Court Days Pro — An App with Lots of Appeal

Image representing iPad as depicted in CrunchBase
Image via CrunchBase

According to the Developer:

“Court Days Pro is the first rules-based legal calendaring app for the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. Court Days Pro provides attorneys and legal professionals with the ability to calculate dates and deadlines based on a customizable database of court rules and statutes. Once the rules are set up in the application, calculations are performed using a customizable list of court holidays.

Once you chose a triggering event (e.g., a motion hearing date) the application will display a list of all events and corresponding dates and deadlines based of trigging event (e.g., last day to file moving papers, opposition, reply briefs).  Icons on the screen show the number of calendar days and court days from the current date for all resulting events.

By default, Court Days Pro is preprogrammed with a list of all federal holidays, but is fully customizable to allow the addition or removal of any court holiday to the list (e.g., Lincoln’s Birthday in California State Court).

Adding, deleting, and modifying rules-based events  in Court Days Pro is quick and easy, and was designed to allow multi-step calculations. For example, if you are calculating the deadline for filing a regular motion in California Superior Court, you can set the application to calculate back 16 court days, plus 5 calendar days, with the last day shifting backward to the next available court day, should it land on a weekend or holiday. You can set an unlimited number of calculations to be triggered by a single event.

Date results not only appear on the screen, but can be added to the device’s native calendar app, and later revised or deleted from within Court Days Pro. Also, all results can be emailed straight from the application.

Future versions of Court Days Pro will allow the purchase of preprogrammed rules sets for certain jurisdictions by using in-app purchasing.”

EsquireTech’s Review:

Definite 4 out of 5, with room for a strong 5.

So far, so good.  I’ve gone ahead and calendared a couple of law and motion dates, trial compliance dates, and a timeline triggered by the service of a complaint.  All of the dates went to my Ipad Calendar, and, from there, to my Google Calendar.  The app crashed once in adding the dates to the calendar.  However, I did not get too upset about that since I know this is a new app.  Also, I have not yet tried it on my Iphone, but will give that a shot later today.

Compared to the costs of Compulaw, Amicus, or Abacus, this may prove itself to be a very worthwhile and easily marketable app.  Hopefully the developer has a good team of litigators who will be able to get the add-in rules for big states like New York, California, etc., into the system and available for purchase.

It would also be nice to see integration with some of the cloud-based lawyer applications such as RocketMatter, which has turned out to be an effective office management package that covers a lot of territory (calendaring, Google integration, DropBox integration, billing, invoicing, timeslips, etc.).  With Court Days Pro, FastCase, and Rocketmatter, the possibility of having a well managed office at minimal cost is becoming a positive reality for small firms.

I am excited about the prospects of this app and look forward to seeing how it develops over time.  Assuming it stays the course, I will be very happy to endorse this product within our bar association.

I’m very much looking forward to seeing this app developer do well and gain the support that they need to be able to compete with WestLaw and some of the other exhorbitantly priced calendar management software vendors.  Nobody should have to pay somewhere between $500.00 and $1100.00 for a single user limited license just to calendar dates, where cloud-computing and other developments make management of data cost-effective and user-friendly.  Hopefully this app and many others will make it easier for small firm practitioners to be the best at what we do.

Officials Push For Action In ‘Online Privacy War’

American Civil Liberties Union

Image via Wikipedia

Found on Huffington Post:

By Bianca Boster (3/6/11)

Top senators and members of the Federal Trade Commission on Wednesday criticized the current state of Internet privacy regulations and pushed for legislation that would give consumers more control over their personal information online.

“We can’t let the status quo stand,” said Commerce Committee Chairman John Kerry (D-Mass.), who plans to introduce a privacy bill of his own.

Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), chairman of the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, noted in a statement that self-regulation by the private sector has been a “failed experiment,” allowing users to become increasingly exposed as new, more advanced tools collect ever-more-personal details over the web.

During a Senate hearing on online privacy, Rockefeller described consumers as being at “war” with companies over control of their information and stressed that Congress must intervene to protect their privacy.

“There is an online privacy war going on, and without help, consumers will lose,” he said in a statement. “We must act to give Americans the basic online privacy protections they deserve.”

The most concrete mechanism for improving privacy safeguards discussed during the hearing was a “do not track” system that would allow users to opt out of receiving targeted advertising based on their browsing history. The FTC previously endorsed such a plan in a privacy report issued in December of last year.

Though Rockefeller and other lawmakers have deemed self-regulation inadequate, FTC chairman Jon Leibowitz noted that companies such as Microsoft and Mozilla stepped up their efforts to introduce privacy tools following the committee’s hearings last summer.

“We are encouraged by what we are seeing,” said Leibowitz. “The pace of moving forward has become far more rapid … It is promising.”

Some are less optimistic. Chris Calabrese, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, outlined a privacy doomsday scenario that he warned could come to pass if existing online tracking practices are allowed to proceed without regulation.

“If this collection of data is allowed to continue unchecked, then capitalism will build what the government never could — a complete surveillance state online,” Calabrase said in a statement. “Without government intervention, we may soon find the Internet has been transformed from a library and playground to a fishbowl, and that we have unwittingly ceded core values of privacy and autonomy.”

Kerry pressed Calabrase on his testimony and suggested that although current practices pose real risks to users’ personal information, the outcome presented by Calabrese may overstate the potential danger of Internet tracking.

“That’s a far reach,” Kerry said. “That’s a big statement obviously about potential downsides.”

Leibowitz also highlighted that there can be benefits to targeted advertising that uses online tracking to present users with ads that are more relevant to their interests.

“We think most consumers won’t mind getting tracked, we just think consumers should have the ability to opt out of that kind of tracking,” he said.

Have Legislators Run Amock with Internet Advertising Restrictions?

Have national and state legislators run amock with Internet advertising restrictions?  Well, it depends on who you ask.  Indeed, it seems that there are compelling arguments for:  a.) Protecting consumers from unreasonable culling, collection, and misuse of private/confidential information;  b.) Allowing a free market economy driven by the need for information on what products and services are available to each of us;  c.) Taking a balanced approach that acknowledges that the Internet has become a primary means of advertising for all businesses and professionals.

Before jumping to conclusions about all of the bad advertisers, helpless consumers, and knee-jerk reactions to the issue, it seems that a little bit of careful analysis is required.  EsquireTech views this as a very complicated question because of the First Amendment and principles underlying a competitive marketplace.

Not only is the risk for consumer information release and abuse an issue, data breaches are already costing companies millions of dollars per instance.  In fact, one can apparently calculate the total exposure to a breach of data security.  Knowing this to be the case, should legislation be treated as more of a temporary mitigation effort until data security protocols can be more objectively injected into the marketplace?

NetChoice.org has released its hitlist of questionable internet legislative efforts.  The list (the Iawful list) primarily focuses on laws designed to limit the culling of private consumer information.

More specifically, opt-in and opt-out provisions are proposed for advertisers, limits are proposed on targeted marketing from social websites, and the imposition of additional disclosure requirements is contemplated.

For obvious reasons, the issue of First Amendment rights permeates this entire process.  Consumers should have a right to evaluate information on products and services.  Companies should have the right to collect basic information in the open where that information will help them survive in a tough economy and to better their products and services.

It is also noteworthy that social website advertising is a good method for attorneys to reach potential clients.  As long as any advertising is generalized and not targeted at specific victims (ambulance chasing) or making promises of litigation results, the First Amendment interest in being able to communicate with potential clients is obvious.  “Networking” with others in the Internet Agora is the new form of meeting up at the public square, having a chat over the telephone, or hanging out at a social gathering.

These otherwise ‘traditional’ sources of potential clients have been concentrated in the new social media and it would be draconian to just assume that none of it can be good. Rather, it seems, that a balanced approach needs to be taken as to which advertisers are capable of culling information in the first place.

The average attorney Facebook advertiser, for example, is simply looking for general characteristics of users and trying to reduce overall expense for advertising where forcing a general distribution would be cost prohibitive and to sporadic to even be effective.  While the natural tendency for lawyers, Libertarians, and market participants might be to say that we really need to put the brakes on internet advertising, be careful — it might just be that if you stop the train too quickly, everything moves forward and and is crushed under the weight of itself.

Whether or not any of this legislation will come up against the commercial free speech rights of advertisers is an open question.

While there are arguments to be had about culling personal information as defined by law, it does not follow that geo-specific advertising to a DNS area is per se’ bad.  Anyway, here’s the list:

The iAWFUL Top Ten: Click On Any Item To Learn More About the Laws that Threaten Your Use of the Internet

The March 2011 iAWFUL Top Ten

  1. Congressional Do Not Track Privacy Bill – Do Not Track is an unjustified restriction on targeted advertising, which helps pay for free online services and content.
  2. Social Network Micro Managing These bills would prevent teenagers from sharing their address and phone numbers on social networking sites and further limit their online interactions.
  3. Affiliate Nexus Bills – An unconstitutional expansion of sales tax burdens to out-of-state businesses.
  4. Recurring Offer Restrictions – Restricting consumers’ ability to use convenient automatic renewals.
  5. Child Online Registry and Do-Not-Market Mandate – Dangerously exposes children’s email addresses while drastically restricting US advertisers’ ability to market to children.
  1. Behavioral Advertising Restrictions – Severe restrictions on websites’ ability to collect user information that enables websites to provide free services and content.
  2. Telemarketing Restrictions on Online Marketing – Sorry, but Do Not Call just Does Not Work for the Internet.
  3. Adolescents’ Online Privacy Protection Act – Strips teenagers’ access to any website collecting information without first obtaining parental consent.
  4. Remote Purchaser Reporting Mandate – Requires out-of-state companies to report consumers’ purchasing information to the state’s Department of Revenue.
  5. Restrictions and Liability for Geo-Location Tracking – Requires repeated consumer consent for the collection of geographical information.

What follows below is the Press Release from Jackie Speier.  EsquireTech is a bit torn on this one since I just argued a consumer privacy case where electronically maintained real estate loan information was released by a lender to operators of a Ponzi scheme, resulting in some $142,000,000.00 in losses in just one area of the state. (Richter v. Nationstar, et al.).

Just to add to the consumer misery, the victims of the fraud were subjected to a Star Chamber arbitration process where they were literally not allowed to be heard whatsoever and the lender was not required to release any of the electronic information its own employees were allegedly kind enough to share with Ponzi scheme operators.  The disallowance of any material evidence, discovery, or production from the defendants was done regardless of the fact that the ex-employee was convicted on felony fraud, an SEC judgment, a Department of Corporations C&D, CA Department of RE C&D, and a civil injunction won by our office.  How can a consumer fight the collection of and a release of electronic information if they are not even allowed to know how the leak occurred or what information was leaked?

In short, regardless of the overwhelming evidence that consumer information was abused, Nationstar and Centex Home Equity were able to rely on a sneaky arbitration process that quieted the potential exposure to the lender for sharing information without permission.  Then, to boot, the companies who released information are seeking to sanction the consumers for even bringing the issue up.

Again, it seems that a careful balancing act is required in order to weigh the interests of the advertising community with those of reasonable consumers.

Press Release from Representative:

Washington DC – Congresswoman Jackie Speier (D-CA), a longtime consumer advocate, today held a press conference to introduce a package of privacy bills aimed at protecting the personal information of all Americans. The Do Not Track Me Online Act of 2011 (H.R. 654) would give consumers the ability to prevent the collection and use of data on their online activities. The Financial Information Privacy Act of 2011 (H.R. 653) would give consumers control of their own financial information. Consumer Federation of America, Consumers Union, Consumer Action, U.S. PIRG, Consumer Watchdog, World Privacy Forum, the Center for Digital Democracy, and the ACLU all announced their support.

“These two bills send a clear message—privacy over profit,” Speier said. “Consumers have a right to determine what if any of their information is shared with big corporations and the federal government must have the authority and tools to enforce reasonable protections.”

There is no longer any anonymity on the Web. The most personal information about people’s online habits is collected and eventually bought and sold, often instantaneously and invisibly. Data collection practices have become a business in themselves, driven by profits at consumers’ expense. The Wall Street Journal recently highlighted these practices—which included targeting children—in its groundbreaking series “What They Know.”

The Do Not Track Me Online Act of 2011 would direct the Federal Trade Commission to develop standards for a “Do Not Track” mechanism that would allow individuals to choose upfront to opt out of the collection, use or sale of their online activities, and require covered entities to respect the consumer’s choice. Failure to do so would be considered an unfair or deceptive act punishable by law. The covered entity would have to disclose its collection and sharing practices, including with whom the information is shared. The bill would allow the FTC to exempt commonly accepted commercial practices like the collection of information for billing purposes.

A USA Today poll released Tuesday showed that 70% of Facebook members and 52% of Google users say they are either “somewhat” or “very concerned” about their privacy.

“People have a right to surf the web without Big Brother watching their every move and announcing it to the world,” Speier said. “The internet marketplace has matured, and it is time for consumers’ protections to keep pace.”

The Financial Information Privacy Act of 2011 would finally give consumers the ability to control the sharing of their own financial information. The bill mirrors legislation Speier successfully steered to passage in California that prevents financial institutions from sharing or selling personally identifiable nonpublic information with affiliates without an opportunity to opt-out, or in the case of unaffiliated third parties, a requirement that consumers opt-in. This bill gives consumers control of their personal financial information and provides meaningful but workable privacy protection.

“Because of the law we passed in California, consumers now have the clear and simple ability to prevent financial institutions from sharing their personal information,” Speier said. “Every American deserves that right.”

 

MILO Celebrates 4th Anniversary & 2850 Members

This is an article from TheMacLawyer, Ben Stevens:

“The Macs In Law Offices (MILO) forum recently (and quietly) celebrated its fourth anniversary.  Since its inception on February 17, 2007, it has grown to become the premier online forum for attorneys who want to maximize the use of Macs in their law practices.  Today, I am proud to say that MILO has over 2,850 members, with more joining every day.  If you are not yet a member, you can take advantage of this free resource by clicking HERE.”

You can see his great blog post on Mac use in the law office at:

http://www.themaclawyer.com/articles/mac-vs-pc/

His site is definitely one of the better sites dedicated to how technology affects the legal environment.  As always, he provides useful and timely information.

Apple iPad 2 hands-on: Predictable, awesome (CNet.com)

Image representing iPad as depicted in CrunchBase

Image via CrunchBase

From Donald Bell at CNet.com :

What does the world’s most successful tablet computer
do for an encore? More of the same.

The second-generation iPad from Apple is thinner, faster, lighter, and
whiter, but not a radical departure from the original. Pricing is also holding
steady, starting at $499 for a 16GB Wi-Fi-only model, up to 64GB with 3G
(provided by AT&T or Verizon without contract) priced at $829.

You can’t blame Apple for going easy on new features. Apple’s original recipe
for the iPad single-handedly created and captured the demand for tablets last
year. By any measure, it is not a product in need of fixing. It has the market
share, it has the developers, and it has the momentum.

Apple also just makes damn fine products. Having had a few minutes with the
iPad 2, I can say that it is every bit as stunning as the original. The first
thing that struck me was the iPad’s weight loss. It’s still not Kindle thin, but
the lighter design should make the e-book crowd happier and prove to be a
distinct advantage over bulkier competitors, including the recent Motorola
Xoom
.

The second thing that registered with me is the feel of the device. Apple
still uses anodized aluminum on the back, which is cool to the touch and
generally resists smudges. The back now flattens out at the middle, allowing it
to better stay put when placed on a table. In spite of the iPad’s thickness
decreasing by a third, it seemed no more fragile than the original design. In
fact, with its lighter weight, it feels less susceptible to being dropped.

I also tried out Apple’s new magnetic Smart Cover. It’s cute and it works as
advertised. From a case perspective, though, it’s a G-string in a world of
coveralls. The tough part of selling these will be convincing customers that the
back of the iPad is resilient enough to resist normal wear and tear.

Of course, the banner feature for the iPad 2 is the addition of two cameras,
which can be used for recording video or stills. The camera on the back is
located in the upper-right corner, recessed onto the tapered edge to avoid
scratching. It looks just like the lens on the iPhone 4
and is similarly blessed with 720p video capture. There’s no camera flash,
and the sensor is not identical to the iPhone’s, since its still-shot
capabilities are essentially video stills (similar to the fourth-gen iPod
Touch). That said, having tested the cameras on more than a few competing
tablets over the past year, I can’t stress how ridiculous you feel shooting
pictures with a tablet in public. Talk about overkill.

[ Continued . . . ].

Read more: http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-31747_7-20038436-243.html#ixzz1FW6xD900

Time Master: A Fantastic Billing App for Ipad and Iphone (Version 3.8)

Time Master ( Version 3.8)

Time Master by On-Core

This is absolutely one of my favorite apps as a lawyer.  It is relatively easy to use, creates usable reports, allows for backup and synchronization, and is a whole heck of a lot cheaper than Timeslips or other similar apps/programs.  The best part is that it allows you to do quick billing while you are out and about.  Recently, they improved the user interface, avatar, and general appearance.  The only criticism that I have is that you cannot really just input a .1 or whatever.  It keeps track of your time in session format, which is not always convenient for entry.

I give this new version a 9.8 out of 10. I strongly recommend that you check this app out, especially if you are a solo practitioner.

Here is what the developer’s site says about the app:

“On-Core Time Master is the ultimate time tracking app for your iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch.

The best, most powerful, comprehensive, easy to use time keeping app on the Apple Store is now even better. Time Master has the highest average rating of all the time management apps. And the other apps don’t come close to our new optional billing module. Our invoices are totally professional.

Our biggest fans are consultants, attorneys and contractors. Time Master is used by individuals working independently, to attorneys from some of the biggest law firms in the USA. If you need to keep track of time and expenses, you can’t find a better app than Time Master. We at On-Core are IT professionals, so we have firsthand experience with billing and keeping track of time. We know from personal experience what is needed and have made this app so flexible, it works for virtually anyone in any industry in which time needs to be kept.

Are you losing money due to poor record keeping?  Did you forget to log the time you spent on a small task and not bill for it last month? On-Core Time Master simplifies the process by having an app handy on your iPhone or iPod Touch, ready at all times, for you to track your time. You can quickly start tracking time with a few taps on the screen. Those little minutes add up every month and this application will easily pay for itself in one month! We think that you will find Time Master the ultimate time tracking application, with its superior ease of use, for your iPhone or iPod Touch.

We looked at all the other time keeping applications out there for the iPhone and iPod Touch, but did not find anything that quite fit what we needed, or had the flexibility we wanted. We also reviewed what people were saying they needed in a time keeping application. We’ve worked very hard to make Time Master the most flexible and powerful time tracking application in the App Store.

Features:

  • Track time by start time, stop time and/or by duration.
  • Session option can track “punch-in & out” for a single time entry.
  • Single or multiple running timers.
  • Support for daily Overtime / Doubletime.
  • Timers keep running even if you are not running the app.
  • Time Entries are by Client and can be sub-categorized by Project and even Tasks for a project. Note: sub-categories are optional and not required.
  • Powerful billing rates that can be defined in the following priority: Global, by Client, by Project, by Task or Custom for a single entry.
  • Powerful time Rounding by hour, minutes and/or seconds. Time can be rounded by: None (no rounding), Round Up, Round Nearest or Round Down. Can be Global or per Client.
  • Multiple Filters to sort by: Day, Week or Month. By Client, Project, Task, Expenditure, Reported and Invoice Status (with optional Invoice module).
  • Define the day of the week that your work week starts.
  • Track Expenses – from Mileage to Meals to Burning CD’s and anything else you want to define.
  • Track Cost vs. Price in expenses.
  • Display Reports right on your device that you can view and email in HTML and/or CSV format. By Client or Timesheet.
  • Is Time Zone aware.
  • Copy Client information from your Contacts list.
  • Currency symbol is automatically set by your Country locale.
  • Dual taxes for countries such as Canada. Second tax may be applied as Separate or Cumulative.
  • Import Clients, Projects, Tasks and Expenditure lists from CSV files using our templates. Works on the iPad now and iPhone/iPod’s when updated to OS 4 when it becomes available (due out this summer according to Apple). See Importing data from a CSV file
  • Save PDF invoices to your iTunes “Documents” folder.
  • Backup and Restore option using our free Time Master Central app via Wi-Fi.
  • Backup and Restore option using the iTunes Documents folder via USB cable.
  • Backup and Restore option using the secure online Dropbox service via the internet.
  • Currency support for the Invoice module. Set the currency in an invoice to other than your current setting and get the exchange rate from Yahoo.
  • TextExpander integration (see below).
  • Option to set audible reminder notifications for devices running iOS 4.0 or greater for running timers.
  • AirPrint enabled. Print reports or invoiced to an AirPrint supported printer.

Download our free Time Master Central app for your Mac or PC to:

  • Backup and Restore your database from local Wi-Fi connection.

OPTIONAL MODULES (one-time additional fee required as an “In App Purchase”):

  • Invoicing: If you want to do billing directly from your iPhone or iPod Touch then look no further. The most powerful invoicing module built directly into Time Master. Professional PDF invoices can be emailed to the client, including your own logo. Click here for more information.
  • Quickbooks Export: With the Quickbooks Export module you can export Time Entries to the Windows version of Quickbooks via IIF files. Click here for more information.
  • Synchronization: Wirelessly synchronize two or more devices. If you have an iPad and an iPhone and want to keep the data synchronized between the two devices, this is for you! Click here for more information.

The two main things that you will want to track and bill for are time and expenses. You can track time using start and stop times, start and duration, and/or timers. All time entries are tracked for a single day, so time entries cannot be greater than 24 hours. It will allow you to time across days, for example if you start a job at 8 p.m. and finish at 2 a.m., it will have a duration of 6 hours.

Expenses can be setup for recurring fixed cost items, such as burning a CD, reimbursement of hardware items, or fluid things such as toll expenses, automobile mileage, etc. Expenses can be tied to a Project so it can be reported with a specific Project.

Quick reporting can be done on the iPhone / iPod Touch with the Reports function. See your totals per client for a given date range and even drill down to see details. The report can also be emailed in an HTML table format and/or CSV format. The CSV files can be ZIP’d and even encrypted with a password. Use our free Time Master Central application to backup your database (and restore if necessary) on a Mac or PC. The data from the backup can be exported, in CSV format, on your Mac or PC to be used in other programs.

Adding new Clients, Projects, Tasks and Expenditures is super easy.  You can create them on the fly without having to navigate to a separate maintenance screen. To edit them you can tap on Setup, do you edit and then return to where you left off in Time Entries or Expenses. By selecting a Project or Task first will automatically fill in the Client field for quick entry.

We’ve made every thing that you can do as seamless as possible. For example if you are in a Time Entry, then hit the Setup tab and then delete the Client (and all it’s associated entries), and then you touch on the Time Entries tab again, it will exit the entry you were in and go to the main Time Entry screen.

To see all the details of what the application can do, please download the “Instructions” PDF manual […].”

From Findlaw: “E-Discovery in 2010 – It Doesn’t Have to Be Perfect”

Book learning

Image by gorbould via Flickr

By Stacy Jackson (Findlaw.com) for Complete Article CLICK HERE.

The advent of e-discovery has given birth to a new field of ancillary litigation — discovery about discovery. Parties are busy looking for what’s missing, in the hopes of making their opponent “the spoliator”. You see, once you label the opposing party as “the spoliator” the riches can be many – including an adverse inference jury instruction and cold, hard cash in the form of sanction.

So, it’s a good thing that this years’ overarching e-discovery theme is “perfection” – more accurately, a lack of perfection. It’s all right that your preservation, collection and production efforts aren’t perfect – as long as they are reasonable and performed in good faith. Consider the two most prominent cases of 2010 – Pension Comm. of the Univ. of Montreal Pension Plan v. Banc of Am. Sec., LLC , 685 F. Supp. 2d 456 (S.D.N.Y. 2010) and 269 F.R.D. 497 (D. Md. pt. 9, 2010) .

Perfection is not expected, but you cannot conduct discovery in an “ignorant and indifferent fashion.”

About the Author of the Original Article on Findlaw.com

Right to an Attorney…or an Attorney with an iPad?

iPad con dock y teclado inalámbrico

Image via Wikipedia

From the American Bar Association Tech Site {Author Unknown}:

Whenever I think about new technology in the courtroom, I always wonder what that technology would have been like in a famous trial.  When I think of famous trials, I always think of the Clarence Gideon trial (Gideon v. Wainwright (1963) 372, which expanded our Constitutional right to an attorney in a criminal matter.  What if Mr. Gideon’s attorney, Fred Turner, had an iPad?!  It’s a bit odd to think about, especially since most of the TV world was still black and white in 1963, but in the year 2011, it is a reality.

I just finished reviewing some of the latest and greatest trial presentation tools, and I have to admit that after a few years of things being a bit stagnant, I am excited about what is hitting the legal market this year.

The first thing that I am impressed with is Sanction and Trial Director, the two competing giants in the trial presentation world.  For a decade now, these two have gone toe to toe in this market.  You have to love competition!  If it weren’t for these two products, technology in the courtroom would be years behind what it is.  The new interface and presentation effects are fantastic.

The second area that I am impressed with is the rapid emergence of tablet computing, which is a very hot topic at ABA TECHSHOW this year.

Somewhat to my surprise, tablet/mobile computing has surfaced in the trial presentation world.  That’s right, … there is an App for nearly everything, including one for trial presentation.  It is called TrialPad.  Being a bit of a trial presentation snob, I admittedly was skeptical about this.  However, after trying it out, I found it to be pretty good.  TrialPad imports PDFs from a folder structure stored in Dropbox.  This allows you to organize exhibits on your computer and import multiple files into TrialPad, keeping the folder structure intact.  Files can also be imported from email, GoodReader, and obviously iTunes. Using a VGA adapter that I bought at the local Apple store, I was able to hook up my iPad to a projector and display documents.  I did experience a little quirkiness with the video from time to time, but nothing I couldn’t navigate through.  Cons:  (1) no video support yet and (2) knowing there are many flavors of PDFs (not all PDFs are created equal), I would be sure to give it a good test with exhibits ahead of time.

In conclusion, while the iPad wasn’t really designed for this type of application, that can be said about many technologies and developments.  The reality is that the iPad can be used for small hearings and cases, and at a minimum, TrialPad and the iPad could be used as a “paperless file” for the countless pre-trial and motion hearings that we have day in and day out … unlike all the trials that settle or get continued.

ABA Releases Results of Legal Technology Survey

Image representing iPhone as depicted in Crunc...

Image via CrunchBase

By Jason Beahm (Findlaw.com)  on October  6, 2010  5:57 AM|

A new report demonstrates that attorneys are increasingly making use of technology. According to the 2010 American Bar Association Legal Technology Survey Report, attorneys are increasingly using Web 2.0 and other technologies in their practice. Attorney’s use of social networking and smart phones both grew by double-digit percentages.

The ABA survey is a project of the ABA Legal Technology Resource Center, which provides the legal community with news and information on technology and its use by attorneys. The Legal Technology Resource Center writes about technology and provides continuing legal education on practice management through the use of improved technology. The survey provides over 500 pages of detailed statistics and trend analysis on the use of technology in the practice of law. Over 5,000 ABA members were surveyed as part of the project. The Legal Technology Survey Report comes in six volumes, Technology Basics, Law Office Technology, Litigation and Courtroom Technology, Web and Communication Technology, Online Research, and Mobile Lawyers.

The report is worth taking the time to read at your leisure. In the meantime, here are a few highlights:

  • 71 percent of attorneys are using smart phones in the courtroom, up from 60 percent in the 2009 survey. 64 percent of respondents use smart phones in court to check for new e-mail, 60 percent send e-mail and 46 percent perform calendaring functions.
  • 56 percent of those surveyed maintain an online presence on a site like Facebook or LinkedIn, up from 43 percent in 2009 and 15 percent in 2008.
  • 10 percent of those surveyed have landed a client through the use of online communities or social networks.
  • 76 percent of respondents use smart phones, up from 64 percent in 2009.
  • The most popular brands of smart phones among attorneys were BlackBerry (66%), iPhone (20%) and Palm (9%).
  • 14 percent of respondents have a virtual law practice.

Where Google Is or Should Be ?

Here’s an article by CNet with observations about what should be focused on by Google in the coming months and year. You can click on the image below for the article and another interesting article can be found on InformationWeek.com.  You might also want to check out the Tope Ten Google Stories of 2010.

Google.com