Attogear has created a series of apps that it calls the QuickQuotes series. Each app costs $0.99 (although there are some free ones) and features quotes either relating to a topic (love, motivational, wisdom, computer geek), from a famous person (Lincoln, Einstein, Leno, Obama) or by people in a profession (cartoonist, dancer, coach, comedian, photographer). The Attogear website lists almost 70 QuckQuotes apps, although a good number of those are not yet in iTunes and are said to be coming soon. One of the profession versions of the QuickQuotes apps is Lawyer QuickQuotes.
The QuickQuotes app design is very nice. Each quote appears on a single screen. (The font size adjusts to accommodate the length of the quote.) You can browse through quotes, bookmark your favorites, search, shake for a random quote, e-mail a quote, change the background wallpaper, and change the font. The app does a great job of handling the content.
My problem with this app is the content. I'm sure that in the history of lawyers, there are many who have said something interesting. At least, I hope so. And many of the lawyers quoted in this app are fascinating people. Examples include Lloyd Cutler, Edward Hall, Samuel Dash, Ralph Nader, Kenneth Starr, Peter Benenson, Augustus Baldwin Longstreet, Stephen Carter and Elliot Richardson. Unfortunately, as I went through many (but not all) of the almost 700 lawyer quotes in this app, I didn't find myself all that inspired or, in most cases, even all that interested. There were also quite a few that sounded like they could be interesting, but only if one understands the context -- which this app doesn't provide. For example, here are two (of a huge number) that left me baffled:
What research is Newdow talking about? A quick Wikipedia search reminded me that Newdow is the attorney and minister who filed lawsuits to seek to have "under God" removed from the Pledge of Allegiance and "In God We Trust" removed from coins and currency. The quote relates to his motivation to file the "In God We Trust" lawsuit. As for the quote from the famous First Amendment attorney Floyd Abrams, it appears to come from this interview in which Abrams revealed his motivation for including a discussion of Supreme Court practitioner strategy in his book Speaking Freely: Trials of the First Amendment
I don't mean to imply that there was nothing interesting. These two were intriguing enough:
But it actually took me a while to find those two when I was looking for interesting quotes to note in this review.
So should you get this app? Perhaps some of you will find these 700 quotes a lot more interesting that I did, but I won't be keeping this app on my iPhone. Having said that, the app design is very nice and I am interested to try others with different content. For example, from the preview on the website, I might enjoy this one with Steve Jobs quotes once it becomes available in iTunes.
Click here to get Attogear's Lawyer QuickQuotes ($0.99): 
I don't know that "attorney and minister" is the best description of Newdow... since he's an avowed atheist, and his ordination comes from the Universal Life Church, which will ordain anyone on-line for free (I'm ordained, too, but old-school, when the ULC charged $5 by mail). I think "attorney and doctor" would probably be more accurate. :)
[Jeff responds: Dave, that is a fair point and I hesitated when I added that to the post. I almost used "atheist" instead of "minister" and then it struck me as odd that I was trying to decide between the two.]
Posted by: Dave! | May 11, 2009 at 09:40 AM