Robert Ambrogi Blog
Wolfram|Alpha, the “computational knowledge engine,” has released an iPhone and iPad app designed specifically for legal professionals. The Wolfram Lawyer’s Professional Assistant provides basic reference information — such as a dictionary of legal terms and the statutes of limitations for every U.S. state — as well as a variety of computational tools.
For anyone unfamiliar with the Wolfram website, it is a search engine of a sort, except that it does not search the web. Rather, it answers your queries by doing dynamic calculations based on its own broad collection of data. Ask it, “How many lawyers in the U.S.?” and it returns a page saying that there are 556,790 employed U.S. lawyers and that they earn a median annual wage of $110,590.
The app lets you perform various calculations on your iOS device. It lets you:
- Perform calendar computations to determine the end date of a specific term.
- Perform financial computations, such as fee calculations, settlement calculations, current interest rates, historical value of money, and federal tax rates.
- Ascertain crime rates and histories for specific crimes, as well as state and national average comparisons.
- Obtain demographics of population and economy for specific cities and international information about currency, country economies, and languages spoken, as well as time zone conversions.
- Get investigative information, including weather, company information and IP lookup.
- Calculate blood alcohol.
- Perform damages and estate-planning computations for occupational salaries, costs of living, life expectancy, and present or future values.
- Calculate numbers for real estate transactions, including mortgage calculations, closing cost estimation, information on square footage, home sales price, and utility prices.
iPad version.