Inadmissible

Before studying law, Nick Nelson spent two years in Bolivia on a church mission, an experience that led to his Spanish fluency. But to produce the “Legal Spanish” iPhone application, which sells for $2.99 on iTunes and the App Store, he had to bone up on translations of basic legal terms such as “abeyance” (“en suspencion”) and “above cited” (“antes mencionado”). Nelson, an associate who joined Haynes and Boone in November 2010, put the app on the market this month with his firm’s blessing. He started developing the app by creating a spreadsheet of 2,300 legal terms, translated into Spanish. Eventually he read those into a recorder and worked with a brother-in-law who has software programming skills. The app translates legal terms from English to Spanish, and users can hear Nelson enunciate the words. Nelson says reading all those terms was tedious. “It made studying for the bar look good. But there was no way around it,” he says. He worked on the app in the fall of 2010 after taking the Texas bar exam but before starting at the firm. “They have been very supportive of the project,” Nelson says of Haynes and Boone. Partner David Harper , Nelson’s boss, says the firm welcomed Nelson’s ingenuity. “It shows how creative he is personally, and everybody likes to see that in their lawyers,” Harper says. So far, Nelson says he has sold about two or three apps a day. After subtracting the 30 percent cut Apple takes, he has enough to buy an inexpensive lunch in downtown Dallas, he says.

Death of a Pioneer

Louise B. Raggio , a Dallas lawyer whose name is associated with a string of firsts, died peacefully of natural causes Jan. 23 at the age of 91, according to her son Grier Raggio Jr. In 1954, Raggio became the first female prosecutor in Dallas County, at a time when women weren’t allowed to sit on juries in Texas. In the 1960s she helped start the Dallas Women Lawyers Association during a time when women were shut out of working at firms. In 1965, Raggio was the first woman elected chair of the Family Law Section for the State Bar of Texas . Raggio led the charge in 1967 to help create Texas’ Marital Property Act, which gave women property rights and allowed them to sign contracts without their husbands’ approval. In 1979, Raggio was the first woman elected as a director of the State Bar of Texas. And in 2000, Texas Lawyer named Raggio a Legal Legend. But in addition to all of the accolades, she was a great mom, says Grier Raggio Jr. “She was the only working mom at University Park grade school. She would serve lunch once a month in the school cafeteria, even if she was in a big trial,” says Grier Raggio, a partner in Dallas’ Raggio & Raggio . “She was there all of the time for her three sons.”

Judge Nominated