I recently received an email from Baton Rouge, Louisiana litigator Ross Dooley of Roedel, Parsons, Koch, Blache, Balhoff & McCollister. He is looking for a quiet external keyboard that he can use with his iPad to take notes in court. He told me that he was recently using his iPad with the Apple Wireless Keyboard during a hearing when the judge's minute clerk alerted him that his typing was too loud. This was a courtroom in which the court reporter was wearing headphones and speaking into a stenomask, and apparently the sound of the typing was somehow amplified in the court reporter's headphones.
I don't often encounter a court reporter using a stenomask, but even so, I rarely type using a keyboard with my iPad in court because I do think that the noise can be distracting. If I am going to use my iPad to take notes, I instead use a quiet stylus like the Wacom Bamboo Stylus duo and an app like GoodNotes. But I cannot write using a stylus as fast as I can with a pen, so for those times in court when speed matters, I just use pen and paper.
On the other hand, in depositions, I use a keyboard with my iPad all the time. In that setting, I have never found the Apple Wireless Keyboard to be too loud, nor have I found the sound of other keyboards to be too distracting.
Dooley tells me that he has been looking at Logitech Keys-to-Go keyboard, which Dooley said didn't seem to be quite as ergonomic as the Apple Wireless Keyboard or the Logitech Ultrathin Keyboard Cover, but it does appear to be very quiet thanks to the rubber keys. It is $69.99 on the Logitech website. [UPDATE: Here is a review of that keyboard by David Chartier on his Finer Things in Tech website.]
If you have a recommendation for a Bluetooth keyboard that is so quiet that it can be used in a courtroom without distracting anyone, I'd love to hear from you via email or in the comments. Perhaps there are some good solutions out there that I'm not thinking of.
