Adrienne Elenteny is a public defender in the San Francisco Bay area (Alameda County). In 2005, she was sitting in court, waiting for one of her cases to be called, and she found herself watching prosecutors, judges and defense attorneys scramble over and over to make sure that all the collateral consequences of a plea were stated on the record
from sentence ranges, fines, driver's license conditions, immigration
consequences, probation eligibility, mandatory jail requirements and so
on. She has a long history with computers—she got her undergraduate degree in computer science and has been using portable technology since the original, luggable Compaq in the 1980s—and with that background, as she was watching the lawyers in the courtroom, she thought, wouldn't it be great if you could look at a single screen of a PDA and see all the related statutes/consequences of a criminal offense? And, as Elenteny tells the story to me, that is how Crime-IQ was born.
Crime-IQ was originally available for the PC, Palm and Windows Mobile devices, and Elenteny updated it over the years. When the iPhone came out, she realized that Crime-IQ would be perfect as an iPhone web app because it is simple to use, easy to read and fast. And unlike other California Codes that are available for the iPhone (which are great if you know the specific statute you are looking for), Elenteny thought that Crime-IQ could offer something unique by essentially already doing the search for you. You tap on a particular offense and you get a single screen with links to each statute related to the offense on a single "Offense Screen" allowing a lawyer to know everything about an offense in just a few seconds.
Each offense screen includes: sentencing ranges, custody credits, fines, DMV consequences, probation eligibility, enhancements, registration requirements, immigration impact and any special consequences related to the offense. Additionally, statutes on the offense screen are linked to the relevant statutory text. A Crime-IQ screen consolidates information from a variety of statutes and codes into a single view for fast, easy, accessible data.
My knowledge of criminal law and procedure is limited and somewhat rusty. Georgetown Law School is well known for its clinical programs, and when I was a third year I was in their great criminal justice clinic which gave me an opportunity to spend one semester trying cases as a prosecutor and one semester trying cases as a defense attorney. It was a great learning experience for me and one of my highlights of law school, but 15 years later, as I look at the Crime-IQ app, I find myself almost as confused as I was when I reviewed Vade Mecum earlier this year—the app in Portuguese containing Brazilian law. Thus, I cannot comment on the substance of the app, given the good feedback that Elenteny has received (take a look at the testimonials on her website), I'm sure that anyone practicing criminal law in California will want to give this one a close look.
The web app isn't cheap. It costs $139.95 a year (or $69.95 for the rest of this year). And because this is a web app, you purchase it through the Crime-IQ website, not on the iTunes App Store. But you can click here for a free demo which includes a limited number of Offense Screens so that you can get a feel for the program.
Thanks to Elenteny for telling me about Crime-IQ, and I hope that those of you who are California criminal practitioners find it useful. It is great to see more and more attorneys creating law-related apps for the iPhone. I think that there will be an increasing demand for them because almost every day I hear of yet another lawyer getting an iPhone.
