BNA is a well-established and trusted name when it comes to legal information, both for researching the latest news and researching specific topics. For example, I've frequently used the excellent ABA/BNA Lawyers' Manual on Professional Conduct when researching legal ethics issues. At ABA TECHSHOW 2013, some folks from Bloomberg BNA showed me their latest app that allows those who subscribe to BNA Law Reports to read the latest news reports on an iPhone or iPad. BNA gave me a free two-week trial to try out the app, and it works well.
Subscribers to BNA Law Reports receive emails with news updates, but email is not always an ideal platform for receiving and reading the news, and the emails do not always contain the full article. But if you use the Law Reports app, you have a central location for viewing the news items in the reports to which you subscribe. On the main screen of the app, you see a list of the available reports. Tap a report to see the latest news stories.
Tap a story to download and read it on your device. A few seconds after you start reading the article, the menu bars at the top and bottom of the iPhone app disappear so that you can use the full screen of your iPhone to read an article.
Normally you need Internet access to download and read articles. But if you select a report as a favorite, your iPhone will download all of the latest articles so that you can read them later even without Internet access (such as on a plane).
The app includes the option to read an article on the BNA website. You can also email someone a link to an article, but they will have to be a subscriber to that BNA Law Report in order to read the article, so this is mainly useful for sharing an article with one of your partners when your entire office has a subscription to the report.
The app runs on both the iPhone and iPad, and in theory you are supposed to be able to use both devices and even use iCloud to sync between devices. Unfortunately, I had trouble logging in from more than one device at a time, and BNA tells me that they are working on a fix to this right now.
If you subscribe to a Bloomberg BNA Law Report, this is a must-have app. It is free, and presents a clean, efficient interface for viewing the latest legal news.
Click here to download Law Reports from Bloomberg BNA (free, but BNA subscription required):
