There are not many lawyer-specific iPhone apps available, and many of the most useful — for example, the great FRCP app recently reviewed on this site — have been written by attorney Cliff Maier of WaffleTurtle Software. Cliff is an Intellectual Property attorney in the Palo Alto office of the prestigious Mayer Brown law firm. Click this button to see all of the current iPhone apps by Cliff Maier: 
I recently caught up with Cliff to talk to him about his double-identity as an IP lawyer by day and an iPhone app programmer by night. Cliff has some interesting thoughts and the road that led him to developing apps for the iPhone is fascinating. I hope you enjoy reading this interview as much as I enjoyed talking to Cliff.
iPJD: What kind of law do you practice?
Maier: My
practice is now almost entirely intellectual property litigation, and,
of that, almost all of the litigation is patent-related. I do a little
licensing work, a little of what patent folks call “clearance” work,
and a little bit of “opinion of counsel” work, as well. Although I
don’t do much now, I’ve also done a fair amount of patent prosecution
work (I am a registered patent attorney).
iPJD: Can you tell us a little bit more about the patent law work do you do?
Maier: My
practice has specialized in the technical areas associated with patent
and copyright cases. My practice is probably not the sort of practice
that would be very familiar to most attorneys, even most patent
attorneys. I do my best to become an expert in the underlying
technology, whether it be cryptographic algorithms, memory circuit
designs, or software user interfaces. I try to get to the point where
I could go get a job in that industry. This helps me make our expert
witnesses more efficient, helps me locate potentially invalidating
prior art, helps me communicate with our clients’ engineers, helps me
figure out reasons our client doesn’t actually infringe, etc. It also
enables me to easily punch holes in opposing experts’ testimony and
reports. In one big recent case, I actually got to use a couple of my
own engineering journal publications as prior art in our patent
invalidity case. That was great fun.
iPJD: What type of work did you do before you went to law school? I know that you obtained a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering in 1996.
Maier: After
I got my Ph.D. in New York, I came out to
Silicon Valley and worked at a start-up. It was the most fun I’ve ever
had, but we went out of business eight months later. I was a chip
designer, working on super-high-end microprocessors for Apple’s Macintosh computers. I had a ton of responsibility because, despite being a youngster, I had spent four years working on exactly
the same technology for my Ph.D. (and no one else in Silicon Valley
other than the folks I was working with really understood the
technology).
iPJD: Many readers of iPhone J.D. are Macintosh users and are familiar with the different microprocessors that Apple has considered using over the years. Which one did you work on?
Maier: The name of the
company was Exponential Technology. We were working on a 500MHz
PowerPC back in the days of the PowerPC 601. Apple was an investor, back in the days when Gil Amelio was the CEO of Apple.
We had working silicon and a big coming-out party at the Fairmont in
San Jose with all the tech press. Apple fans used to send us mail
offering to be janitors just so they could work for us. Then Steve
Jobs came back to Apple and sort of put the kibosh on the whole thing.
iPJD: Where did you go after Exponential Technology?
Maier: I went to Sun to work on what we, at the time, called Ultrasparc
V, but I quit after three months and went to AMD. At AMD I worked on
K6-II, K6-III, and Opteron/Athlon 64. At AMD, I also had a lot of
responsibility and we worked on very small teams. We had something
like 18 main people working on the Opteron/Athlon 64. I worked there
for 8 or 9 years, and eventually became the Manager for Advanced
Development, which is where I started doing software programming as my
main daily activity.
iPJD: What type of programming did you do?
Maier: My big programming
projects were all “Electronic Design Automation.” I wrote giant
programs (sometimes mini-operating systems, really) that were used by
chip designers to design microprocessors. Some of these were
graphical, many were batch-type programs.
iPJD: So what made you decide to leave the microprocessor industry and become a lawyer?
Maier: When I started
in Silicon Valley it was the tail end of the crazy days when you could
start a microprocessor company and make something happen. That was no
longer the case. I looked around and saw that there were no
retirement-aged engineers, and not a lot of fun places left to go work.
I decided I wanted to try something else. I was always very restless,
anyway. I took the LSATs to see if I would get a good score.
After my first year of law school (I went to Santa Clara University at
night) I got a scholarship, and figured I might as well stick with it.
iPJD: Did you write programs for any smartphones before the iPhone?
Maier: I wrote some programs for Palm and Windows Mobile, but I never sold that
stuff. I used it myself or gave it to my friends.
iPJD: What made you decide to start writing apps for the iPhone?
Maier: From the first day I saw the phone
demo’d, I hoped they’d release an SDK. I started out writing apps that
I, myself, wanted to have. And that’s pretty much what I still do.
Though the Colorado Civil Procedure Rules aren’t of too much use to
me, personally. 🙂 I’m always happy to help my fellow attorneys out,
however.
iPJD: Where did the name of your company — WaffleTurtle Software — come from?
Maier: It came from an idea I had for a 2D scroller.
iPJD: I find FRCP, FRAP and many of your other reference apps very useful. [FRCP link: . FRAP link: ] It is so handy to have commonly used statutes and rules always with me on my iPhone. You already have about 20 of these types of apps on iTunes. Can you tell us about any more that are coming out soon?
Maier: Apple is
reviewing “BailOut” (the bail out bill), but they’ve stalled for a
month, and I wonder if they will reject it for political reasons. The
Colorado Rules of Civil Procedure and the Pennsylvania Rules of
Evidence are also under review. I have about a dozen other requests,
many of which are state rules, but also things like the federal
sentencing guidelines, the patent office MPEP, etc. I’m getting to
them as fast as I can. In the last couple of weeks, I’ve released the
Minnesota UCC, the Delaware business code, and the Tennessee Rules of
Evidence. I’ve also been revising the existing programs so they can
talk to each other, and have added improved layout (bold face, italics,
and elimination of stray horizontal lines). Apple is currently
reviewing updates to several apps which have these changes.
iPJD: I’m not a patent lawyer, but your Patents iPhone app seems to be more sophisticated than your other reference apps. [Patents link: ] I take it that this app grew out of your own needs?
Maier: Patents
is an app that I use all the time. I need to keep track of patent claims
and other important patent information (priority dates, etc.), and this
app lets me find that stuff quickly, organize it by matter number, and
store it away for off-line access. So when a partner says “doesn’t
claim 4 require a left-handed widget?” I can give him the answer
immediately.
iPJD: Are you working on any other apps related to the practice of law?
Maier: I am working on a simple,
single-purpose time-tracking app called BillTarget. This app will allow an attorney who has a billable hours goal to enter his or her billable hours target, set holidays and vacation days, input the billable hours to date and then the app will tell you what you need to bill per work day for the rest of the year to stay on track with your billable hour goal. This app will help attorneys to budget their time. I actually released the app on iTunes a few days ago, but pulled it before anyone
bought it to address a few minor bugs. I resubmitted it, but I’m not
entirely happy with the user interface and will be working on improving it over the
course of a few updates. I’ve also got a few other things in mind, but I’m always eager to receive good ideas.
iPJD: Speaking as one of the countless iPhone-using attorneys who is about to start working on a new billable hour goal with the start of the new year, I look forward to using BillTarget when it is out! I see that you have also found the time to write some apps unrelated to the practice of law. Can you tell us a little about those?
first apps were card games: solitaire, blackjack, hearts, and spades.
The support load on these apps is huge because everyone has an
opinion (the cards are too small! the cards take too much space!) and I
have stopped releasing new games (though I still write them for my own
amusement). I also have written a couple of pregnancy-related
programs: a $0.99 baby kick counter called Kicker Counter and a $0.99 contractions timer called Contractions. I’m amazed by
the Contractions reviews, where women in the middle of labor took the
time to review my software. I wrote those two because comparable
programs were selling for $5 and I thought that was pretty nuts.
iPJD: How does writing apps for the iPhone compare to writing programs for other platforms?
literally a joy. I am not yet an expert objective-C programmer, though
I’ve gotten reasonably proficient with the iPhone SDK. I have written
millions upon millions of lines of C++ code, mostly for UNIX-based
systems. The Mac (and by extension, the iPhone) is UNIX-based, so at
least the underlying system is familiar. Objective-C has a lot of
benefits when compared to C++, and these are just becoming clear to me.
I’ve programmed for Windows and Windows Mobile, and those are absolute
messes in comparison. It’s next to
impossible to explain to a non-programmer why one language is easier or
better than another, or why one SDK is more beautiful than another, but
things like consistency, flexibility, and orthogonality are all
important.
iPJD: How long does it usually take to write an iPhone app?
it varies. The core engine I use for my reference apps took around
40 man-hours, I’d guess. Each additional reference app takes 8-24
manhours, depending on how much text there is. Although I can
automatically process and format parts of the text, I do have to spend
a lot of time manually adjusting things, deciding where to insert
hierarchy, reformat things, etc. Rules of Evidence are the fastest,
so I love doing those 🙂
iPJD: Given the amount of time that goes into writing an app, do you consider it financially rewarding to write iPhone apps?
Maier: I had several apps in the store on opening day. In the early days,
the money was very good. Now, not so much. I have around thirty apps
in the store right now. The law apps probably average about one sale a
day. It’s enough to support my gadget obsession and supplement my
income, but I won’t be quitting my day job. I work for a big law
firm, so the tradeoff between time spent billing hours and the time
spent working on the apps is a little difficult to calculate. Luckily
(?), there isn’t enough legal work to keep me busy 24/7, so I don’t
have to choose. In this first year I will probably make about 2/3 of
my legal salary due to the first couple of months of sales, but next
year will undoubtedly be much less.
iPJD: Have you thought about different business models for selling iPhone apps?
Maier: I’m
experimenting with different prices and different ways of marketing,
but Apple ties my hands to some extent. For example, if I could, I’d
experiment with things like buy three apps, get one free, or a
subscription model where each app costs $0.99 per year (to help offset
the time I must spend each year updating the apps as the statutes
change). Or I’d have each app discretely suggest my other apps. (Some iPhone app sellers do this, but Apple frowns on it.) I’m also working to increase
the value proposition of purchasing multiple apps by having the apps
communicate with each other and allowing you to jump from rule to
relevant rule between apps; the first wave of the updated apps is
currently awaiting approval by Apple.
iPJD: Being a lawyer and being a programmer seem like such different professions. How do you compare the two?
Maier: These
are completely different non-overlapping fields. In programming, or in
engineering, you are trained to get to the answer. In law, the story
you tell and the way you convince someone of the answer is far more
important. Heck, in law there isn’t always a right answer. The head
of intellectual property at my firm loves to tell the story of how,
when I was a summer associate, he asked me to do one of those typical memos. The memo I turned in was only a half-page long. I answered his
question correctly, cited the relevant cases, and that was it. He had
been expecting ten pages full of case cites, with explanation of why
these were all irrelevant. Luckily, he appreciated my approach — other
attorneys may not have been so appreciative!
I’m not bad at telling the story or at finding ways to craft the facts
and the law into a compelling argument, but many engineers would be
wholly unsuited to litigation work because of the complete difference
in mindset.
iPJD: Is anything the same in both jobs?
Maier: The biggest crossover is logic. Programmers have no choice to think logically. Experienced programmers
think about the world differently than “normal” people. When writing a
brief, it’s always helpful when there’s an underlying logic to the
thing. 🙂
iPJD: Is there any other way that your programming experience has helped you as a lawyer?
Maier: My background certainly helps with marketing. We’ve
definitely generated initial interest by floating my resume around to
potential clients, and we’ve gotten to make specific pitches because
the technology matches my experience. As a first year associate, I flew
to Asia to meet with a potential client. It’s not too uncommon to find
Ph.D.’s who’ve gone into law, but most don’t go into litigation, and
few of those have actually worked in the industry for a decade. And
having experience in both hardware and in software has been a big help.
iPJD: Your success my cause some other lawyers with a technical background to want to try to write iPhone apps. Can you offer any advice for those just starting out on writing apps for the iPhone?
Maier: They should feel free to contact me. The first step is to
learn objective-C. There are lots of good books on the subject. For a
C++ programmer, objective-C is pretty easy to learn once you get past
the “weird” syntax. The other advice is this: don’t think you’re going
to get rich. The economics of the app store right now are that you
have a tiny chance of making a lot of money, and a huge chance of
making hardly any at all. Do it because you need something you can’t
get from someplace else, do it for the technical challenge or the
personal satisfaction, or do it to help society. Don’t do it for the
money. For me, the law is why I leave my house every day, but engineering is my passion.
* * *
A big iPhone J.D. thank you goes to Cliff Maier for sharing his insight and his experiences. For many of us, third party apps are the best thing about the iPhone, and it is interesting to hear from someone who is creating many of the great apps that attorneys use on their iPhones every day.
I have purchased seven of Mr. Maier’s apps for my iPod Touch and highly recommend them. You can literally carry around a library on your iPhone/iPod Touch! You can email rules to yourself, then copy and paste them in your briefs. I think these apps are too cool!
PTLaw
Thanks, Philippa. Spread the word! 🙂
I just finished writing a motion and memorandum for moot court. My job was so much easier because I was able to look up rules, email them to myself, then cut and paste as needed into my documents. With apologies to Tony the Tiger, “They’re great!”
Nice to hear 🙂
Extensive updates coming to all the apps, plus two new apps: Title 28 and Title 18.
Just waiting for Apple to approve it all.
I would urge you to consider publishing Title 5 (you’d get a lot of govt employees) Title 25 (Indians) and Title 42 for government contracts. Any thought of publishing CFR volumes?
You should make a Mighty Bob app. I’d buy it. I miss that guy and his hatred for Steve.