Facing Legal Troubles? There Are Plenty of Apps for That.

Facing Legal Troubles? There Are Plenty of Apps for That.There are applications for almost everything we do: finding a restaurant, grabbing a cab, buying theatre tickets. But did you know there are more than 20 different apps that can help you with legal questions? The American Bar Association Journal reports that applications like CitizenshipWorks and the New York-based Stop & Frisk Watch are “putting justice into the hands of some who may need it most” – namely, immigrants and indigent people whose rights are being abused or “neglected” along the way.

While a small number of the apps require a fee – such as PhoneView, which “allows a user to view, save and print all iPhone, iPad and WhatsApp messages” as PDF files on a Mac computer, for the price of $29.95 – the majority of these justice-based apps are free to the public and available in every state.

There are a few apps that give users direct access to attorneys, of course, but the majority of these applications offer far more services:

  • FBI Child ID. This app allows parents to store all of their children’s vital information and pictures in one central location. If the child goes missing, a parent can use the app to give local police all the information they need at once.
  • Legal Aid News. This app – one of three offered by Pine Tree – helps people with lower incomes get access to legal advice and counsel from attorneys and services around the country, on a state-by-state basis.
  • My Attorney Apps. Free for users (though not for lawyers), this app allows you and your attorney “to store background information, witness information and photographs associated with cases,” and lets you call or text your attorney directly. Law firms can also input information about their attorneys and their successes, and clients can find other relevant information about the firm from other users.
  • My Health Car Wishes. This keeps all your pertinent health information in one space, including living wills and DNR orders, if you have them. (The premium version of this app is $3.99.)

These are just a few of the applications mentioned by the ABA Journal, and there are many more out there. Everything you need to protect yourself is essentially at your fingertips.