Jeff Richardson

California attorney David Sparks has a recurring feature on his MacSparky blog where he asks people to share the apps on their iPhone home screen.  This week, in an homage to Sparks, New York attorney and TechnoLawyer publisher Neil Squillante showed off the apps on his iPad home screen.  He has some interesting choices so his post is worth reading.  It’s been over three years since Sparks asked me to talk about the apps on my iPhone home screen, and a lot has changed since then.  My current iPhone home screen apps include Vesper to track tasks, Tweetbot for Twitter, Feedly for RSS feeds, 1Password for my passwords and confidential notes, Fantastical for my calendar, Forecast for the weather (which is actually a free web app, not an app that you download from the App Store), FlickTunes
for skipping through music tracks while I am driving, Facebook, plus
the Apple apps Photos, Camera, Maps, Podcasts, App Store, Phone,
Contacts, Settings, Messages, Music, Reminders and Clock.  My dock
currently contains Calendar, Safari, Mail and Launch Center Pro — although I might remove Launch Center Pro at some point soon because I use it less often nowadays.  And now, the news of note from the past week:

• British Columbia lawyer David Paul recommends iPad apps for lawyers for Canadian Lawyer magazine.
• Speaking of California attorney David Sparks, he recommends Editorial, a text editor app for the iPad.
• Josh Ong of The Next Web recommends 10 writing apps for the iPad, including Editorial.
• Rene Ritchie of iMore has five tips for using Siri.
• David Pogue of the New York Times compares the iPhone’s Siri voice recognition system to the similar system on Android phones.
• Poornima Gupta and Peter Henderson of Reuters wrote a profile of Apple CEO Tim Cook.
• Dan Frakes of Macworld recommends the best external keyboards for the iPad.  I currently recommend two keyboards, both of which Frakes likes as well.  First, if you want a keyboard that is part of a case for the iPad so that you can carry it all together as one, I think that the current best choice is the Logitech Ultrathin Keyboard Cover.  Second, if you want a keyboard with full-size keys (which is my preference for typing), I recommend (and use) the Apple Wireless Keyboard along with the Incase Origami Workstation, which covers and protects the Apple keyboard plus provides you with an iPad stand.
• And finally, we all know what Marimba sounds like, the standard ringtone on the iPhone.  The band Mars Argo created a song around the Marimba ringtone, and it’s actually quite good.  Here is the video.  (via The Mac Observer)

One of the best iPad and iPhone chargers is sold by Apple and comes with every new iPad.  The Apple 12W USB Power Adapter can charge an iPad slightly faster than the old 10W USB Power Adapter, the prongs fold down for easy storage when traveling, it works great with any iPad or iPhone, and it costs only $20 (or a few bucks less on Amazon).  But it can only charge one device at a time, so if you need to charge multiple devices, you need to multiple power adapters and access to multiple plugs.  For just a few bucks more, you can get Kensington’s new AbsolutePower 4.2 Dual Fast Charge for Tablets and charge two iPads and/or iPhones at the same time.  Kensington sent me a free review unit a few weeks ago and I’ve been testing it out.  While it has a few drawbacks, I’ve found it to be so useful that I recommend you consider this product if you are in the market for an additional iPad or iPhone charger.

USB chargers are almost a dime a dozen, but they are not all built the same.  To charge an iPhone as fast as is safely possible, you need a device that can deliver 1.0 Amps.  To charge an iPad as fast as is safely possible, you need a charger that can deliver 2.1 Amps.  With anything less you get less than optimal results.  For example, I have many USB chargers that provide only 1.0 Amps.  They will connect to an iPad, but they only charge the iPad when the device is in sleep mode; if I am actually using the iPad, a charger that delivers 1.0 Amps can keep the iPad going but doesn’t also add more juice to the internal battery.

Although some dual chargers deliver 2.1 Amps to only one USB port, the Kensington AbsolutePower 4.2 delivers 2.1 Amps to both USB ports at the same time.  Thus, you can charge two full-size iPads and/or iPad minis using just a single plug.  If you instead plug in an iPhone, the AbsolutePower will deliver the 1.0 Amp required to safely give your iPhone the specific power that it needs.  Note that you use your own USB cables; no cables come with this product.

The time that it takes any charger to recharge an iPad or iPhone is going to vary from test to test and from device to device.  But to give you some rough estimates, in an hour, the AbsolutePower 4.2 would add around 20% charge to my third generation iPad and would add about 35% charge to my iPad mini.  For my iPhone 5, an hour was enough to add about 65% charge.  Thus, I could bring my iPhone up to 100% in less than two hours (depending upon the charge that I started with), whereas I would usually leave iPads plugged in overnight to get a full charge.  These numbers are similar to what I see using the Apple USB power adapter, so you don’t seem to be losing anything by using the Kensington AbsolutePower 4.2 to charge two devices at once.

Only having to use a single outlet plug to charge two devices was sometimes useful at my home or office but was extremely useful when I traveled.  I often find only a single outlet plug free in a hotel room, and with the AbsolutePower 4.2 I didn’t have to decide which lamp in the room to triage to make room for a second charger.  Similarly, last week I was waiting for a plane in San Francisco after taking some depositions and I found a seat next to an outlet with two plugs but someone else was already using one.  With the AbsolutePower 4.2, I was able to use the remaining outlet plug to add a significant charge to both my iPhone and my iPad at the same time so that I had power for both of my devices for the long flight back to New Orleans.

Because a device like this is so useful for travel, one of my two gripes is that this device could have been better designed for travel.  I love the ability to fold down the prongs on the Apple USB Power Adapter and I wish that the AbsolutePower 4.2 shared that feature.  What you can do is press a small button and easily slide off the two prongs.  This does makes it easier to pack this charger for travel so that the prongs didn’t stick out so much in my bag — but I still wish I could instead fold down the prongs.

My only other small gripe is that the device itself is somewhat large.  There were two times when I wanted to use this device but there wasn’t enough space around the outlet to do so.  For example, one time, I was at a conference room table that had a pop-up drawer containing a plug which could not accommodate the size of the AbsolutePower 4.2  To be fair, however, the Apple USB Power Adapter is somewhat large as well and I have frequently encountered places where it similarly would not fit.

Overall, though, I have enjoyed using the AbsolutePower 4.2.  Carrying one adapter takes up less space in my travel bag than two adapters, and as someone who frequently travels with multiple iOS devices, being able to charge two devices simultaneously using only a single outlet plug is quite useful.  I wish that this device was even better designed for travel, but it worked well enough for me to want to use it again and again.  The device costs $29.99 on the Kensington website, but you can get it for almost $20 on Amazon — just a few bucks more than the Apple USB Power Adapter that only charges one device at a time.

Click here to get Kensington AbsolutePower 4.2 from Amazon ($21.82)

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.

I love using my iPad at my desk as a sort of second monitor.  I can look at emails on my iPad while I am doing legal research on my computer.  I look at a document on my iPad screen while I am drafting a memorandum about the document on my computer screen.  But it is awkward to look at an iPad flat on a desk next to a computer monitor, and even when the iPad is propped up by the Apple SmartCover or any of dozens of iPad stands that sit on a desk, the iPad is lower than my computer screen.  But when an iPad is in the Stable PRO by Thought Out, it has the height of a computer screen, perfect for a dual monitor setup, and perfect for when you just want to look straight ahead at your iPad screen while you type on an external Bluetooth keyboard connected to the iPad.  Thought Out sent me a free review unit of this stand a few weeks ago and I am somewhat surprised how useful it has been.  I find myself using it every day, and it makes my iPad even more helpful in my office.

[UPDATE 8/14/13: Note that in my original review, I incorrectly called the product that I have been testing the “Stabile 2.0.”  The product I reviewed is actually called the Stabile PRO.  There is a different, less expensive product called the Stabile 2.0 which is lighter and has a fixed vieiwng angle.  Click here for a comparison.  My guess is that most people would found the Stabile PRO worth the extra $40 to have the better viewing angles and a heavier stand, but it is nice to have the option to get a $60 version or a $100 version.]

The Stable PRO lives up to its name.  It is heavy (just over 3 pounds), made of steel, and very strong and sturdy. 

The vinyl-covered pads on the “arms” of the Stable PRO securely and safely hold your iPad on the device.  You can pivot the device to point your screen in lots of different directions, but there is a lot of friction so that when you are just touching the iPad’s screen to interact with the iPad, it stays put.

Note that I am using the device with the optional Grapple PRO
accessory.  You don’t need this accessory — you can just sit your iPad
on the Stabile — but with the Grapple PRO attached, your iPad is held
snug in place so that there is no risk of it falling off or getting
accidentally knocked off.  I recommend getting this accessory.

The iPad can sit on the Stabile in either portrait or landscape mode.  And if you have the Grapple PRO accessory, it adjusts to work in either mode.

The design of the Stabile reminds of an Apple iMac computer.  It looks very nice and is obviously well made.  It even looks good from the back, which is important because people who walk in your office are likely to see this device from the back while your iPad is on your desk. 

The Stabile PRO is heavy enough that this is not a stand that you would want to take with you when you travel.  You’ll want to keep it on your desk so that you can easily set your iPad in it whenever you want to view or read items on the screen.  Indeed, the Stabile holds the iPad at a perfect height for viewing and reading
items on the iPad screen.  As noted above, it makes your iPad feel much
like an external monitor — except that you can lift your iPad off of the Stable whenever you want to use the iPad as a flat tablet.

The bottom of the Stabile PRO has flat non-skid black polyurethane 3M feet.  They keep the Stabile PRO in one position so that it doesn’t slide around your desk even when you are pushing on the iPad screen with your fingers.  They seem to me to be very well attached, but it is nice that you can buy cheap replacement feet if you need them.

The version of the Stable PRO that I tested is silver, which matches the back of the iPad and also matches the silver on the Apple Wireless Keyboard.  It’s a great color.  The Stabile also comes in black or white.

Thought Out did a great job with this product.  I had no idea how helpful my iPad could be when placed in this position, and the product itself is well-designed and well-made.  The Stabile PRO is a unique and very useful iPad stand.

Click here to get the Stabile PRO from Thought Out ($99.99)

Click here to get the Stabile PRO from Amazon ($120.74)

South Carolina attorney Justin Kahn posted yesterday on his iPad Notebook website that Wacom Bamboo Styluses are currently on sale at Staples. There are three models available, but my favorite is the duo because it is the perfect length and it also includes a pen, just in case you ever need it.  Here is a link to my 2012 review, and I’ll add that I have been using this stylus many times a week for over a year and it is simply fantastic.  There are other great styluses on the market — I also like the Adonit Jot Pro and still use it from time to time — but the Wacom Bamboo Stylus duo is the one that I keep coming back to again and again.  If you are just going to get one stylus to use with your iPad, I think that the Wacom Bamboo Stylus duo is the one to get. 

I usually recommend using Amazon to buy a stylus because their prices tend to be the best, but I see that right now, the Wacom Bamboo Stylus duo costs $31.99 on Amazon while it costs only $29.99 (a $10 discount off of their regular price) at Staples.  Granted, the $2 difference is not huge, any you may prefer to buy from Amazon anyway if you are a member of Amazon Prime, but since this is the lowest advertised price that I have ever seen for this best-in-class stylus, I thought that it was worth sharing the news that Justin Kahn discovered just in case you are in the market for a stylus right now.

By the way, the most common use for my stylus is to take handwritten notes on my iPad, and my current favorite app to do so is GoodNotes.  I also use a stylus from time to time when I am annotating PDF documents with an app like GoodReader or more recently, the excellent iAnnotate app that I reviewed last week.

You can click here to buy online from Staples, or you can just pick one up at the store if there is a Staples in your area.  I presume that this sale will last about a week, and if you are reading this post after the sale has ended, then your best best is probably to buy the Wacom Bamboo Stylus duo from Amazon.  Wherever you get it, a good stylus is a very useful iPad accessory.

Earlier this week, Minneapolis attorney Lisa Needham explained on Lawyerist.com
why she loves the GoodReader app.  My last post dedicated to GoodReader was over a year ago, but in case anyone forgot, I love the app too.  Indeed, I probably use GoodReader
more than any other app on my iPad except for the Mail app, and it is one of my top recommendations for lawyers using an iPad.  She also notes
in her article that the “good folks over at iPhonejd.com” — those
“folks” would be the triumvirate of me, myself and I — recently reviwed iAnnotate, but she likes GoodReader better.  Frankly, I do too, but I use them for different tasks.  For simple reading and annotating of documents, GoodReader is awesome.  But if you need to do more complicated work with a PDF file, a more sophisticated app like iAnnotate or PDFpen or PDF Expert can manipulate and annotate PDF documents in ways that GoodReader cannot.  And I also recommend that all attorneys get the Adobe Reader app because sometimes it can handle PDF files that other apps cannot, plus it is free so why not have it for just in case you need it.  Enough about PDFs, let’s get on to the news of note from the past week:

• It’s a good idea to be ready for power outages, especially now that we are in hurricane season.  Last year I wrote an article with tips for using an iPhone during a lengthy power outage for the TechnoLawyer BigLaw newsletter, and it was recently posted on the TechnoLawyer blog.  Check it out for my advice.
• If you use ProVantage for your law firm time billing and financial management, you can now use Bellefield’s iTimeKeep to access ProVantage records on your iPhone and iPad as noted in this press release.
• Jesse Londin of Law Technology News writes about Bike Crash Kit, a free app with tips for those who end up in a bicycle offered by personal injury law firm Flanzig and Flanzig.
• 1Password is one of the most useful apps on my iPhone and iPad.  Read my review to find out why.  The app usually costs $17.99, but it is currently on sale for only $7.99 — a great price for an incredible app.  Click here to get 1Password: 
• David Pogue of the New York Times reviewed the new Moto X smartphone this week, the latest Android smartphone.  I mention the article becuase in it he notes that there are more than 4,000 touch-screen phones available — including six different models of the iPhone and 3,997 different Android phones.  Gulp.
• I recently wrote about Wireless Emergency Alerts on the iPhone such as AMBER Alerts.  This week, there was an AMBER Alert in San Francisco around 11:00 pm, and that was the first AMBER Alert that many iPhone users in the area had ever seen.  It resulted in a lot of articles about these alerts, such as this one from Lex Friedman of Macworld.  If you still don’t understand what these alerts are, I encourage you to read about them now so that they make sense to you when they occur.
• T-Mobile started selling the iPhone in April, and John Gruber of Daring Fireball notes that as a result, T-Mobile gained customers last quarter for the first time in four years.  Note, however, that as reported by Kevin Bostic of AppleInsider, T-Mobile insists that its new “Un-carrier” ad campaign is the real reason, not the iPhone.  Regardless of who is right, I’m glad that T-Mobile users can finally buy an iPhone.
• Long before the iPhone or the iPad, Apple sold the Newton.  Mat Honan of Wired wrote a good article on the Newton’s lasting impact.
• And finally, I’ve long been a fan of the great commercials used by Apple.  I really like the current series of commercials called Photos Every Day, Music Every Day and the latest FaceTime Every Day, all of which you can see on Apple’s YouTube page.  But you can also turn back the hands of time and watch this video of none other than Siskel and Ebert reviewing Apple commercials back in 1986.  I miss those guys.

If you are interested in hearing me talk about the iPad and iPhone, here are some of my upcoming speaking engagements.

The New Orleans Bar Association is currently hosting the Free on Fridays CLE, a series of one-hour CLEs that address the latest technology issues and cutting edge topics relevant to lawyers.  If you are in New Orleans this Friday, August 9th, I’ll be giving an iPad for Lawyers presentation from 10 am to 11 am.  The CLEs are free for New Orleans Bar Association members; non-members pay $35.00.  To register, you can email Rebekah Burg or call NOBA at (504) 525-7453.

If you practice employment law, consider attending the 7th Annual Labor & Employment Law Conference, sponsored by the ABA Section of Labor and Employment Law.  The conference is in New Orleans November 6th through 9th, and on Thursday, November 7 at 2:15 pm, I’m on a panel to discuss Apps for Employment Lawyers along with James McKenna of Morrison & Forester in San Francisco, Natalie Kelly of the Georgia State Bar in Atlanta (and Chair of ABA TECHSHOW 2014) and Jeff Taylor of Absolute Legal Services in Oklahoma City (and publisher of The Droid Lawyer).

And finally, if you are a member of the Product Liability Advisory Council, I’ll be talking about using the iPad as a litigator at the Fall Conference in Las Vegas.

If any of those work into your schedule, I’d love to see you.  Otherwise, you can find me here on iPhone J.D.

I work with a large number of PDF files in my law practice, and I’m sure that I’m not alone.  All federal court pleadings on PACER are in PDF format and many state courts are moving to PDF electronic documents, other counsel frequently send me files in PDF format, when I do legal research I download the cases in PDF format, exhibits are in PDF format, etc.  Perhaps most importantly, when I know that I’m going to work with a document on my iPad, I usually prefer that it be in PDF format.  The iPad has the built-in ability to view PDF files, and the free Adobe Reader app offers even more options, but for professional work with PDF files it is nice to have a more powerful app.  A few weeks ago, Branchfire sent me a free review copy of their $9.99 app iAnnotate, and I am incredibly impressed.  This seems to be the most powerful and sophisticated app that I’ve seen for working with PDF files on the iPad.  I am not sure that I would recommend this app to a mere casual iPad user because it is going to be overkill, but for those who want all of the tools at their disposal, this is a fantastic app.

There is typically a tension with PDF apps.  On the one hand, you want to have access to lots of tools to annotate a document.  On the other hand, you don’t want all of those tools cluttering up the screen when you are just trying to read a document.  iAnnotate strikes a perfect balance by providing tools on both the left side of the screen that you can easily make disappear with only a tiny tab remaining so that you can access them again when you need them.  Similarly, you can tap in the middle to make the tools at the top disappear, or tap again to see them.

Let’s talk about those tools at the top.  The top left tab brings you to the main screen (more on that in a moment) but most of the tools at the top are tabs to your open PDF documents.  Keeping multiple PDFs open at a time is incredibly useful, making it easy to switch back and forth between several documents.  The gear at the far right brings up app preferences, and right next to it is a Dropbox circle.  If you are reading a document that you accessed from your Dropbox account and you have modified the document on your iPad, the circle turns red to warn you that you are working with a changed version of the document.  But if you tap that circle (or close the document) the changes are synced back to Dropbox.  It is a great Dropbox integration that works really well.

On the right there are tools to work with the document.  All of the common tools are there in the default toolbar, but what makes this app truly useful is that you can both modify the default toolbar and create your own additional toolbars.  A simple flick from the right side of the screen switches between your active toolbars, so you can create toolbars with different tools for different types of tasks.

And boy are there a lot of tools to choose from.  Here is a picture showing all of them, which I had to stitch together from three different screen shots on the iPad:

The tools include, for example, two instances of the pencil tool so that you can use one set by default to drop thin black lines and another set by default to draw thick, translucent yellow lines (useful for highlighting a scanned document).  There is also a true highlighting tool which works great with OCR’d documents.  There are tools for navigating within the document, tools for rotating the document, and tools for adding and working with bookmarks.  You can use the standard pencil tool to sign a document, or you can use a specialized signature tool that makes it easier to sign and create a stamp of your signature that you can quickly and easily apply in the future. 

Speaking of stamps, the app comes with a lot of built-in ones, and you can add any picture as a stamp.  I created a picture of an Exhibit sticker and made a stamp out of it so that I can easily place virtual exhibit stickers on documents.  For a stamp you use frequently, you can even create a custom stamp tool for the toolbar on the right that applies that specific stamp; the icon on the stamp tool even changes to a picture of that stamp.

If you ever need to save a copy of a website, iAnnotate does a better job than any of the browsers on my computer.  And there is even a tool icon that brings up the full list of tools so that you can quickly select one that isn’t normally on one of your toolbars.

And those are just the tools on the right side of the screen.  On the left side of the screen, there are five sets of tools such as Thumbnails and Actions that give you even more options for editing aspects of the document, copying a document, etc.

On the main screen, you can view a list of files that are local on the device (either in list view or in icon view) or tap Connections to access cloud-based storage such as Dropbox.

When it is time to export documents, you can either keep your annotations intact or export a flattened PDF document. 

iAnnotate also has the ability to annotate Microsoft Word documents.  This is a really neat and useful feature.  Simply open a Word document in iAnnotate and as you start to annotate the document, the app will create a PDF version of the document.  You can then highlight, markup in a red pen, etc. all over the document and then you can email that PDF file to someone else.  If you want to markup a brief for another attorney or secretary to make the edits, iAnnotate is a powerful tool for doing so.

Even after a few weeks of using this app, I know that I am still just scratching the surface of what it does.  Suffice it to say that if you want a sophisticated tool for working with PDF files on your iPad, and if you don’t mind a slight learning curve to figure out everything that this app can do, iAnnotate is an excellent choice.

Click here to get iAnnotate ($9.99): 

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I’m reading a great novel by Patrick Rothfuss called The Name of the Wind.  Much of the book involves the main character, Kvothe, recalling the (exciting) events of his life with great detail.  At one point he notes that his most defining attribute is his memory, and I’ve always been jealous of people (like my wife) who are great at remembering things.  It always seemed that they barely needed to study in school; they hear or read something once, and then they know it.  Fortunately, my iPhone does a perfect job of remembering things so that I don’t have to.  I jot down something in a Notes app or tell Siri to remind me of something, and the iPhone never forgets, freeing up my brain to focus on analyzing issues instead of worrying about rote memorization.  New York Times columnist David Pogue (the keynote speaker at ABA TECHSHOW earlier this year) wrote a great article in Scientific American discussing how smartphones are starting to make memorization obsolete.  It’s a good read.  And now, the rest of the news of note from the past week:

• Pennsylvania attorney Sara Austin showed me an iPhone charging connector called the Kii that is small enough to fit on a keychain.  Neat idea.
• New Orleans attorney Ernie Svenson told me that he encountered a strange bug that was preventing him from updating apps on his iPad.  He pointed me to this thread on Apple’s forums to show that he is not alone.  But I see that the very latest posts on the forum indicate that Apple may have finally done something on its end to fix it, so if you are having the same problem, hopefully you won’t have it for much longer.
• Readdle is celebrating its sixth birthday by reducing the price of six apps by up to 70%.  This includes the great Scanner Pro for $1.99 instead of $6.99 (my review) and PDF Expert for $4.99 instead of $9.99 (my review).
• Serenty Caldwell of Macworld offers advice for traveling overseas with your Apple devices.  One suggestion:  bring an iPad instead of a laptop.  I agree; I travel a lot within the U.S., but I can’t even remember the last time I brought a laptop.
• If you ever receive an iMessage that is spam, Lex Friedman of Macworld explains how to report it to Apple.
• Friedman also offers advice on the best battery cases for the iPhone 5.
• Jeff Gamet of The Mac Observer shares a neat trick that was new to me for selecting multiple photos in the Photos app that involves using two fingers at once.
• Rene Ritchie of iMore shares a few more tricks, gestures you can use in Siri, Mail, Safari, Calendar and the keyboard.
• Daniel Eran Dilger explains what the future holds for iPhone and car integration.  Sounds great to me.
• Brad Nicholson of Touch Arcade notes that Bad Piggies, a game from the folks that brought you Angry Birds, is Apple’s app of the week.  Meaning it is free.  I’ve never played it, but my seven-year-old son likes it.
• And finally, here’s a product that is still in development but looks promising:  Egg Minder, an egg tray that holds your eggs in your refrigerator and tells your iPhone how many eggs are in the tray.  No more sleepness nights wondering how many eggs you have left!

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:  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 the best resource I am aware of to reveal how the approximately one million attorneys in the United States are using technology.  Yesterday, the ABA released Volume VI of the report titled Mobile Lawyers.  This year’s report shows that a huge and growing number of attorneys are using iPhones and iPads.

Over half of all attorneys now use an iPhone

This year’s survey reveals that 91% of all attorneys use a smartphone, and that percentage increases with the size of the law firm.  For example, smartphones are used by 85% of solo attorneys, 90% of attorneys in a firm of 10 to 49 lawyers, 97% of attorneys in firms of 100 to 499 lawyers, and 99% of lawyers in firms of 500 or more lawyers.  About two-third of attorneys using smartphones are using a device that they own, while about one-third are using a smartphone assigned to the attorney by their law firms.

For the 91% of attorneys who are using smartphones, what smartphones are they using?  The survey reveals that 62% are using an iPhone, 22% are using an Android phone, 16% are using a BlackBerry, about 1% are using Windows Mobile, and about 1% either don’t know or selected “other”.  Yes, that adds up to 102%, but perhaps some folks use more than one device.  Here is a pie chart to give you a sense of the big picture:

As you can see, 2013 is the first year in which we can say that over half of the attorneys in the United States are using an iPhone.  

This is the third year in a row that the ABA survey has collected this kind of information, which gives us the ability to see how the percentages have changed over time:

Over just the last two years, we have seen the BlackBerry drop from being an item used by 40% of all attorneys to only 14%: a drop of 26 percentage points.  At the same time, the iPhone has grown from 31% to 55%: a gain of 24 percentage points.  Android has also seen some growth, from 15% to 20%, and the number of attorneys who don’t use a smartphone at all has dropped from 12% to 9%.  Thus, while some former BlackBerry users are now using Android phones, it appears that for the most part, BlackBerry’s loss from 2011 to 2013 has been the iPhone’s gain.

What are attorneys doing with their smartphones?  The survey reveals that most attorneys are using their smartphones for e-mail, telephone, calendar, contacts, the Internet and text messaging.  Less than 10% of lawyers report using their smartphones for expense tracking, time and billing, document creation, spreadsheets, web conferencing or presentations.

Over 400,000 attorneys use an iPad

Apple released the first iPad in 2010.  The survey data for 2011, 2012 and 2013 has been consistent in one respect; every year, about 9 out of every 10 attorneys using a tablet have used an iPad.  Specifically, the percentage was 89% in 2011, 91% in 2012, and 91% in 2013.  (For those few attorneys who use a tablet but don’t use an iPad, more than half of them use an Android tablet and the small remainder use a Windows tablet or something else.)  The survey reveals that over 80% of attorneys using a tablet own their device; less than 20% of tablet users are using something issued to them by their law firm.

While the iPad’s incredibly dominant marketshare for attorneys has remained relatively steady over the years, what has changed is the number of attorneys using a tablet at all.  In 2011, about 15% of attorneys used a tablet.  In 2012, about 33% of attorneys used a tablet.  This year, 48% of all attorneys report using a tablet.  With about a million attorneys in the United States and with the iPad being used by 91% of the 48% of attorneys using a tablet, this means that in 2013 there are around 436,000 attorneys using an iPad.

These numbers are impressive in their own right, but I also see a lot of room for growth.  We now see 9 out of every 10 attorneys using a smartphone, and while I don’t expect tablet use by attorneys to get quite that high in the short term, it could get close.  The iPad is ideal for reading and carrying around documents, managing email and using the Internet, tasks that attorneys do every single day.  I rarely make it through a week in my office without another attorney sticking his or her head in my door to proudly announce that they “finally” got an iPad.  I expect this trend to continue.

A large market

With around a million attorneys in the U.S., these number suggest that there are over a half a million attorneys using an iPhone and almost a half a million attorneys using an iPad.  That’s a lot of potential customers for law-related iOS apps.  This is good news for those who already create apps for lawyers, and hopefully will encourage others to create even more great legal apps.