Ravel Law (above, presenting at Reinvent Law in Silicon Valley last Friday) is a start-up that grew out of Stanford Law, that is building visual tools for legal research. Cases’ importance to an issue would make them larger or smaller, cites would be visual links, relationships would be color coded.
Another great visual possibility would be to let users share their research paths for others to follow. Say one user has been searching on what the limits of the Commerce Clause is — she could pin all the cases and notes she has compiled together, post it publicly for others to find, and then let others use (and build upon) her work. In this way — legal research could be crowdsourced and collaborative.
