LegalTech News Scraper

A desktop app that scrapes legal technology news, scores articles by relevance to NetDocuments and your chosen segment, and drafts a formatted email blast via Outlook — in one click.

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Screenshots

#V2 UI

#Email blast example

What It Does

1. Fetches articles from 20+ legal tech news sources (RSS feeds + web scraping)
2. Scores each article based on keyword relevance, segment focus, and competitor mentions
3. Curates the top articles into a polished HTML email
4. Opens a pre-addressed Outlook draft ready to send

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Two Versions

Feature	NewsScraperv1 (ui.py)	NewsScraperv2 (ui2.py)
UI Framework	tkinter (classic)	CustomTkinter (modern)
Look & Feel	Standard Windows widgets	Rounded cards, gradient header, dark log panel
Segment Selector	Dropdown	Segmented button
Progress Indicator	Status label	Animated progress bar
EXE Build Script	build.bat	build_v2.bat

Both versions share the same scraping engine (generate_blast.py) and settings file.

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Features

• Segment targeting — Strategic, SML, or International; each segment boosts different keywords
• Competitor tracking — checkboxes for iManage, Clio, Filevine, and more; matching articles get flagged
• Custom investigate term — type any phrase to give it +30 scoring points (same weight as "netdocuments")
• Custom email recipient — override the default To: address without editing code
• Settings persistence — segment, email, investigate term, and checkbox selections are saved between sessions (%APPDATA%\LegalTechScraper\settings.json)
• Deduplication — strips duplicate articles by URL before curating
• Outlook integration — generates a styled HTML email and opens it as a draft

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Scoring System

Articles are scored out of a possible ~200 points. Higher = more relevant.

Signal	Points
"netdocuments" in title/body	+30
Segment keyword match (Strategic/SML/International)	+20
Competitor mention (per competitor)	+15
Legal tech keyword (e-discovery, matter management, etc.)	+10
Custom investigate term	+30
Recency (published today)	+10

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News Sources

Includes RSS feeds and scraped pages from:

• Legaltech News, Above the Law, Law Technology Today
• The American Lawyer, Legal IT Insider, ILTA
• Artificial Lawyer, LawSites (Bob Ambrogi), Lawyerist
• Legal Futures, Wolters Kluwer, Thomson Reuters
• Law.com, Relativity Blog, iManage Blog
• Clio Blog, NetDocuments Blog, and more

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Getting Started

Run from Source

pip install requests beautifulsoup4 feedparser customtkinter
python ui2.py        # v2 (recommended)
# or
python ui.py         # v1

Run the EXE

Download the latest release from the Releases page and run NewsScraperv2.exe. No Python installation required.

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Building the EXE

# v2
build_v2.bat

# v1
build.bat

Output lands in dist\NewsScraperv2.exe (or dist\NewsScraper.exe).

Note: CustomTkinter must be installed at
%APPDATA%\Python\Python314\site-packages\customtkinter
for the v2 build script to find it. Adjust the path in build_v2.bat if your Python version differs.

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File Structure

legaltechnewsscraper/
├── ui.py               # v1 UI (tkinter)
├── ui2.py              # v2 UI (CustomTkinter)
├── generate_blast.py   # Scraping engine, scoring, Outlook integration
├── sites_config.py     # News source definitions (URLs, types, segments)
├── build.bat           # PyInstaller build script for v1
├── build_v2.bat        # PyInstaller build script for v2
└── README.md

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Customizing Sources

Edit sites_config.py to add, remove, or adjust news sources. Each entry specifies:

• url — RSS feed or webpage URL
• type — "rss" or "scrape"
• segments — which segments this source is relevant to

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Customizing Scoring

Edit the KEYWORDS and SEGMENT_KEYWORDS dictionaries in generate_blast.py to tune what scores highly.

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Requirements

• Python 3.9+
• requests, beautifulsoup4, feedparser, customtkinter
• Microsoft Outlook (desktop) for email draft generation
• Windows (Outlook COM automation is Windows-only)