Jeff Richardson

The International Legal Technology Association (ILTA) is a peer networking organization for people who work in the legal technology field, such as the people who work in law firm IT departments.  ILTA just concluded its annual conference in Nashville, and at the conference ILTA and InsideLegal released the results of their ninth annual technology purchasing survey.  The survey was sent to about 1,400 ILTA member law firms with responses from 281 (20%) law firms, about 86% of which were U.S. firms.  You can download this year's report in PDF format here.  Here is what I saw in the survey results that struck me as interesting for attorneys who use iPhones and iPads

iPhones and iPads are exciting to IT departments

When respondents were asked to describe the most exciting technology or trend, the top four answers were (1) mobility, (2) cloud services, (3) virtualization and (4) artificial intelligence and wearables.  iPhones and iPads fit into at least two of those categories — mobile devices used to access cloud services — and if the rumors are true about Apple announcing an "iWatch" iPhone accessory later this year, the iPhone may soon relate to three of those categories of the most exciting technologies.

For law firms that buy smartphones, almost all buy iPhones

This is a "technology purchasing survey" which means it asks about technology purchased by law firms.  There are many categories of legal technology that are virtually always purchased by law firms and not individual lawyers, but the category of mobile technology is one that is moving away from IT purchasing departments.  Many attorneys now buy their own device, a practice so prevalent in all companies that there is a common acronym for it:  BYOD (bring your own device).  Indeed, this year's survey reveals that 36% of law firms do not purchase any smartphones for their attorneys.  And this is clearly the trend:  in 2013, 21% of law firms were BYOD-only, and in 2012, 10% were BYOD-only. 

The ILTA survey does not ask any questions about smartphones that attorneys purchase themselves, only the smartphones that law firms are buying.  If 36% of law firms have a BYOD-only policy in 2014, that means that the other 64% are still buying smartphones for at least some of their attorneys.  What are they buying?  Virtually all are buying iPhones (63%), most are buying Android (39%), almost half are still buying BlackBerries (28%), and a small number are buying Windows smartphones (9%).  Or stated differently, for those law firms that purchase smartphones for their attorneys in 2014, 98% are buying iPhones, 61% are buying Android, 44% are buying BlackBerry and 14% are buying Windows. 

Because ILTA has been asking this question for three years now, we now have three years of data to chart and can start to see some trends.  For law firms that purchase smartphones for their attorneys — which, as noted, fewer and fewer do each year — there have been some notable changes.  Just two years ago, only about half of law firms purchased iPhones.  In 2014, virtually all law firms that purchase smartphones purchase iPhones.  And while only about 11% of law firms would purchase Android phones in 2012, now 61% of law firms purchase at least some Android phones. 

What this chart doesn't tell you is how many of each smartphone the firms are buying, just that the firm is buying at least one of that brand.  On the other hand, the chart does tell us something about which smartphones are acceptable to IT departments at law firms.  Two years ago, half of the law firms refused by buy any iPhones, and now virtually all of them buy iPhones.  Two years ago, very few law firms would buy any Android smartphones, and now 61% of them will do so.  And while other surveys, such as the latest ABA Technology Survey that I analyzed last week, indicate that attorney BlackBerry use has plummeted over the last few years, almost half of law firms will still consider buying a BlackBerry for at least some of their attorneys. 

For law firms that buy tablets, almost all buy iPads

In the 2012 ILTA purchasing survey, only 13% of law firms purchased tablets for at least some of their attorneys.  That increased substantially in the 2013 survey, when 58% of law firms purchased tablets for at least some of their attorneys.  But this year, more law firms have BYOD policies on tablets, and only 48% of law firms purchase tablets for at least some of their attorneys.

For those law firms that do purchase tablets for their attorneys, once again the ILTA survey reveals that virtually all buy iPads.  (In 2013, essentially 100% purchased iPads for at least some attorneys, and in 2014, about 92% purchased iPads for at least some attorneys.)  In 2014, about 21% of law firms that purchased tablets purchased Android for some of their attorneys (similar to 22% in 2013), and about 35% of law firms that purchased tablets purchased Microsoft Surface devices for some of their attorneys (up from 21% in 2013).

One interesting question asked in 2013 and 2014 was "What percentage of your firm's attorneys use tablets in their day-to-day work?"  In 2013, 86% of law firms reported that at least one of their attorneys used a tablet, and in 2014 that increased to 91%.  That tells us that it is getting even harder to find a law firm that doesn't have at least one attorney using a tablet.  In 2013, 7% of law firms reported that over half of their attorneys used a tablet every day; in 2014, that increased to 10% of law firms reporting that over half of their attorneys use a tablet every day.

Security policies

As more and more of us recognize the importance of mobile device security, it is becoming increasingly important for law firms to have policies in place that govern how attorneys can use their devices — especially considering that more and more attorneys are bring their own devices to work.  For example, I believe that law firms should require that their attorneys use a passcode to lock their iPhones and tablets because those devices are likely to contain confidential client information, and it is too easy for someone besides the intended user to pick up a mobile device, perhaps becuase it was left unattended, or perhaps because it was stolen.

In 2013, only 30% of law firms had a formal security policy for mobile devices.  In 2014, this increased to 65%, plus another 21% are in the process of establishing a policy.  This is an encouraging trend, and I hope it isn't long before the numbers get closer to 100%.

What would you do if you were on the street using your iPhone and a thief grabbed it from you and ran away?  It recently happened to Clara Vondrich, who calls herself a “recovering lawyer” on Twitter; she used to work on international arbitration law at Arnold and Porter in Washington, D.C. but now works on climate change issues at communications firm Fenton in New York.  Even though she was wearing a dress and wedge shoes, she ran after the thief, chased him for several blocks, and eventually caught him and held him in a bear hug until the police arrived.  Kenneth Garger was there and took photographs, which landed on the cover of the New York Post and resulted in this article.  Vondrich got lots of other publicity, such as an interview on New York’s Pix11 News and another one on News 12.  Unfortunately, she didn’t get her iPhone back because the thief passed off her iPhone to a friend while he was running, and while the police were able to track the iPhone and determine the building that it was in, they didn’t enter without a search warrant.  Vondrich now admits that if it happens to her again, chasing a suspect is probably not the wisest idea.  Vondrich and I emailed about the incident, and she told me that because the thief was only 13 years old, she is not pressing charges and she even “offered to talk with the kid and take him hiking.”  It is tough for any of us to predict how we would react in this situation; I suspect that split-second decisions are made based on adrenaline more than logic.  But now you are thinking about it, as am I.  And now, the rest of the news of note from the past week:

• New York attorney Nicole Black interviewed Judge Richard Wesley of the U.S. Second Circuit about how he uses his iPad as a judge, and wrote about it in this article on Above the Law.
• When it comes to mobile technology, I don’t always see eye-to-eye with Oklahoma City attorney Jeff Taylor, the expert when it comes to attorneys using Android phones who publishes The Droid Lawyer website.  But I do agree with what Taylor wrote in this article, namely that for most law firms, having a mobile app makes a lot less sense than just having a mobile-friendly website.
• Earlier this year I reviewed DkT, a great app for accessing PACER on an iPad and iPhone.  The app recently had some problems logging in to PACER because PACER changed the way that logins work, but the developer of the app, New York attorney Matt Zorn, has now solved the problem.  It worked for me when I was using the app yesterday, so if you have been having issues with the app (as I was), hopefully it now works for you.
• California attorney Scott Grossberg discusses options for sending and receiving faxes on an iOS device.
• San Francisco attorney Wiliam Peacock, who graduated from law school in 2011 and now works for FindLaw, gives four reasons that law students shouldn’t use an iPad.  I think that his reason #2 makes some sense, but I disagree with the rest of his reasons.  And even on his reason #2, I can see an iPad + an external keyboard being an excellent way to take notes in class.  Having said that, when I went to law school in the early 1990s, people were not even using laptop computers in the classroom yet, so I may not be the best one to give advice on what technology law students today should use.
• TrialPad, a fantastic iPad app for displaying documents in a trial, mediation or meeting, is normally $89.99, but through August 24, 2014 is on sale for only $49.99.  This app doesn’t go on sale very often, so if you have been thinking about getting it but were deterred by the price, now is the time to get it.  Click here to get TrialPad ($49.99): 

  

• Speaking of sales, Transporter — a current sponsor of iPhone J.D. — has a back-to-school sale going right now where you can get $20 off of a Transporter Sync (use offer code B2SSYNC) and $50 off of a 1 TB or 2 TB Transporter (use offer code B2STOWER).  The sale ends August 25, 2014.
• Does it seem like your iPhone has less free space than it should?  John Moltz explains that he restored his wife’s 16 GB iPhone and was able to recover over 6 GB of free space, and he restored his iPhone and got back around 3 GB of free space.  Very impressive.
• I don’t link to Apple rumors very often on iPhone J.D., but if you do want to keep up with the rumor mill, one of the best ways to do so is to read articles by Mark Gurman on 9to5Mac.com.  What you may not know is that Gurman is only 20 years old, a Junior at the University of Michigan.  I enjoyed reading this interesting profile of Gurman that was written by Michael Rosenwald for the Columbia Journalism Review.
• On December 23, 2013, I wrote about an Apple TV ad called Misunderstood.  As I wrote at the time:  “Apple has a tradition of running some pretty great Christmas commercials, and the one that they are running this year is, in my opinion, one of the all-time best.”  I guess I wasn’t the only one who liked it.  As the aforementioned Mark Gurman writes for 9to5Mac, the ad won the Emmy for Outstanding Commercial – 2014.  Congrats to Apple!
• If your iPhone falls off of a boat into 10 feet of water and stays down there for five minutes, you might assume that it is a goner.  But that happened to Rob Griffiths of Macworld, and he brought his device back to life, as detailed in this article.  Wow.
• What can you do if you find a lost iPhone and want to get it back to its owner?  Allyson Kazmucha has some good tips on iMore.  Maybe someone will find Clara Vondrich’s phone.
• And finally, do you love hot tea as much as you love your iPhone?  If so, you will love the iKettle, a $165.95 teapot that uses Wi-Fi to talk to your iPhone.  As the manufacturer states, “imagine how perfect and complete life would feel if there was no longer that tiresome wait for the kettle to boil. This blissful paradise we’ve just described is now all too real, thanks to the iKettle – The World’s first WiFi Kettle.”  That sounds over-the-top, but Ben Lovejoy of 9to5Mac reviwed the iKettle, and while he admits that it is expensive, he says:  “As someone who works from home and loves tea, the iKettle is perfect.”

If you are in the New Orleans area and you want to get an hour of CLE credit tomorrow while you listen to me talk about using an iPad in a law practice, I am told that there are still a few spots left for the New Orleans Bar Association’s Free on Friday CLE Series.  The CLE will take place from Noon to 1:00 at the New Orleans Bar Association’s office in downtown New Orleans at 650 Poydras St., Suite 1505.  Lunch will not be served, but the CLE is free to NOBA members (or $35 for non-members).  To register for a spot before they are all gone, you can email Rebekah Burg or call NOBA at (504) 525-7453.

If you are in New Orleans, I hope to see you there.  And if you are not in New Orleans, hopefully you will find an excuse to get yourself down to the Crescent City in the near future.

Every year, the ABA Legal Technology Resource Center conducts a survey to gauge the use of legal technology by attorneys in the United States.  My thoughts on the prior reports are located here:  2013, 2012, 2011, 2010.  No survey is perfect, but the ABA tries hard to ensure that its survey has statistical significance, and every year this is one of the best sources of information on how attorneys use technology.  Yesterday, the ABA released Volume VI of the report titled Mobile Lawyers.  This year’s report once again shows that a large number of attorneys are using iPhones and iPads.

Six out of ten attorneys now use an iPhone

In both 2014 and 2013, the survey revealed that 91% of attorneys use a smartphone.  (In 2012 the number was 89% and in 2011 the number was 88%.)  For the past four years, there has been a slight correlation between law firm size and smartphone use.  In 2014, for example, 86% of solo attorneys reported using a smartphone, 89% in firms of 2 to 9 attorneys, 95% in firms of 10 to 49 attorneys, and for firms with 100 or more attorneys, 96% use a smartphone.  As a whole, though, it is fair to say that the survey consistently shows around nine out of every ten attorneys use a smartphone.

For those nine out of every ten attorneys who are using smartphones, 74% reported in 2014 that they were using a personally owned smartphone, and 28% used a smartphone permanently assigned by their law firm.  Those numbers were closer to 66% and 36% in the prior three years, so it seems that in 2014, fewer law firms are buying smartphones for their attorneys and more attorneys are buying their own smartphones.

Whether they buy it themselves or it is purchased by their law firm, what smartphones are those nine out of ten attorneys using in 2014?  Last year, the big news was that over half of all attorneys were using an iPhone.  This year, that number increases even more:  60.8% of all attorneys are using an iPhone (66.8% of the 91% of attorneys who use a smartphone).  So if you can imagine a row of ten attorneys, this year one of them doesn’t use a smartphone at all, and six of them use an iPhone.  What about the other three?  Two of them are likely using an Android phone (24.5% of the 91% of attorneys who use a smartphone report using an Android phone in 2014, a small increase from 22% in 2013.) and that last attorney is probably using a BlackBerry or maybe a Windows phone.  Specifically, the 2014 numbers for the 91% of attorneys who use a smartphone are:  66.8% iPhone, 24.5% Android, 6.8% BlackBerry, 1.9% Windows and 1.5% other.  That adds to 101.5% because some attorneys use multiple smartphones.  The following pie chart is somewhat imprecise because the numbers add up to just over 100%, but nevertheless it shows you graphically the relative use:

It is interesting to look at how smartphone preferences have changed over the last four years that the ABA has been collecting this data.  Clearly, iPhone use has increased:

BlackBerry use among attorneys has plummeted, from 40% in 2010 to almost 6% in 2014.  Almost all of those attorneys who had been using a BlackBerry seem to have switched to an iPhone, with attorney iPhone use increasing from 31% to almost 61% in the same period, while a few BlackBerry users switched to Android, with attorney Android use increasing less dramatically over the same period from 15% to just over 22%.

What are these attorneys doing with their iPhones and other smartphones?  Over half of all attorneys using a smartphone say that they are using it for email, telephone, calendars, contacts, internet access and text messaging.  Other popular uses are GPS/maps and the camera.  Only 7% use a smartphone to track expenses, and only 4% use a smartphone to create documents.

The survey reveals that attorneys are becoming more conscious of the need for smartphone security.  In 2011, 23% of respondents were not using any security on their smartphone.  That dropped to 15% in 2012, 11% in 2013, and this year only 8% report that they don’t use any security.  The most popular security measure is to use a password to lock the device, and in 2014 90% of attorneys using a smartphone say that they do so.  That number really ought to be 100%, and hopefully all attorneys who read iPhone J.D. now use a passcode.  21% of attorneys report that they use the Find My iPhone feature or something similar so that they can use GPS to track a lost or stolen phone.

Over 400,000 attorneys use an iPad

Last year, based on the 2013 survey, I concluded that over 400,000 attorneys were using an iPad based on the survey numbers and the assumption that there are about one million attorneys in the U.S.  This year, I still believe that there are over 400,000 attorneys using an iPad, but the 2014 survey results on lawyer tablet use were surprising to me in two respects.

First, lawyer tablet use is not growing nearly as much as I had expected.  In 2011, 15% of attorneys reported that they used a tablet device.  In 2012, that more than doubled to 33%.  In 2013, it increased to 48%.  Thus, I would have guessed that more than half of attorneys would be using tablets in 2014.  But that didn’t happen.  The number instead increased only from 48% to 49%.  Have we reached the point where most attorneys who want to use a tablet already have one?  After all, as useful as an iPad is, I often hear attorneys tell me that laptops such as the MacBook Air are so thin and light that they carry theirs almost everywhere, and when you always have a laptop with you there is less of a need for an iPad.  Is it possible that even though almost half of all attorneys now use a tablet, the other half will never see the need to do so?  I don’t know, and I will be very interested to see what happens to this number next year.

The other surprise to me was the percentage of tablet-using attorneys using an iPad.  From 2011 to 2013, while the number of attorneys using a tablet increased every year, the percentage of those attorneys using an iPad remained steady at about nine out of ten.  It was 89% in 2011, 91% in 2012, and 91% in 2013.  In 2014, there was a dip, with 84% of attorneys who use a tablet reporting that they use an iPad.  What are the other tablet-using attorneys using?  10% are using Android tablets (up from 7% last year), almost 6% are using Windows tablets (up from 1% last year), and another 3% are either using something else or report that they do not know what they are using.  Again, this adds up to slightly more than 100%, I presume because some people have more than one tablet.

Looking at the past four years on a chart shows visually how the percentage of attorneys not using a tablet had been declining rapidly but then has held steady over the past year, and the percentage of attorneys using an iPad had been rising steady but then essentially held steady over the past year.

What are these attorneys doing with their iPads and other tablets?  Pretty much the same thing that they are doing with their smartphones (other than the phone function), with over half of attorneys reporting that they are using their tablets for internet access, calendars and contacts.  While only 4% report using a smartphone to create documents, that number rises to 17% with tablets.  Expense tracking is slightly higher:  10% on tablets versus 7% on smartphones.

Popular apps

The survey also asked attorneys to identify apps that they use.  Popular legal-specific apps include Fastcase, apps to access Westlaw and Lexis services, legal dictionaries, TrialPad and TranscriptPad.  Popular general business apps that attorneys said that they downloaded include:

• LinkedIn:  68%
• Dropbox:  65%
• Evernote:  38%
• Documents to Go:  21%
• GoodReader:  20%
• Quickoffice:  18%
• LogMeIn:  15%
• Box:  9%
• Notability:  7%

A huge market

One thing clear from the 2014 ABA survey is that iOS is a huge platform for attorneys.  If you assume that there are a million attorneys in the U.S. (which I believe is roughly accurate), that means that there are around 600,000 attorneys using an iPhone and over 400,000 attorneys using an iPad.  For any developers considering making great apps for attorneys, there seems to be lots of potential customers.

From time to time, attorneys who read iPhone J.D. write to tell me how they are using their iPhone or iPad in their practice.  I love to read these stories, and with permission I like to share some of them here on iPhone J.D.  I recently heard from Will Harrelson, an attorney in Troy, OH with the law firm Faust, Harrelson, Fulker, McCarthy & Schlemmer who focuses his practice on business litigation, estate planning, collections, family, and employment law matters.  Will also recently joined Curo Legal on the Practice Operations team where he works with solo and small firms to implement cloud-based technology solutions to improve their efficiencies and better serve their clients.  I first met Will at the annual ABA TECHSHOW conference held in Chicago every Spring, and he generously agreed to share with iPhone J.D. readers his favorite iPhone and iPad apps.  Take it away, Will!

• DS file – Our offices uses a Synology NAS (a mirrored two-hard drive network file server with backups to the cloud) so I use Synology’s free DS file to access all of our files, including Word and PDF documents, where I then open them in other useful apps.
• Microsoft Word for iPad – I originally used Apple’s Pages for document editing because, before Word was released, it retained the .docx formatting the best.  Now, I have an Office 365 subscription and I use Word for iPad to draft and edit pleadings, correspondence, and other documents.  [Jeff adds: my 2014 review]
• PDF Expert and GoodReader – GoodReader and PDF Expert are the two apps that I use for PDF reading and annotation.  They both offer amazing features for annotation and the newest version of each app includes substantial integration with cloud services.  I do love the ability and ease of emailing a flattened PDF with my signature from PDF Expert.  On the other hand, GoodReader allows for some awesome annotation, file manipulation, and organization features.  [Jeff adds:  my 2012 review of PDF Expert; my 2014 review of GoodReader]
• Bamboo Paper – Because I sometimes like to take handwritten notes during a meeting, I use the Wacom Bamboo Paper app with the Wacom Bamboo stylus (or one of the Clio pen/stylus combos that I picked up at the ABA TECHSHOW) to record my thoughts.  [Jeff adds:  my 2012 review of the Wacom Bamboo Stylus duo]
• Evernote – When typing is more appropriate, I link up my Apple Wireless Keyboard that’s clipped to my Incase Origami case and use Evernote to type notes.  Hidden trick: even when I handwrite notes into Bamboo Paper, I upload those notes directly to Evernote so they are all in one place.  [Jeff adds:  my 2010 review of the Apple Wireless Keyboard; my 2012 review of the Incase Origami Workstation for iPad]
• Clio – For all practice management issues such as timekeeping, billing, contact lookups, etc., I use the Clio app that allows me to access all of my case data from the awesome Clio service.  [Jeff adds:  my 2013 look at the Clip app]
• Box – Though I keep all files in our private NAS and can access it via the cloud, I do have a Box account so that I can easily transfer certain sets of documents to third parties without having to configure it through our NAS.  It’s a lot simpler to tailor the access restrictions when it is just a few documents at a time.  I can use the Box app to manage my account and download files on the go. I often use it to upload files from a client’s computer instead of using USB flash drives.
• 1Password – This often praised password management app is the one I use to manage all of my accounts and to store various membership card information so that I can stop collecting that paperwork in my home office.  [Jeff adds:  my 2013 review of 1Password]
• Fantastical – I have recently replaced the standard Apple iOS calendar with Fantastical 2 and I love the ease of scheduling appointments with simple language (for example, typing “Meeting at Tom’s at his house at 9am” will turn it into an appointment called “Meeting at Tom’s” with “his house” being the location and “9am” being the time.  The visual aspect is much more pleasing to my sense of design as well.  [Jeff adds:  I haven’t posted a review of the current version, Fantasical 2, but here is my 2012 review of the original Fantastical]
• MindNode – There are many blog posts on the concept of “mind-mapping” but it isn’t on every lawyer’s radar.  It is simply the use of flow charts and webs to illustrate connections visually.  I use the MindNode app for sketching out ideas for blog posts, trial preparation, and when I’m working on product improvements for Curo Legal to better organize my thoughts.
• Launch Center Pro – This is a bit of a stretch for most non-tech types but Launch Center Pro is a really fascinating app that allows you to build a menu of complicated commands all in a one-button solution.  For example, I have built a command to launch my favorite radio app to open to a certain station without my having to launch the app, search for the station, and then press play.  It is a workflow solution if you are into the overly-nuanced solving of very unimportant problems.  [Jeff adds:  my 2012 review of Launch Center Pro]
• TranscriptPad and TrialPad – I use TranscriptPad every time I have to annotate a deposition transcript.  The features are endless and it helps me review and prepare deposition summaries in a fraction of the time it used to take.  TrialPad is a fantastic trial presentation app that allows me to manipulate exhibits and display them on a screen with ease from any spot in the courtroom, wirelessly from my iPad.  [Jeff adds:  my 2013 review of TranscriptPad]
• UberConference – I use UberConference for small conference calls because it is more reliable than a phone system and I can do screen sharing through their website if necessary.  I use a free account which is plenty for my needs.
• SignNow – When I engage a new client or need something with their signature, I send it to them using SignNow and they can sign it from their iOS device or computer and return it in minutes rather than me asking them to come to the office or both of us mailing copies to each other over the course of a number of days.
• Boxer – I’ve been fairly pleased with Apple’s default Mail app for most of my time being an iPhone and iPad owner but recently I tried both Mailbox and Boxer and I settled on Boxer as my permanent email replacement app.  It allows me to turn emails into tasks, send emails to Evernote, reply with a number of pre-written responses, and assign emails to contacts as a to-do.  It uses a Getting Things Done-type set of commands so I can use my inbox as an actual inbox instead of a giant pile of unsorted messages.
• Voice Memos – I use Apple’s built-in Voice Memos app for dictating messages to email or text to my assistant)
• Pocket – Pocket is a great app that I use to read certain articles later.  I often use Pocket by sending links from Twitter.
• Spotify and TuneIn Radio – I use both Spotify and TuneIn Radio for streaming great music on the go.
• Ruby Receptionists – The Ruby Receptionists app works with this great service that I use with Curo Legal as our virtual receptionists.
• Scanner Pro – Scanner Pro by Readdle is the best scanning app I have ever used.  [Jeff adds:  my 2012 review]
• Uber – Uber is the only way I get around Chicago, Nashville, and Columbus.
• Venmo – Venmo is a terrific money transfer app that I use with friends when I need to pay someone for my share of a dinner, for example.

Thank you so much, Will, for sharing this great list of apps.  There are some great apps on your list that I use all the time — including Word for iPad, PDF Expert, GoodReader, 1Password, Fantastical, Launch Center Pro, Transcript Pad and Scanner Pro.  But there are lots of others here that I haven’t tried out yet, so it is great to learn that they work for you.

If you are willing to share your own experiences using an iPhone or iPad in your law practice with other iPhone J.D. readers, I’d love to hear from you!  And in case you missed them, here are reports that I previously shared from other attorneys:

• William Axtell:  2/19/13
• Zane Cagle:  1/1/12
• Megan Erickson:  5/11/11
• Jeff Forbes:  3/21/13
• Tom Freeland:  7/13/10
• Cliff Maier:  12/22/08
• Lindsay Rakers:  12/18/12
• Alfred Saikali:  5/4/11
• Mike Schneider:  4/28/09
• Clark Stewart:  7/22/10
• Joe Suhre:  12/3/13
• John Walker:  7/2/13

Twenty years ago today, I started practicing law — at the same firm where I still practice today, Adams and Reese in New Orleans.  Well technically, I wasn’t sworn in as member of the bar for another two months, but my first day in the office was August 15, 1994.  Back then, Adams and Reese used Macs, and I was excited to be the first person in the office with a Power Mac 6100, the first Mac with a PowerPC chip.  My firm switched to PCs in the early 2000s, but thanks to the iPhone and iPad, some of the best (and certainly the most enjoyable) technology in my law practice is still made by Apple.  The 1994 version of me would have been floored by what you can do with an iPhone today.  Twenty years from now, perhaps the 2034 version of Siri will be smarter than all of us.  And now, the news of note from the past week:

• John Edwards of Law Technology News recommends six iPhone productivity apps, including the Hours time-tracking app that I’ve heard good things about.
• Law firms have been focused on diversity and releasing diversity data for many years, and this week, Apple released lots of data about their workforce diversity and created this webpage with more information.  As Apple CEO Tim Cook says:  “We believe deeply that inclusion inspires innovation.”  That is certainly true in the practice of law, and it doesn’t surprise me that it also holds true for technology.
• Apple is known to have a sophisticated in-house education program, but most of the details have been held close to the vest.  Brian Chen of the New York Times managed to learn quite a bit about so-called Apple University and wrote this interesting article.
• My favorite external keyboard for the iPad is the one made by Apple, the Apple Wireless Keyboard.  It is nice to have an iPad stand that works with the Apple keyboard, and I have long used and recommended the Incase Origami Workstation.  Julie Strietelmeier of The Gadgeteer discusses five stands that work with the iPad and the Apple keyboard, including the Origami Workstation.
• Speaking of that 2034 version of Siri, some of the folks who invented Siri before it was purchased by Apple are now working on sophisticated artificial intelligence that is supposed to do a great job of responding to your questions.  Steven Levy wrote an interesting account of these efforts in an article for Wired.
• I recently reviewed the Lumsing Harmonica Style Power Bank, a 10,400 mAh external battery that costs $23.  Lumsing tells me that their 6,000 mAh battery, the Ultra Slim Portable Power Bank, is the subject of a promotion on Amazon; it costs $23.99, but today only you can use the code LUMSING6 at checkout to get $5 off, so that makes it only $18.99.  Click here for more details on Amazon.
• Do you hate having to crawl under a desk to reach an outlet?  Janet Cloninger of The Gadgeteer reviews the Wall Mounted Outlet Extender, an interesting $40 device from Hammacher Schlemmer that moves the outlet up to your desk height.
• If you can’t get enough of the law during your day job and you want to also play a lawyer on your iPhone or iPad, yesterday Capcom released the fifth installment of the Ace Attorney games:  Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Dual Destinies.  I haven’t played them, but I’m told that they are very popular, especially in Japan.  The game is free an includes the first episode, but the remaining episodes require an in-game purchase.  Jared Nelson of Touch Arcade has the details.
• And finally, do you want to charge your iPhone in your car, but do so with the flair of Doc Brown and Marty McFly in a time-traveling DeLorean?  Then you will want to check out the Flux Capacitor USB Car Charger.  Originally an April Fool’s gag, ThinkGeek manufactured the product and it will be released next month for only $24.99, the perfect device for all of you who still have fond memories of the Back to the Future series.  The device includes two 2.1 Amp charging ports (which can handle two iPhones or iPads), but most importantly includes a Flux Capacitor light sequence.  Have fun, but be careful when you hit 88 mph…

Of course I enjoy listening to music, but when I am driving to and from work or doing chores around the house, I prefer to use my iPhone to listen to the spoken word — specifically, either audiobooks or podcasts.  I’ve been listening to podcasts since Apple first supported them in iTunes 4.9 (released June of 2005), and if you don’t listen to podcasts, you’re missing out.  It’s essentially talk radio with a million different channels, as there are shows on just about any topic under the sun.  My favorite podcasts deal with technology (especially iPhones/iPads) and law — I know, big surprise, right? — but I often listen to podcasts relating to other subjects too.  In all of the years that I’ve published iPhone J.D., I’ve never once reviewed a podcast app, in large part because I never found one that I really liked.  And I’ve tried just about all of them.  So until recently, I found myself just using the built-in Podcasts app made by Apple, even though I always knew that there should be something better. 

Last month, Marco Arment released Overcast, an app that downloads and plays podcasts, and I’ve used it just about every single day since it has been available.  Overcast quickly became my favorite podcast app, so finally I have something to recommend to folks who are looking for a good one.  Instead of charging for the app, Arment made the app itself free so that anyone can download it and kick the tires a bit, but to enable the features that make the app so great, you need to pay a one-time in-app fee of $4.99.  So just think of it as a $5 app.

The main screen of the app lists your playlists, followed by each of your podcast shows.  Buttons at the top right let you create a new playlist or add a new podcast.  I myself just use a single playlist that I call “New” which includes all of my podcasts that are either new or that I haven’t finished listening to yet and sorts them in order from newest to oldest, because I usually want to listen to my most recent podcasts first.  But there are some podcasts that I always want to listen to first, even if I have something else that is newer, and Overcast has a very useful feature called Priority Podcasts where you can select one or more podcasts that will always rise to the top of the list, even if something else is newer.

 

To listen to podcasts, either select a playlist or an individual show.  I virtually always listen to a playlist, which I like because when one podcast ends, the next one starts to play automatically.

The interface when playing a podcast looks simple, but there is a lot of power in there.  Most of the screen is composed of the cover art for the podcast.  The orange bar at the top shows you how far you are into a podcast, and you can drag the bar at the end of the orange color to move to a specific location in a podcast.  The main button below the art is a big, easy to tap play/pause button.  To the left and right are buttons that you can tap to jump backwards (useful when you get distracted and then realize that you just missed something in the podcast) or forwards (useful for skipping commercials or otherwise skipping ahead).  I have mine set to 15 seconds back or 30 seconds forward, but you can adjust that in the app settings, accessible by tapping the overcast icon at the top left of the main screen.  (The choices are 7, 15, 30, 45 or 60 seconds.)

The Playback button at the bottom left lets you control what happens when this podcast ends (play next podcast or stop) and also lets you set a sleep timer.  But one of the coolest features of the app is the Effects button at the bottom right.  Tapping Effects gives you the option of speeding up the podcast, and what is neat is that you can do it in two ways.  First, you can adjust the speed using the slider, a traditional control which makes everything faster but does a good job of keeping the voices at the same pitch so that it doesn’t sound like you are listening to Alvin and the Chipmunks.  But even better is the Smart Speed button, which analyzes the sound waves in the podcast and appropriately shortens the silences — the space between words.  I’ve never seen this feature before in any other app, and it works really well.  The end result is that I can make only a slight increase to the speed — I usually just go one notch above 1x speed — plus use the Smart Speed button, and the end result is that you can listen to an entire podcast in much less time, but do so without the voices sounding obnoxiously fast.  It just sounds like you are listening to someone who speaks a little fast and doesn’t waste time between words.  Just above the Smart Speed button, the app tells you the net effect of these settings (which changes throughout the podcast, depending upon how long the pauses are in the speaker’s voice), but for me the net effect is usually around 1.3x speed.  So I typically listen to a 60 minute podcast in only about 45 minutes.

The faster speed is nice because you have more time for other podcasts, but I also like the faster speed because I find that it makes all of my podcasts even more engaging.  It’s like the difference between listening to an energetic speaker and someone boring who just drones on and on and on…

When you tap a playlist, you see a list of all of the episodes that are upcoming.  As noted above, any of your priority podcasts are automatically moved to the top.  But if you want to make further adjustments, you can also manually adjust the list to move any specific podcasts up or down by tapping the Edit button at the top right.

 

You can also tap the Info button to get information about a specific podcast.

As you can see from the above pictures, on just about any screen in the Overcast app, a bar at the bottom lets you control the currently playing podcast.

From the main screen, you can tap on any podcast show to see all of the episodes, either the ones that you have downloaded and haven’t played yet or all podcasts that are available to download.  You can also adjust the specific settings for that show such as whether to subscribe to all new episodes or just include the ones that you manually download, whether to give you a notification when a new episode has been downloaded, and how many unplayed episodes to keep.

 

One thing that Overcast cannot do is stream an episode that has not yet been downloaded — i.e., play it while it is also downloading.  I believe that this is because an episode needs to be downloaded first for Overcast to perform its Smart Speed magic, although I understand that Arment is considering adding streaming in the future.  But since Overcast automatically downloads all of my new episodes when I am using Wi-Fi and I am usually on Wi-Fi many times during the day, that’s not a problem for me.  Any episodes that have not yet downloaded, because the app is waiting for a Wi-Fi connection, can be viewed by tapping the download button at the top of the main screen.  By flipping a switch at the bottom of the screen, you can tell Overcast to go ahead and get that episode using your cellular connection if you don’t mind using up some of your monthly data allowance to do so.

Overcast includes all of the features that I have been looking for in a podcast app.  It does a great job of handling playlists, and while I like that I can rearrange the order of podcasts in a playlist when necessary, the great Priority Podcasts feature usually takes care of that automatically for me.  The controls for playing and skipping around in a podcast work great.  And the Smart Speed button is as useful as it is innovative.  Overcast is a fantastic podcast player, and is my #1 recommendation if you want to play podcasts on your iPhone.

Click here to get Overcast (free; $4.99 to enable all features): 

Thank you to Connected Data and Drobo, maker of the Transporter, for sponsoring iPhone J.D. this month.  The Transporter is one of the most valuable technology tools in my law practice, and that is saying something because I surround myself with gadgets.  Simply connect a Transporter to your home or office network and you get a folder on your computer in which you can add sub-folders and documents.  The Transporter folder is synced across computers, so if you add a draft of a brief to the Transporter folder on your PC at work, you can access that brief at home in the Transporter folder on your Mac.  Similarly, on your iPhone and iPad, you can use the free Transporter app to access any of those files.  If you use Dropbox, this type of service probably sounds familiar, but Transporter is different because you own and have custody of your Transporter so all of your documents remains private.  You don’t need to worry about your documents being on the cloud and in the possession of a third party that hasn’t signed a confidentiality agreement with you.  If you store lots of files, a Transporter is also cheaper than Dropbox because you just pay once for the hardware and can select just about any capacity drive that you want, such as a 500GB Transporter for $199.  (That same amount of space on Dropbox would cost you $499, and that is a recurring charge that you have to pay Dropbox every year.)  If you want to put a large document, such as a big video file, on your Transporter but not have it take up space in the Transporter folder on your computers, the Transporter has a special Transporter Library folder where you can store items that are not synced to your computer but are still accessible from your computers, iPhones and iPads.

Connected Data has also provided developers with the tools to integrate Transporter access directly within their apps.  One recent example is the PDFpen app for iPad (which I reviewed in 2012).  But for apps that don’t have built-in Transporter support, you can simply use the Transporter app to select a document and then send it to another app.  Indeed, when you have Internet access, your Transporter gives your iPad and iPhone access to terabytes of files, for more than you could ever store on the iPad or iPhone.  And once you access a file from the app, the app remains downloaded so that you can access it again later, even if you don’t have an Internet connection.  (Just swipe to delete a file if you don’t want it, and the app asks whether you want to delete just the downloaded version or also delete it from your Transporter.)

As I mentioned a few months ago, a recent update to the Transporter app lets you tell the app to automatically upload pictures that you take with your iPhone and/or iPad to your computer.  It does so using location-based services, so for example, you can tell your iPhone to upload your photos when you are in your house, and when the app senses that it is at your home on your Wi-Fi network, the uploads occur in the background.  (Or you can manually tell the app to upload photos right now from wherever you are located.)  The next time you sit down at your computer, your pictures are already there waiting for you in the “Camera Uploads” folder of the Transporter.  I use this feature all the time to get the best of both worlds with my iPhone and iPad.  What I mean by that is that the iPhone is far better than the iPad for taking pictures, but when I want to view those pictures I’d rather do so on the larger screen of the iPad.  I take pictures with my iPhone, then the pictures are uploaded to the Camera Uploads folder on my Transporter, and then I can see and download those photos on my iPad.  A recent update to the app adds small thumbnail images next to each file name so that even if you have dozens or hundreds of pictures, you can quickly figure out which picture that you want.

When you buy a Transporter, you have lots of options.  You can spend $199 to $349 to get a Transporter with a built-in drive of up to 2TB.  Or you can spend just $99 for the Transporter Sync and add your own USB drive of whatever capacity you want.  They both work the exact same way, so it is just a question of whether you want the simplicity and elegance of a single device that looks like a cone, or you want the flexibility of a device where you can add any drive that you want but then you have two items on your desk, the Transporter Sync plus the drive.

As a part of its sponsorship of iPhone J.D., the company provided me with free Transporter back in early 2013 when I first tried it out.  But knowing how useful it is, I would buy one now immediately if I didn’t already have it.  This is one of those rare pieces of technology that I use just about every single day, just like my iPhone and my iPad.  In fact, you can buy two Transporters, keep them in different locations (such as your home and your office), and tell them to automatically sync to each other so that even if disaster strikes at one location and one Transporter is somehow damaged, you’ll still have a complete backup.  Having said that, even if you just own one Transporter, you always have a backup of all of your files on the Transporter folder of your computer(s) — except for those files that you put in the Transporter Library, which means you are explicitly telling the Transporter to only store the file there.

To get more information on Transporter and Transporter Sync, click here to access the Legal Solutions page of the Transporter website.

Last year, Apple announced the iPhone 5S on September 10, during the second week in September.  The year before, Apple announced the iPhone 5 on September 12, again during the second week of September.  John Paczkowski of re/code reports that sources tell him that this year, the iPhone 6 will be announced on September 9.  Paczkowski’s sources are usually pretty good on things like this, but frankly, he could have asked me and even I would have predicted a new iPhone announcement this year during the second week in September.  The big rumor this year is that the iPhone 6 will be larger than all of the prior iPhones.  That wouldn’t surprise me, and we’ll find out for sure around this time next month.  And now, the news of note from the last week:

• Tampa attorney Katie Floyd describes how she went from paying Verizon $10 a month for cellular data on her iPad to free 200MB of data a month using T-Mobile.
• California attorney David Sparks posted a really interesting interview with an airline pilot about the apps he uses on his iPad.
• If there is a desk or other location at your home or office that has an outlet nearby and you want to have lots of USB ports to charge your devices, one solution is to buy a USB charging station.  Oklahoma City attorney Jeffrey Taylor, who publishes The Droid Lawyer, recently reviewed the Inatech 5 Port USB Charging Station, a device that costs only $20 on Amazon which provides two 2.1 Amp ports for iPads and three 1 Amp ports for iPhones and other lower-power devices.
• Today is the last day to tell the ABA Journal which law blogs you think should be included in the 2014 Blawg 100.   Click on this link if you want to tell the ABA Journal editors about your favorite blog, whether it be iPhone J.D. or any other blog.
• If you are in the New Orleans area and you want to earn an hour of CLE over lunch while you learn more about using an iPad, I’m teaching iPad for Lawyers on Friday, August 22 from Noon to 1:00 at a CLE sponsored by the New Orleans Bar Association.  It is free for NOBA members.  Click here for more information and to sign up.  I hope to see you there.
• Documents to Go has long been an excellent app for viewing Word and other Microsoft Office documents on an iPhone or iPad.  Until recently, there were two versions:  a $9.99 standard version and a $16.99 premium version.  Yesterday, DataViz changed the name of its entry app to Documents to Go Free, and as the name implies, the app is now free.  If you just want to view and edit files, the Free version might give you all that you need.  There are three in-app purchases in the new free version to add additional features:  (1) cloud service support, (2) desktop file sync and (3) password protected file support.  Each of those features costs $6.99 to unlock, or you can unlock all three for $16.99 — which essentially turns the free app into the premium app.  On my iPad, I prefer to use the Microsoft Word and other Office apps to work with Office files, but on my iPhone, I still usually read Word documents using Documents to Go.  If you don’t already have a copy of Documents to Go on your iPhone, it is a great app, I recommend that you get it now that it is free.  Click here to get Documents to Go Free (free): 

  

• I noted last week that the Microsoft Word for iPad app now lets you export a Word document as a PDF file when you email the file to someone else.  The app doesn’t give you the option to export to Google Drive, but Alex Campbell of Macworld figured out a workaround; it’s a little complicated, but might be of interest to some of you.
• Alyssa Bereznak of Yahoo Tech provides tips for using Pages, Numbers and Keynote on a Mac, iPad and iPhone.  (Warning: video starts playing when the page loads.)
• GoodReader 4 is my favorite app for managing PDF documents on my iPad, and I also like to use it on my iPhone.  I reviewed GoodReader 4 a few months ago, and this week, Jeff Merron reviews the app for Macworld.
• Apple CEO Tim Cook tweeted this week that last month, Apple had its highest App Store sales ever.
• 9to5Mac notes that Apple is advertising a sale on productivity apps, and you can get great apps like Scanner Pro, Fantasical, Launch Center Pro and PDF Expert for a fraction of their normal prices right now.  Also, the amazing 1Password app is on sale right now.
• There is a guy named Sam Sung who used to work in an Apple Store in Canada.  “Sam Sung” in an Apple Store is sort of funny, and so the guy decided to auction off his badge and other items on eBay to raise money for charity.  As of last night, the bids were over $80,000.  Way to go, Sam!
• And finally, here is an interesting video to advertise Navdy, a $299 device shipping early next year that will provide a heads up display in your car that you control with your voice or hand gestures.  It looks sort of neat, and the video does a good job of showing it off:

The practice of law is certainly a profession that requires one to juggle lots of different tasks, which means that you need a way to keep track of those tasks.  Those are countless ways to do this with an iPhone or an iPad.  You can use the built-in Reminders app.  You can use a complicated and sophisticated app such as OmniFocus, which California attorney David Sparks shows off in these videos.  My wife is a long-timer user of Things, a very powerful app for the iPhone, iPad and Mac.  But for me, I’ve always preferred simple solutions for managing tasks.  I’ve been practicing law for 20 years this month, and for a good number of those years, my task management tools were simply a small legal pad and a pen; I would jot down a to-do item, and then scratch it out when it was done.  But for about a year now, I’ve been using the Ita app to manage my tasks and keep track of other lists, and the system has worked well for me.  (The developers say “Ita is pronounced like ‘Item'” so I presume that the name “Ita” is a play on the idea that your lists have multiple items. [UPDATE 8/8/14: one of the two developers of Ita tweeted that ita is a Latin word that means “thus” and is a possible origin of the word item; UPDATE 8/11/14:  the other developer of Ita then tweeted: “I know Ben said otherwise, but yeah I think of Ita as being the plural of items. —Bob”.])  A few days ago, Ita was updated to version 2.0, which has a new, clean interface that matches the look of iOS 7, so I figured that it is now a good time to talk about this app.

The main screen of Ita shows you all of your lists.  You can quickly create a new list by tapping the plus sign.

As you can see, in addition to creating a list of “Work To Do” items, I also have a list of file numbers for my most common matters.  That way, if I need a file number and can’t remember it, I can easily look it up in Ita.

If you want to change the order of your lists, simply hold your finger down on a list for about a second and then you can drag it up or down.  Tap a list to see the items on the list.  In one of my lists, I jot down the tasks that I need to do in my cases.  Obviously I can’t show you my real list of the tasks I need to do for my clients, so here is a fake one to give you a sense of the types of items that I typically put on a list:

To add a new item, just tap the plus sign at the bottom right.  Then type your items and hit DONE when you are finished.

 

New items appear at the top of the list, but you can easily reorder items just by holding your finger down on an item for a second and then dragging it up or down.  An item turns red while you are dragging it.

To edit an item, just slide it to the left to expose two icons:  edit and delete.  Or, you can tap the edit icon at the bottom, middle of the screen and then tap any item to start editing it.

When an item no longer needs to appear in the list, such as a task that you are finished, you have two choices.  As shown above, you can swipe to the left and then tap the trash can icon, which will delete it completely from the list.  Or, you can tap an item and that moves it the bottom and makes it gray, useful if you want to continue to see items even after you have marked them as done.

If you are using Ita to manage your work tasks, you probably won’t see a need to keep items on a list after you are done with them.  I simply delete a task item after I do it.  But for other kinds of lists, it is useful for the item to still remain visible even after you are done with it.  For example, you can make a list of the 15 items you need to remember to pack whenever you go out of town.  As you pack your suitcase you can tap each item to mark it as done.  Once you are finished, if you tap the icon at the bottom left (the box with an arrow) one of options is “Restore Completed Items” which will reset all of the items so that you are ready to mark them as completed again when you have your next trip.  (Note that to use this particular feature, you need to go into Ita’s settings. accessible by tapping the atom icon at the top left of the main screen, and then turn on “Show Restore Action”.)

I virtually always use this app on my iPhone, but it is a universal app, so it works on your iPad too.  You can use iCloud to sync items between your devices.

The developers of Ita mentioned on the Debug podcast in May of 2013 that they were working on a version of Ita for the Mac, but I don’t believe that has been released yet.

You can use Ita with Launch Center Pro to do some sophisticated automated tasks, such as appending the contents of the clipboard to a list.  You can also email a list, and if you send the list to someone else who uses Ita, they can import the list into their Ita app.  But I suspect that most Ita users don’t do anything fancy like that.  I certainly don’t.  The beauty of Ita is that it is such a simple app.  It lacks the bells and whistles of others task manager apps, such as assigning due dates, providing push notifications, etc., but that’s because Ita isn’t really a task manager app, even though I use it that way.  It’s just a list making app. 

If keeping simple lists is the way that you like to organize your life, then I think you will like Ita as much as I do.  It is simple to use, it has a clean interface, and I can use Ita very quickly to see the items on my lists and easily add or delete items.  If a simple list manager seems like the right fit for your lifestyle, Ita is a great app.

Click here to get Ita ($2.99):