ABA TECHSHOW 2012 -- Hope to see you there

ABA TECHSHOW is my best learning experience every year. No other legal technology conference has so many of the Who's Who of legal technologists because of the number of presentations that are offered. The Early Bird deadline is February 17, 2012 and the savings are significant. You can register and get more information at www.techshow.com. Just take a look at this great lineup of timely presentations. Many of you may be a member of a bar association that is an ABA TECHSHOW Event Promoter and provides you with another discount.

I am extremely excited about my two presentations at ABA TECHSHOW 2012. My first presentation is with Diane Ebersole, who is a practice management advisor for the Michigan Bar Association. Our topic is “Magic in Minutes: Effective Use of Document Assembly." This is truly a hot topic. With three cloud-based practice management systems announcing new document assembly tools in the last several weeks and a new generation of tools that operate as Microsoft Word plug-ins, there have been a lot of recent developments in this area.

“The Future of Law Practice: Dark Clouds or Silver Linings?” is the title of the plenary session that I will do to kick off the final day of ABA TECHSHOW. Doing a solo plenary session at ABA TECHSHOW is a great honor and responsibility. I will not claim to have the reputation and expertise of Richard Susskind, who addressed ABA TECHSHOW 2009 on a similar topic, but I have a list of ideas to share about preparing for your next decades in law practice. Here is an article I wrote for the Oklahoma Bar Journal that you can download to give you a preview. Download OBJ 2012 Jan14 - Preparing for ABA TECHSHOW

The world is changing. Attend ABA TECHSHOW to master these changes, As a tweet from @emyth observed recently, "If you're waiting for change to happen to you, it will, but probably not the change you want." I hope to see you at ABA TECHSHOW.

Five Takeaways from the 2011 National Solo & Small Firm Conference

Last week at the ABA/GPSolo National Solo & Small Firm Conference I sat in on some great CLE sessions, did a presentation with Colorado Bar's Reba Nance on Keeping Them Happy: Secrets of Client Satisfaction and was drafted for a non-singing bit part in the Oklahoma Bar Family Law Singers Ethics Musical The Perils of Pauline, which was presented at the Conference.

The folks from Attorney at Work asked me to do a brief essay on my five takeaways from the 2011 National Solo & Small Firm Conference and it was published today as a part of their Friday Five series. It contains some nice technology tips. So read it at this link.

The Wonders of Windows 7

Last week I wrote about using a Windows 7 keystroke shortcut to make your two monitors appear as four. (Yes, you can do the same split screen thing with one monitor.)

I have to say that I am a big Windows 7 fan. So I want to direct your attention to The Wonders of Windows 7: Is It Time to Upgrade? which was written by Jim Calloway and Catherine Sanders Reach, Director of the ABA's Legal Technology Resource Center for the March/April 2011 edition of Law Practice Magazine. There are many reasons to upgrade to Windows 7, but I urge you to consider this strongly. Many lawyers have agreed with my comment that I never really cared that much about operating systems, but this one makes a difference in my day-to-day activites.

A quick way to turn two monitors into four

I recently was a co-panelist on a webinar and I had four different items I needed to have in my view on my monitors. These included my e-mail to receive questions from the attendees, the browser showing the actual program being broadcast, our joint notes on who was doing what portion and the actual PowerPoint so I could see the upcoming slides. Four items to view on only two monitors! Well, I could have printed part out or manually resized the windows to split the monitors. But that wouldn't make for a good blog post.

The week before I had been at ABA TECHSHOW where I presented a program called Getting the Most from Windows 7 with Ivan Hemmans. Since I use a Windows 7 machine, handling this was a Snap--literally. This is because Windows 7 has a feature called Snap. You can snap a window to half the screen size simply by dragging it to the left or right of the screen. But the dragging method doesn't work as easily with dual monitors. The best way is to use the keybpard shortcut, which is holding down the Windows key while tapping on the right or left arrow key. So I grabbed one screen, held the Windows key and tapped the right arrow. Grabbed Outlook and did the same but used the left arrow. Then repeated on the other monitor. (Tapping the arrow repeatedly allows one to toggle between half-screen right, half-screen left or full screen view.)

In just a few seconds I had the equivalent of four almost equal sized monitors with the four items I needed to see. Features like this are why you need to consider getting a new computer with Windows 7.

Lawyers and Their iPads

(UPDATE: After my original post, I received this tweet from  Shawnee, Oklahoma lawyer Edward Terry, "Used my iPad in an all-day custody trial for the first time a couple of weeks ago. I love it." I also learned of another iPad for lawyers blog, Walking Office, and added it to the list below.)

 The 2011 ABA TECHSHOW was a great experience. I'll be writing more about that later. But one of the really remarkable things about the ABA TECHSHOW this year was the number of iPads in evidence. In some sessions there were more iPads than laptops being used for note-taking. But of course, the iPad is perfect for a conference or convention when you might be changing rooms every hour and the light weight really makes a difference.

It seems pretty clear at this point to most anyone paying attention that the iPad is a real game-changer in the same way that the iPhone was. Certainly other manufacturers are now attempting to catch up and produce similar devices. But for now, the iPad rules.

Tom Mighell just released his new book, the iPad in One Hour for Lawyers, published by the ABA Law Practice Management Section.  It is a short read and at a great price $34.95 (even less for section members.) He also launched a new blog, iPad 4 Lawyers.

Sharon Nelson and I are both iPad owners. So we decided to have Tom as our guest for this month's Digital Edge Podcast and our topic is... you guessed it ... iPads for Lawyers. You can listen here and hopefully the podcast is also available on iTunes again after some technical problems. Our show notes include some of Tom's favorite apps.

Speaking of apps, a great session that I had to miss at ABA TECHSHOW due to speaking at the same time was 60 Apps in 60 Minutes. Reid Trautz, Josh Barrett and Jeff Richardson highlighted many great apps for attorneys using an iPhone or an iPad. They had an overflowing crowd, as you can see. And readers, you can see the entire list of apps right here via iPhoneJD.

I've now been to a couple of presentations about using the iPad in the courtroom and have done a presentation myself with another slated for later this week. In my opinion, the reason why iPad's are rapidly catching on with trial lawyers is that a laptop, netbook or even the “traditional” convertible tablet PCs are useful at counsel table, but cannot be carried in the courtroom easily when the lawyer is standing at the podium or addressing the jury. Essentially, the iPad is just a little heavier than a paper legal pad in a holder and not nearly as heavy as the lightest netbook or laptop.

I just had one of many "Aha" moments when I wanted to make comments and notes on a PDF file and realized that the easiest way for me to do that (since the comments needed to be e-mailed back) was to put the file in Dropbox, open it on my iPad make make the notes using iAnnotate PDF ($9.99 at the iTunes App Store.)

I got to spend a good amount of time with Ian from TrialPad at ABA TECHSHOW. At first I was a bit put off by the $89.99 price tag, but TrialPad certainly makes courtroom presentations of documents and photos on the iPad simple and easy. When version 2 comes out in a few weeks and adds the ability to do "call-outs" from documents on the fly and other features, it will certainly be a contender. (See this review comparing TrialPad and iAnnotate with lots of reader comments.)

The iPad is elegant and fun to use. It is not a desktop replacement, nor is it intended to be. As one critic noted, if your practice is being tied to your desktop generating documents all day, it is not the tool for that purpose. But most lawyers I know are "on the go" quite a bit and to have your e-mail, the web, dozens of useful apps and much more all at the ready in an instant is a great tool for efficiency, whether you are waiting for your case to be called or waiting in a doctor's office. And if at the end of a long day, you blow off some steam with Angry Birds, that is fine too.

I'll make one prediction. In the next few years, you will be seeing a lot more iPads and other tablets in public places than laptops. I'll still take my laptop on road trips and it will sit in the hotel room if I need to work on a document or tweak a PowerPoint. But when I head out of the room to meetings or classes, my iPad will be in my hand.

If you want a list of blogs focusing on the many ways a lawyer can use an iPad, here's a list for you:

• Tablet Legal (http://www.tabletlegal.com/)

• TechnoESQ (http://www.technoesq.com ) 

• iPhone JD (http://www.iphonejd.com/iphone_jd

• MacsinLaw (http://www.macsinlaw.com )

• The Mac Lawyer (http://www.themaclawyer.com

• Hytechlawyer (www.hytechlawyer.com)

• iPad 4 Lawyers (http://www.tommighell.com/ipad)   

• WalkingOffice (http://www.walkingoffice.com/)

• iPadmania (http://almipad.wordpress.com ) is also a worthwhile site to visit, not legal specific.

Speech Tools for Lawyers in 2011

This month in the Oklahoma Bar Journal, my column is Speech Tools for Lawyers in 2011. I covered many ways that lawyers can use their computers and their smart phones to prepare documents and do other tasks with their voices working with their computers and smart phones. I have tried to keep up in this area, but I am sure I have probably missed something. You may find some great new ways that you didn't know existed to use your voice to accomplish things faster. Who knows? You might even find a special bargain. Download SpeechTools4Lawyers2011.Calloway.OklaBarJ

Pizza and Online Document Repositories

Let's discuss a really powerful free tool that you may not yet be using. I hope this blog post will convince you that you need to set up a free online document repository.

I have been finding many interesting uses for Dropbox and have encouraged others to sign up. Dropbox offers 2 GB of online storage for free. (Although with a few referral credits from blog readers, my free Dropbox account is up to 8 GB.) Recently Box.net increased its free online storage from 1 GB to 5 GB and business accounts now start at 500 GB. Just this week SugarSync increased its free storage from 2 GB to 5 GB. Drop.io used to offer the abillity to create many free document drops. But I say "used to" because Facebook just bought Drop.io and is shutting it down. So look for the future announcement that Facebook will be offering a document repository in addition to its photo albums.

I've also had many lawyers asking me recently what "the cloud" really means. I think the possibilities are starting to become interesting to many. Let's set aside lawyers and client files and confidentiality for a minute and talk about something simple--like pizza.

I've told many people that the above services are so neat because they synchronize your documents so you know a synchronized document is the current version of the document. It also saves you the trouble of e-mailing a document home to work on it or keeping it on a flash drive. But let's say you only work on one computer ever and you've made a decision never to ever store any business or client document in the cloud.

That's where pizza comes in. Two new "pizza by the slice" places have opened in my home town. They are located not very far from me, almost facing each other across Main Street. As I was picking up some pizza from one I asked the manager a few questions, like delivery charges and such. I took a paper menu from the counter. It turned out the pizza was good and I might order from them again. I went to put the paper menu in the "paper junk drawer" in the kitchen. It was stuffed full with menus and manuals. The manuals reminded me of another plan I had not yet put into practice.

So instead I put the menu in the home scanner and scanned it to PDF. named it SandrosPizza.PDF. created a new folder c:/MyDocuments/MyDropbox/Menus and saved the file to it. I scanned a couple of other menus from the drawer and placed the files there too, just to get into the rhythm. So now those files will be available from my Dropbox subfolder on my computer or by logging into the Dropbox site from any computer. But that's not the point. I could locate it in the drawer at home and the restaurant has a website. The point is the synchronization with my iPhone (or any popular smart phone.) So now i can get to the menu whereever I am if I have my phone, whether that means calling in from work before I leave to pick up food on the way home or just not having to get up and rummage through the drawer to find it. I can, in effect, have a file cabinet's worth of documents that are easily accessible from my phone.

It's not a perfect system to read a menu from an iPhone screen, but it is doable. Of course if it was a 20 page document I had saved to my online Document Repository, i'd read it on the computer or the iPad which also has a Dropbox app. Menus are not really the best example anyway as restaurants often have websites with the menus online, often in PDF format.

You may not want your tax returns or medical records in an online repository. That's your call. But think of all of the documents you could store there that you might want to access from your phone and you'd definitely like to have out of the way. For your children, there are school directories, sports team information and schedules, special events and assignments, just for one set of examples. Every new product comes with a manual. why not just go to the web site of the manufacturer and download to the PDF of the manual for your product to your drop? Sure it will probably be still there online sixteen months from now when you need it, but why not keep it where you can grab it is seconds.

All of these documents don't even fill up your phone. Unless you specify otherwise they are just links and the document loads in a few seconds when you click on the link.

There are lots of tools you can use, but at a minimum you need one of these free online document repository accounts and a scanner. It is better if your scanner can scan in duplex (two sides at a time) mode. It is better if you own a PDF management tool like Adobe Acrobat. Acrobat reduced the size of the menu file from almost 2 megabytes to about 750 KB and would have OCR'd it if needed. But think of the fact you can get from two to five GB for free and 1024 megabytes equals one GB. That's a lot of documents! (Of course, if you start uploading lots of photos, you could fill up your alloted space pretty quickly.)

Of course if you really start scanning many documents, you might fill up your free space after a year or so and have to start paying the small fees. I assume that is what the vendors are hoping.

If you do not use your scanner much, you may want to invest the time to set up a "scan to drop" setting so you can just scan everything to a My Scans folder under the Dropbox folder on your computer. Then you could just feed things into the scanner and only periodically do the clean up work of changing them from that location to the proper location with a proper file name.

These repositories also make it easy to share documents. Basically you can copy a link to a single document that allows someone to download that one document without granting them complete access to your repository. Just recently I was tied up in a meeting so I copied the link to the document that was due that day and used my iPhone to e-mail it to my assistant wth a note to review it and suggest any changes. When I got back to my office, her edits and suggestions were in my inbox. Once you have this set up, you will find your own uses, like Grandmother asking when the next grade school basketball game is and you responding by e-mailing her the complete schedule or a lawyer keeping blank new client information sheets and other documents to easily e-mail potential clients from the smart phone outside of normal office hours.

Take some time to try this out now as it probably represents your future document filing system for your personal papers. You may fnd that you can set this up in less time than it took to read this post.

 

Oklahoma Bar Journal Gives You Great Collection of Legal Technology Articles

The November 2010 Oklahoma Bar Journal has a Law Office Management and Technology theme and we're happy to share them with you whether you are a member of the Oklahoma Bar Association or not. So pass along this link to someone you think might be interested and settle in for a lengthy session if you decided to read them all.

In order that they are included in our publication:

• Social Media for the Reticent Attorney by Shawn J. Roberts Download Social Media for the Reticent Attorney.Roberts.OklaBarJ Some of you may already know of Shawn from his Twitter posts.
• Ethics up in the Clouds by OBA Ethics Counsel Travis Pickens Download Ethics up in the Clouds.Pickens.OklaBarJ Travis spoke on the ethics of cloud computing at the Oklahoma Solo & Small Firm Confernece and has been putting a good bit of study into this topic.
• The Traveling Lawyer by Jim Calloway Download The Traveling Lawyer.Calloway.OklaBarJ From remote access to carrying it all with you, today's lawyer should have the tools to be able to work as well out of the office as in it. This article also contains a sidebar on using public wi-fi by my friend Oklahoma City lawyer John N. Brewer.
• Welcome to the Future: The Paperless Office and E-filing by Tulsa lawyer Adrienne N. Cash  Download Welcome to the Future.Paperless.EFiling.Cash.OklaBarJ
• Oklahoma's New E-Discovery Rules by Steven S. Gensler Download Oklahomas New EDiscovery Rules.Gensler.OklaBarJ Professor Gensler is the Welcome D. and W. DeVier Pierson Professor of Law at the University of Oklahoma College of Law. He is Vice Chair of the OBA Civil Procedure Committee and chaired its Electronic Discovery Subcommittee.
• The Lawyer's Guide to Using and Citing Wikipedia by Lee F. Peoples Download Lawyers Guide to  Using and Citing Wikipedia.Peoples.OklaBarJ Lee Peoples is director of the Law Library and associate professor of law library science at the Oklahoma City University School of Law.
• Improving Client Satisfaction Improves your Practice and Improves Your Life by Jim Calloway Download Improving Client Satisfaction.Calloway.OklahomaBarJ Sort of ironic that I wrote the only one in the collection not directly related to technology isn't it?  This article discusses using the three pronged approach of establishing expectations, clear policies and good systems to improve client satisfaction.

Surely there is something interesting in this group of articles for every practicing lawyer. I encourage you to read them all and pass this post along to others who will enjoy them.

 

Really Cool Tool: VuPoint Magic Wand™ Portable Scanner

WARNING: If you read this blog post you may find that you have to buy a VuPoint Magic Wand™ Portable Scanner. I mean, first of all, what lawyer hasn't wished for a magic wand before, particularly in certain courtrooms and depositions? 

But seriously, the VuPoint Magic Wand™ Portable Scanner is a great tool for many, many lawyers. It is very affordable at around $80 street price. Portable scanners are very nice tools, but a cordless battery-operated portable scanner that works independently of the computer for under $100 is a great tool. Watch the demonstration video here. How handy is it to be anywhere (court clerk's counter, taking a statement in the home of a witness, looking at a magazine) and think "oh, I'd like a copy of that" and be able to do it almost instantly without booting up a computer.

I mentioned it to a few colleagues and one of them, a Legal Aid lawyer, bought one and has already scanned about 200 pages of police reports in just the last six weeks or so. He loves the Magic Wand. Of course, there is a cord to plug into your computer to transfer the scanned images there. It comes with OCR software included, but I have to confess that I just transferred the PDF files to my computer and OCR'd them with Adobe Acrobat. A microSD card is required, along with two AA batteries. It will scan in color or black & white, at 600 dpi or 300 dpi. But truly, this is a stunningly simple gadget that does just what it is supposed to do at a price every lawyer can afford. It should be a great addition to your laptop bag or briefcase.

Here's the fact sheet with all of the details. Best Buy and Walmart supposedly carry them, although I know of no one who has actually seen one in stock. FTC Blogger disclosure: They are going to have to physically come and pry my review copy out of my hands to get it back. :-)

Cool Tools: Windows 7

No one is more surprised than me that I am featuring Windows 7 as a cool tool. I hated the early versions of Vista with a passion and still don't like it. I've always tended to not care about operating systems. I just wanted an OS to run my applications. But Windows 7 delivers on the broken promises of Vista. If you are still using Win XP, you should understand that you have an upgrade path. (Although if you have an old computer with XP, it probably makes more sense to buy a new PC with Win 7 preinstalled.)

I won't go into all of the great features here, but the Federated search is really impressive, particularly for those of you who never used a third party desktop search tool like X1 or Copernic. Pinning the most commonly used applications to the Taskbar is a nice timesaver. Even the old Windows Calculator has a face lift; now it does many kinds of unit conversions (temperature, weight, area, and eight others), date calculations and amortization of loans.

I have to confess that I probably wouldn't be using Windows 7 yet if my Executive Director hadn't asked me to do a presentation on it at the annual meeting of the National Association of Bar Executives in August with Catherine Sanders Reach of the ABA Legal Technology Resource Center and Nerino J. Petro, Jr., the Practice Management Advisor for the Law Office Management Assistance program of the State Bar of Wisconsin. As a result of that presentation Nerino prepared Windows 7 Resource Links that are Useful. I strongly suggest you visit that resource.

There is a nice collection of articles in the PC World Windows 7 Center with numerous free articles like 10 Tips That Make Windows 7 Simpler and Windows 7: The Top 10 Hidden Features.

Ellen Freedman points us to a free 50 page guide to Windows 7 from Gizmo.

And for many of you lawyers still using Windows XP, will want to read Scott Basset's post on why you probably want to buy Windows 7 Professional Instead of Home Premium.

If you are moving from XP, there will be some re-training. If you are moving from Vista, there will be happiness. "Upgrading" from Vista isn't easy as a removal of the old OS and a clean install is required. But i really think most every Windows users will like Windows 7 -- a lot!