Google released Google Refine yesterday.  It is a web-based (although locally installed) toolkit to manipulate text files.  Any text file.  

Its intent is to solve the problem of ingesting and massaging large government datasets, but I can see Google Refine as being a huge help in Litigation Support.  Most people don’t really think about it, but Litigation Support is still all about the mighty text file.  It is vital to know how to manipulate TXTs, DATs, LFPs, etc, in order to get anything done in litigation support.  Google Refine could really help here.

Need to load and correct a million line DAT file?  Google Refine can handle it (try that with Excel).  Need to run a formula to remove unnecessary ”^” or “«” symbols?  Google Refine can handle that, too.  Need to find all street addresses in a data dump from a corporate ERP database from opposing counsel and find the latitude and longitude of each of their sales people?  Really?  You wouldn’t love to have that and display the information on Google Earth to show a jury?  Oh, good - you would…..because you can do that, too.

Best of all, Google Refine allows you to “replay” and “unwind” all of your data manipulations with a click of a button - no matter how complex or how many steps deep.

It looks like there will be a steep learning curve, but Google Refine may very well be the new litigation support swiss army knife of text manipulation. And, yes, I love UltraEdit, Excel and Access - they are invaluable.  But think more flexible, larger data sizes and 100% web-based.  Check out what Google Refine can do.