One of the best things that I did in law school was participate in a clinic. I was a part of Georgetown's criminal law clinic where I had the chance to try jury and bench trials, one semester as a prosecutor and one semester as a public defender. And of course there are many other types of clinics devoted to all sorts of areas of law, all of which are a nice change of pace from memorizing cases. I was intrigued to see an article by Maria Clark of New Orleans CityBusiness about a clinic at Loyola Law School in New Orleans that teaches students to create law-related apps. The students wrote web-based apps, not native iPhone apps, but they look pretty useful on an iPhone. For example, the Multiple Bill Calculator lets you quickly calculate minimum and maximum sentences under the Louisiana Habitual Offender Law. Neat. And now, the rest of the news of note from the past week:
- I like the title – "Paper or Plastic" – of an article by Philadelphia attorney Maria Harris in which she discusses attorneys no longer bringing tons of paper files to court and instead relying on PDF files. When I am in court, my GoodReader app with all of my documents is one of the best tools I have.
- John Edwards of Law Technology News recommends apps for attorneys who travel. I'm taking depositions in San Francisco this week, and I used some of these apps during my travel, such as GateGuru and FlightTrack Pro. He should have also mentioned TripIt.
- If you are interested in a an easily-accessible version of the Model Rules of Professional Conduct, the ABA released a $24.99 digital version of the 2013 edition that you can purchase in the Rulebook app. Last year, I reviewed the version of the Bluebook released for the Rulebook app, and I still find it very useful to have that citation guide easily available on my iPad.
- Ohio attorney Will Harrelson discusses using an NAS server at your law firm to store files that you can access from an iPad in this article on Lawyerist.com.
- I suspect that a large number of attorneys using an iPhone previously used a BlackBerry. Vauhini Cara wrote an interesting article in The New Yorker about the rise and fall of BlackBerry.
- When will the next iPhone be announced by Apple? According to sources with a very good track record of predicting things like this, the announcement will be on September 10.
- In addition to a new iPhone, Apple will release iOS 7 this Fall, the next version of the iPhone and Pad operating system. Rene Ritchie of iMore wrote a good preview of what we will see based on the information that Apple has made public. And of course, I'm sure that Apple also has some interesting surprises for the release.
- Earlier this week, I reviewed a great iPad stand called the Stabile PRO. At least, that is what I should have said it was called; in much of my review, I called it the Stabile 2.0 by mistake, which is a different, less expensive version that lacks features such as a pivoting head. Sorry about the confusion. The Stabile PRO is the version that I have been using and that I recommend.
- And finally, I often hear about folks getting a new iPad and giving their old model to their kids, but how about instead giving it to Rover or Morris? Sophia Hollander of the Wall Street Journal writes about iPad apps for pets to use. The article includes a video with scenes like this one. Must be a slow news day on Wall Street.
