Pictures and notes from ABA TECHSHOW 2019

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Last week, I attended ABA TECHSHOW 2019 in Chicago.  It was a great conference; I learned a lot, and had fascinating and fun conversations with lots of interesting people.  Here are a few pictures from the conference, along with some information that you might find useful even if you were not at the conference.

The Expo Floor had lots of booths of interest to attorneys using an iPhone or iPad.  Smile had a booth to show off ways that lawyers can use TextExpander.  The primary person manning the booth was Jeff Gamet, who recently became a Smile employee but who you may know from his 13 years covering Apple-related news for The Mac Observer, or from one of his numerous podcasts such as The iOS Show.

Sharon Stewart was part of the crew from Bellefield showing off iTimeKeep, a great app for entering and tracking your time on your iPhone, iPad, Mac, or PC.  I first heard about iTimeKeep many years ago at ABA TECHSHOW, and now it is a product that I use almost every day.

Ed Walters, the CEO of Fastcase, was a speaker at the conference and was also showing off all of the new technology that Fastcase is using to improve legal research.

I had an interesting conversation with Dan McCade, the Chief Information Officer at Casemaker.  A while back, Casemaker purchased an app called Rulebook which contains sources of law (like a state’s code of civil procedure) as well as other useful legal texts, most notably The Bluebook.  I’ve been frustrated with that app for a while now because it has some bugs and I was wondering if the app had been abandoned.  McCade ensured me that the app is still being developed, and he even showed me a beta of new version of the app which he said should be out very soon.  He showed me that it (finally) restored hyperlinks to the index at the back of The Bluebook — thank goodness.  I love having The Bluebook and other rules right there on my iPad and iPhone, so I am really looking forward to the next update to this app.

MyCase was doing lots of things at ABA TECHSHOW.  For example, Niki Black was interviewing folks to ask about a good tech tip (here was mine).  They also had one of their programmers, Quy Phan, programming code for the next update to MyCase right there in the booth.  His Javascript programming was way over my head, but it was still neat to see and hear him describing what he was doing to add new features to the service.  Here he is with Niki:

There were two companies offering iPhone apps with the same basic goal:  give you a way to have a text message conversation with a client, but include a way to preserve the conversation so that you can store a copy in your document management system.  One of the companies is a new startup called JurisBytes, and their app was so impressive that they were the winners of the 2019 Startup Alley competition, as Jason Tashea of the ABA Journal reported in this article.  For their product, your client can use whatever normal app he or she uses to text, but the attorney uses the JurisMS app to text and there is a special phone number (that can be in your normal area code) to provide to clients to reach the attorney via text.

The folks from EIE Legal had a similar product.  For their app to work, both sides have to text within the special EIE app.  Once again, you can get a PDF document for preservation purposes containing the entire conversation.

And finally, Rocket Matter had a Game of Thrones theme at its booth, and its CEO Larry Port was dressed up as character Robb Stark to get in the mood.

Of course, the sessions are the best part of TECHSHOW, and I attended some great ones that related to the iPhone and iPad.  Craig Bayer and Stanley Louissaint discussed Mobile Device Management:

Brett Burney and John Simek discussed collecting and preserving evidence and other information from mobile devices.  If you have access to someone’s password (such as your client’s) there is a lot of information you can get from an iPhone.  If you don’t, you probably won’t be able to get anything off of the phone at all, although some companies claim to be able to crack certain devices for a large fee.

Antigone Peyton and Bob Ambrogi discussed legal issues surrounding the Internet of Things, an interesting issue as we find ourselves surrounded by more devices, such as the Apple Watch and smart home technology, which record lots of information that could be relevant in litigation.

Friday morning, Sharon Nelson and I gave a presentation on selecting the best technology for your law firm.  MyCase hired artist Leah Silverman to create cartoons to record what was discussed during certain presentations, including the one.  Thus, if you missed our session, you can get the gist of it from this cartoon.  (Click to enlarge.)  Also, Jason Tashea of ABA Journal wrote this article about our session.

I also teamed up with Brett Burney to discuss a huge number of iOS tips, app recommendations, and hardware accessory recommendations.  It was a fast-paced and fun presentation with an enthusiastic audience, as you can see.

The last session I attended was a presentation by David Sparks and Craig Bayer with tips for improving security on iOS devices.

On Thursday night, David Sparks and I hosted a Taste of Techshow dinner, and it was great fun with a really fantastic group of old and new friends:  Neil Squillante who publishes TechnoLawyer, Jeff Gamet of Smile, Prof. April Dawson of NCCU School of Law, Brett Burney of Apps in Law, Oklahoma prosecutor Russ Cochran, Judge Joseph Adams of Pennsylvania, Pennsylvnia attorney Evan Kline, Louisiana attorney Gregg Tweed, Idaho attorney David Cummings, and Michigan attorney Tom Howlett.

It was great catching up with so many of you in Chicago, and I hope that we can do it again soon!

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