Baay.
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