Yesterday, I wrote about Jimmy Verner and the first iPhone app that he created, Texas Child Support Calculator. Verner’s second iPhone app is called Texas Litigation Deadlines.
I’ve written frequently about date calculators, both general date calculators and more recently Court Days, a calculator written especially for attorneys that takes into account different legal holidays in different states. Verner created an even more specialized app that calculates pretrial and posttrial deadlines in Texas civil courts, and Verner has done a great job.
I don’t practice law in Texas so I can’t say much about how dates are calculated there, but Verner, who is board certified in civil trial law, tells me that the Texas Rules of Civil Procedure are “bizarre, Byzantine [and] don’t even remotely resemble the federal rules or the rules of any other state.” This app helps you to navigate those rules. To use the app, you simply enter a starting date. It can be either a trial date (if you want to calculate pretrial deadlines) or a judgment date (if you want to calculate posttrial deadlines for either an ordinary or an accelerated appeal).
The app then tells you the date on which each of the significant events occurs. For example, if March 5, 2010 is the trial date, you can tap the “Pretrial deadlines” button and you will see a screen telling you the date of each of the significant dates, such as 120 days before trial, 45 days before trial, etc. You can tap on any date and the app tells you what is due along with a cite to the appropriate rule.
The app works the same way for posttrial deadlines. Enter a judgment date and you will see the appeal deadlines:
Like the Court Days app I previously reviewed, this app automatically excludes weekends and holidays. But unlike Court Days, this app includes a helpful information screen which, among other things, tells you exactly which legal holidays are being excluded:
This looks like a really useful iPhone app that any Texas litigator will frequently find very handy. If a similar app were available for Louisiana where I practice, I would buy it instantly.
Verner tells me that he has other good ideas for iPhone apps and that he even hired another software engineer to help him to bring the ideas to reality. I always love to hear about attorneys creating iPhone apps for other attorneys, and I look forward to seeing what Verner brings us next.
Click here to get Texas Litigation Deadlines ($19.99): 
I recently purchased both of Jimmy Verner’s apps (Vernerlegal on iTunes). They are incredibly handy and worth every penny. I highly recommend them both.