Jeff Richardson

I am constantly hearing attorneys tell me that they find their iPad so useful that they no longer carry around a laptop, whether that means taking the laptop home from the office every night or taking the laptop with them on trips.  That’s certainly what I do.  But sometimes when you are away from a computer, you need to do something that requires the computer, such as access a document that you left on your desktop or access some software that can only run (or runs best) on a PC, such as your law firm’s document management system.  One popular culprit:  restaurant websites that require Flash.  I will be out of town, looking for info on a restaurant, and when I try to pull up the website on my iPad I see nothing.  Arrgh!  A solution is to use remote access software so that my iPad (or iPhone) can access one of my computers, whether it be the PC at my office or the Mac at my home.  I can run the software or access the Flash website on that computer, and my iPad acts like an external monitor for that computer so that I can see whatever I need to see.

There are lots of remote access solutions for the iPad and iPhone, but the one that I have used for a long time is LogMeIn Ignition.  (My 2009 iPhone app review is here, my 2010 iPad app review is here.)  My only hesitation in recommending it was the price; it cost $30 and there are other, free solutions in the app store.  But the app is nicely done and I’ve considered it worth it.

LogMeIn recently announced that they are changing their prices and you can now use LogMeIn on your iPad for free.  If you want advanced functions, you can pay more, but the free product will be all that many people need.  This is fantastic news.

I’m still trying to wrap my mind around the differences between the free and paid options, and here is what I have learned so far.

1. Free computer to computer access

LogMeIn has long offered a free product called LogMeIn Free that lets one computer access another computer, and I’m mentioning this first just to provide context.  For example, you can install the LogMeIn Free software on your office computer and your home computer, and then if you need to do some work at home at night, you can just connect to your work computer and you will see it on your screen (even full screen if you want) and you’ll be working just like you were in your office.  Note that if your IT folks want to manage this access, they can use a product called LogMeIn Central for $300/year.

2. Paid computer to computer access

For $70 a year, you can purchase LogMeIn Pro for a single computer, such as your PC at work or your Mac at home.  (Or you can purchase a monthly subscription for $12.20 a month.)  This adds lots of extra features such as the ability to transfer a file between the two computers, although you can do something similar in the LogMeIn Free product just by e-mailing a file to yourself on one computer and then downloading that file from your inbox on the other computer.  You can also print something from your remote computer running LogMeIn Pro and have it print on the printer attached to your local computer.  (Again, e-mailing the file to yourself gives you a similar ability with the free product.)  A full feature comparison list can be seen here.

A new feature just announced a few days ago is HD.  When a PC is running LogMeIn Pro, the image that it sends to a remote client is even better.  If you play a video on the host computer running LogMeIn Pro, the video looks much better on any remote computer.  HD is being added to LogMeIn Pro for Mac in the future.  For more information and a video showing the difference, read this post on the official LogMeIn blog.

3. Free iPad or iPhone to computer access

The big news for users of the iPhone and iPad is that you no longer have to pay $30 for the LogMeIn Ignition app.  With the new, free LogMeIn app, you can now use your iPad to access a computer, either Mac or PC, as long as you installed either LogMeIn Free or LogMeIn Pro on that computer.  And for most users, I think that the new, free LogMeIn app on the iPad/iPhone and the free LogMeIn Free software on each computer is all that the user will ever need.  You get great remote access from a product that has been around for a very long time.

4. Upgrade to Pro from the free app for $40

If you use the new free LogMeIn app, you have the ability to make a $39.99/year in-app purchase (I’ll just round it up to $40 for simplicity) to add advanced features.  First, you can use that new HD feature with a PC (Mac support coming soon).  Second, you can now access cloud storage services from within the app (Dropbox, Google docs and a WebDav server).  Third, you can save files from a remote computer to your iPad/iPhone or transfer files (a feature that has been in the LogMeIn Ignition app for a while).  When you make this $40/year in-app purchase, the upgrade only applies to one computer.  In other words, if you pay $40 and apply it to the PC in your office, you will have HD video from your office PC and the ability to transfer files between your office PC and your iPad or iPhone, but you won’t have those features when you connect to the Mac at your house.

Note that if you already have LogMeIn Pro running on that computer in your office, you don’t need to pay the $40 in-app fee to get the extra iPad/iPhone app features.  But as far as I can tell from what I have read (and I haven’t tried this out myself to confirm), I don’t see any difference between paying $70 on your computer to purchase LogMeIn Pro versus paying just $40 on your iPad or iPhone to get the same LogMeIn Pro.  The app does state that $40 is an “introductory price” so perhaps it will increase by $30 at some point in the future.  For now, however, if you want the advanced features of LogMeIn Pro, you can slash the price by paying for it through your iPad or iPhone instead of on your computer.

5. LogMeIn Ignition remains for current customers, and costs $100 for new customers

Here is the part that seems a little strange but I suppose makes sense after you think about it.  The LogMeIn Ignition app that used to cost $30 (and would occasionally go on sale for $20, such as the day that I wrote this review) remains in the app store.  The company says that it is doing this so that it can continue to support customers who previously paid for the app.  I’m one of those customers, so I appreciate the continued support.  And people who use the LogMeIn Ignition app get all of the features that the iPad/iPhone app has when it connects to a computer running LogMeIn Pro even if that computer is just running the free version of LogMeIn. 

If you previously purchased LogMeIn Ignition, this is good news for you.  You can access the new features that I mentioned above (HD and cloud services access) plus the features that the Ignition app has always had but which are missing from the new free app (the ability to save files locally and transfer files between computers) without having to pay a yearly subscription for each of your computers, either the $70/year or the new $40/year.  The $30 you paid for LogMeIn Ignition in the past (or $20 if you got the app on sale) now seems like a real bargain.

While the company is leaving the Ignition app in the App Store so that the company can continue to support it, I’m sure that LogMeIn would rather have new customers get the free app and then pay the yearly LogMeIn Pro rates.  Thus, the company has raised the price of the LogMeIn Ignition app to $99.99.  At first I considered that massive price increase a way to discourage people from buying the app at all.  On further reflection, however, that is a reasonable price compared to what people are paying for LogMeIn Pro.  If the main reason that you want LogMeIn Pro is to get the advanced features on your iPad or iPhone, and if you want to access two (or more) computers such as your office and your home computer, paying $100 once may seem better than paying $80 every year for two computers via in-app subscription, or for that matter $140 every year if you were going to pay for LogMeIn Pro on the computer instead of through the in-app purchase.

Bottom Line

If you were an early adopter and purchased LogMeIn Ignition for $30 (or less), that app is now even more valuable.  It now has new features (HD and cloud services) and you don’t have to pay a yearly fee to keep those features.

If you stayed away from LogMeIn in the past because you wanted a free alternative, the new LogMeIn app may be exactly what you need.  While I haven’t done an exhaustive comparison of LogMeIn with all of the free remote access products on the App Store, my sense is that the free LogMeIn app is more advanced.  If nothing else, it is supported by a large company with a long history in remote access software.

If you haven’t yet purchased LogMeIn for your iPad/iPhone and you now want to do so, and if you also want access to the advanced features such as the new HD or the helpful ability to transfer files from a remote computer to your iPad without having to use a work-around such as e-mailing the file to yourself, you are now going to pay more.  Instead of the $30 (or less) you could have paid, you’ll now have to either make a one-time payment of $100 or you will have to make yearly payments of $40 for each computer you want to access.

The new prices are somewhat confusing — and for some new customers are more expensive — but I’m happy that LogMeIn has continued to update its iOS products over the years.  The new features make the app even more valuable (and for basic use, more affordable), and I presume that in 2012 and beyond we will see even more added to the apps.

Click here for LogMeIn Ignition ($99.99): 

Click here for LogMeIn (free): 

Apple has a tradition of producing some great Christmas-themed commercials.  This year, they are running a commercial showing Santa Claus using Siri.  I believe that the commercial started this past weekend (I first saw it on Sunday during the Saints football game) so perhaps you have seen it already, but if not, it is worth watching.  Here it is:

Last year, Apple ran this ad with “Santa” using FaceTime:

The year before, in 2009, Apple ran an iPhone ad called The 12 Apps of Christmas:

One of my all-time favorite Apple Christmas commercials was this one that ran in 2007 as a part of its Mac vs. PC ads.  I suppose that I’m a sucker for the Rankin/Bass-style during the holiday season:

The follow-up to commercials in 2008 were also cute:

And finally, here is an older Apple ad that ran during the holiday season.  I think that this one was from 1994, and it is called The Nightmare Before Christmas:

Merry Christmas!

It’s a short week on iPhone J.D. due to the holidays.  Hopefully, you have Friday and Monday off like we do at my firm.  Here are the iPhone and iPad news items of note from the past week:

• Indiana attorney Bill Wilson considers TrialPad the best app of 2011 for lawyers.
• Michael Rose of TUAW recommends iPad apps and accessories as gifts for business colleagues.
• Click here for a funny Dilbert cartoon regarding Siri on the iPhone 4S.
• Do you sometimes forget where you parked your car?  Find My Car Smart is a $25 device that you leave in your car, and using the advanced Bluetooth Smart technology in the iPhone 4S, your iPhone can show you how to get back to your car, even in a crowded parking lot.  This is a Kickstarter project, but it has already far surpassed the $10,000 goal so it looks like this one will be made.
• Billion Dollar Hippy is a one hour documentary about Steve Jobs produced by the BBC, now available to view on YouTube.
• Mike Schramm of TUAW reports that, if you are a Verizon customer, you’ll be able to watch the Super Bowl live on your iPhone or iPad.
• And finally, I didn’t believe this video when I first saw it, but then I read Jim Dalrymple’s post at The Loop explaining how it is done.  Some smart folks who work at Yamaha figured out how to use Siri to tell a Yamaha Disklavier player piano to play songs:

If you are looking to get some new apps for your iPhone (or iPad), it’s the most wonderful time of the year.  You see, a whole bunch of people are going to be getting a new iPhone, iPod touch or iPad on December 25, and many will also receive iTunes gift cards to purchase apps for their existing or new devices.  That means that a HUGE number of people are going to be purchasing apps starting in just a few days.  If you are an app developer, you want your app to be high on the lists of the most popular apps.  What’s a quick way to make a lot of sales this week and get higher on those lists of popular apps?  Reduce the price of your app substantially, or even make it free.

As a result, you can currently load up your iPhone and iPad with lots and lots of apps — especially games — at a fraction of the normal price.  For example:

• 1Password for iPhone ($9.99 -> $5.99)

  

• 1Password for iPad ($9.99 -> $5.99)

  

• Wolfram Lawyer’s Professional Assistant for iPhone and iPad ($4.99 -> $2.99)

  

• The Monster at the End of This Book ($3.99 -> $0.99)

  

• Madden NFL 12 for iPhone ($4.99 -> $0.99)

  

• Madden NFL 12 for iPad ($9.99 -> $0.99)

  

• Scrabble for iPhone ($1.99 -> $0.99)

  

• Scrabble for iPad ($9.99 -> $0.99)

  

• Trivial Pursuit Master Edition for iPad ($4.99 -> $0.99)

  

• Tapper World Tour HD ($1.99 -> $0.99)

  

• Tiger Woods PGA Tour 12 for iPad ($4.99 -> $0.99)

  

• Yahtzee HD for iPad ($4.99 -> $0.99)

  

• Monopoly for iPad ($9.99 -> $0.99)

  

• Mirror’s Edge HD for iPad ($9.99 -> $0.99)

  

• Risk for iPhone ($2.99 -> $0.99)

  

• Risk HD for iPad ($9.99 ->$0.99)

  

A few that I can personally recommend from that list:  (1) if you are looking for something fun to do with your kids, my six-year-old son and my four-year-old daughter both love The Monster at the End of This Book; (2) Scrabble for for the iPad is fantastic if you love word games; (3) Tapper World Tour HD is a lot of fun if you have great memories of the Tapper arcade game when you were younger (as I do); and (4) Mirror’s Edge is a fun, fast-paced game.

For even more great deals, AppAdvice has a list of over 180 iPhone and iPad apps on sale, and Touch Arcade has a list of games on sale from Gameloft, Electronic Arts (which is offering every game for either $0.99 or free), Telltale, and others.

Enjoy your new apps!

[UPDATE 2/11/2013:  This app is no longer available in the App Store, apparently because Apple didn’t like on-screen notifications being used this way.]  Many of my favorite iPhone apps share a quality: they do one simple thing, and do it well.  Dan Friedlander, an attorney in Irvine, CA, has produced many iPhone apps through his company LawOnMyPhone that aim to do just that.  For example, his Court Days Pro app does a great job of calculating dates based on rules that you provide.  He recently released a new app called Do Date that does one thing and does it well — it reminds you how many days are left until an event.  How many days do you have before your next anniversary?  Your spouse’s birthday?  Your next trial?  Your vacation?  Do Date gives you a prompt with that number every day, using Apple’s Notification features in iOS 5.

Creating an event is simple.  Tap the Add Date button at the bottom of the app, type in a name for the event, and then scroll the date wheels to assign a date.  That’s it.  If you tap on the first icon at the bottom, Do Dates, you’ll see a list of all of your upcoming events.

 

Every night at midnight, the app provides a new set of notifications with the number of days that you have until your next event.  So if you have notifications on your lock screen turned on in the iPhone Settings, and assuming that you go to sleep before midnight, you’ll wake up every morning with notifications on the screen of your iPhone telling you which events are upcoming and how many days you have until the events occur:

You can also view the events in the Notification Center, a pop-up window that you access by swiping down from the top of your iPhone’s screen:

The app’s built-in Settings let you change just a few things, such as toggling the reminder on or off again and changing the date format.

The first thought that I had when I tried out this app is that it would be useful if the app let you set the time of day that the notifications occur.  If you are night owl (like me) you are often up past midnight, and it would be better to have the notifications take place at a different time, such as 5am, so they are fresh when you wake up every morning.  Friendlander told me that he received that suggestion from other users as well, and he has already submitted an update to Apple that adds this feature.

In the Settings app on the iPhone, you can allow any app to provide up to 10 notifications.  The default is lower than that, so if you use this app you’ll probably want to increase the notification to the maximu of 10.  That also serves as a limitation of the app; you can’t be shown more than 10 notifications at one time.  Thus, you’ll want to save this app for just a few important events such as the date that a trial begins, as opposed to every pre-trial deadline.  But this limitation is not a big problem because if you were to have dozens of events listed, you probably wouldn’t focus on all of them anyway.  Limit use of this app to your major events, and then the daily reminders of how long you have until the event occurs will have more impact.

Do Date is a focused, nicely designed app that provides a useful reminder of the number of days until an event takes place.  And at only $0.99, the price is right.

Click here to get Do Date ($0.99).

If you are an attorney, then I suspect that you already know that PACER is a service that provides online access to U.S. Appellate, District, and Bankruptcy court records and documents for all federal courts in the U.S.  If you have ever tried to access PACER while you are on-the-go on your iPhone, then you know that it is not a pleasant experience.  You can access the PACER website, but the screen is not formatted for an iPhone screen so the text is tiny and thus hard to read.  You can view the docket of a case, but then once you try to view a specific document you often only see the first few pages of the document, and it is impossible to move the document into another app. 

 

I am having trouble finding a link right now, but I have seen in the past a reference to an upcoming version of the PACER website that will work with the iPhone.  There is already a version of the PACER case locater that is formatted for mobile devices (you can access it here) and that helps when you are trying to find a case, but then once you find it and you want to get into the details of the case, you run into the same problems that I noted above.

Newton Oldfather, a recent graduate of UCLA Law School, decided to do something about this and thus, with the assistance of his father and another friend, he created the app FedCtRecords.  The app usually sells for $19.99 but for a limited time during the holiday season, it is FREE so I encourage you to download it now.  [UPDATE 12/31/11:  The free promotion is over; the app is now priced at $9.99.]  The app does a good job of providing an iPhone interface to the PACER service.

You start by entering your PACER login and password, which the app saves for future use (already an improvement on the website).  Then yous select a court from a pop-up list and then enter your query, using any of the traditional PACER fields such as case number, party or attorney.

 

You wait a few seconds while the app sends the query to PACER, and then you see the PACER results, nicely organized into sections.  For example, tap the Attorney section to see a list of attorneys involved in a case.  If you tap on a name you get the full information such as the attorney’s address and the client represented.

 

But of course, you will often want to use this app to access the docket, and the app does this well.  Tap on Docket Report to see a list every docket entry.  Tap on an entry to see the transaction receipt, including information on how much it will cost (if anything) to view the document.

 

Tap the View button at the top right to view the PDF file.  The file will appear on the screen, and you can read it.  Unfortunately, the app doesn’t include the often-standard iPhone button to open the PDF in another app.  (As I’ve noted in the past, the best apps for reading an a PDF on the iPhone are iBooks and the Adobe Acrobat app.)  However, you can tap the EMail button at the top right, and then send the PDF file to yourself as an e-mail attachment, and then once you receive that e-mail you can open up the attached PDF file in whatever app you want.

 

The app also give you the option to save a case that you located via a query in a My Cases area.  That way, in the future, insted of typing the case number you can just tap the case name from a list to quickly pull the PACER information.

Because the iPad can run iPhone apps, you can use this app on an iPad, but the app is not formatted for the iPad screen.  Of course, once you find a document and e-mail the PDF to yourself, you may prefer using an iPad so that you can use the larger screen to view the PDF file.  Oldfather tells me that if there is sufficient interest in the iPhone app, he would consider creating an iPad version.

[UPDATE:  As several have pointed out in the comments, note that this app currently does not access Bankruptcy files.]

Not surprisingly, you cannot use this app to file documents in federal court.  For that, you need to use a computer.  But if you just want to receive information about a case on PACER, this app works great.

The interface of the FedCtRecords app is not as polished as some other iPhone apps, but that is not really a problem.  The app is very functional, and infinitely better than accessing the current PACER website from an iPhone.

If you practice law in federal courts, this is a useful app to have.  As noted above, it typically costs $19.99, but during this introductory period during the holiday season it is free, so I encourage you to download it so that you are ready to access PACER the next time that you are away from the office and need to do so on your iPhone.

Click here to get FedCtRecords ($9.99): 

This late in the year, there isn’t much in the way of iPhone and iPad news.  If you are looking for something else to do after reading the stories I list below, please remember that the voting booths are open in the ABA Journal’s Fifth Annual Blawg 100, which you can access by going to this page.  After taking about 10 seconds to register, you can vote for up to 12 of your favorite blogs.  If you enjoy reading iPhone J.D., I would certainly appreciate your vote in the legal technology category.  And now, a look at the (minimal) iPhone and iPad news of note from the past week:

• Massachusetts attorney Robert Ambrogi relates the story of Jamie Daigle, a Portland attorney who has an idea for a better iPad case that he is trying to fund through Kickstarter.
• St. Louis attorney Spencer Farris writes about the TrialPad app on the iPad to present evidence during trial.
• Louisville, KY attorney Finis Price writes about ExhibitView, another trial presentation app for the iPad.
• The Law Firm Mobile website reports that of the 200 firms on the AmLaw 200 list, 37 of them have versions of their websites optimized for a mobile device like the iPhone.  My own firm, Adams and Reese, is one such firm; here is a direct link to our mobile website, but it comes up automatically if you access the main website address from an iPhone.
• Matthew Berg, the director of IT at the Wolf, Greenfield & Sacks law firm, writes about integrating iPads into a law firm in an article on the TechnoLawyer Blog.
• Monica Bay, the editor-in-chief of Law Technology News, reports on a recent survey about lawyers’ use of mobile devices.
• Are you a frequent traveler?  Mark Sullivan of PCWorld reports on the the 20 best U.S. airports for tech-savvy travelers (Dallas-Ft. Worth International is #1) and the most tech-friendly airlines (Delta is #1).
• John Lasseter of Pixar wrote a short, interesting article about Steve Jobs for Time.
• John Mello of PCWorld reports that adults spend more time with mobile devices than with print media.  That’s certainly true for me.  (via Niki Black)
• Dr. Iltifat Husain provides three reasons that doctors love Apple products:  simplicity, solid build quality and uniformity.  (via Brett Burney)
• And finally, David Pogue of the New York Times has some interesting tech-related gift suggestions, such as $300 light bulbs that are also speakers and the Parrot AR.Drone Quadricopter, a $300 four-propeller craft that you control from your iPhone.

Most iPhone J.D. readers access this site from a computer, but I have something really neat to show you on your iPhone or iPad.  Go to this page on your iOS device:

http://www.apple.com/retail/grandcentral/

That’s the page for the brand new Apple Store in Grand Central Station in New York.  On that page, on the left, click on “View More Photos.”  You will see a list of photos on the right.  Click on the bottom right photo, this one that I have a yellow circle around:

The picture that comes up is a 360º picture.  Using the gyroscope in your iPhone or your iPad, you can move your device, and as you do so, the picture adjusts too just as if you were standing there in the middle of Grand Central Station and your iPhone or iPad was your view to the world.  You can even point your device all the way up to look at the ceiling.  Very cool stuff.  According to Matthew Panzarino at The Next Web, this works with an iPhone 4, iPhone 4S, iPad 2 or iPod touch 4G.

By the way, you can also see this picture in some browsers on a computer, such as Safari on a Mac.  On a computer, you can click and drag to manually move the photo around.  But that is not nearly as cool as tilting or moving your iPhone or iPad and feeling … almost … as if you are actually there.

Kudos to Apple.  This is really neat.

When you are in a long trial, it is helpful to make arrangements for daily transcripts so that you can refer back to what was said by a witness, the court, or your opponent in a prior day.  In a trial of any length, you will want to have access to prior deposition transcripts and prior hearings.  Court reporters typically provide those transcripts in several forms — paper, ASCII and .ptx format.  You can (and probably should) have paper transcripts with you in the court in a box just in case you need to show something in paper format to the judge, but I find it helpful to have an electronic version of the transcripts on an iPad.  This makes it easy to search the transcripts to find what was said, plus makes it easy to highlight important things in the transcript.  And when you need to argue to the judge, you can easily take your iPad up to the bench during a sidebar and read from the relevant portion of the transcript.  Here are the tools that I find useful for doing this.

I find it most useful to start with the .ptx format and then create a PDF file.  The .ptx format, called the E-Transcript format, was created by RealLegal, which was acquired by LiveNote and is now owned by Thompson West.  Unfortunately, you need a PC to work with these files; there has not been an E-Transcript viewer on the Mac since before Mac OS X.  I open the .ptx file on a PC and “Print” the full-page version of the transcript, but instead of printing to a printer, I print to a PDF file.  There are many programs that let you do this on a PC.  For example, the full version of Adobe Acrobat can print to PDF, as can other software such as PDF Converter from Nuance.  As an alternative, you can make arrangements for the court reporter to give you a PDF version, but make sure it is a searchable version (not just a scan of the transcript pages).

You also want to make sure your PDF is a full page version, which you can create using the software I described above, or if you are getting your PDF file directly from the court reporter you can request that.  Miniature transcripts, with four transcript pages on each side of each page, are nice to reduce the amount of paper you have to carry when you are working with paper transcripts, but when you are dealing with an electronic file on your iPad you won’t care how long the document is — your iPad doesn’t weigh more or take up more space in your briefcase when your documents are longer — and it is more flexible to have full page transcripts for when you want to highlight.

Now that you have a searchable, full-page PDF file of the transcript, you’ll want to get that transcript on your iPad.  My favorite tool for viewing and annotating PDF files is GoodReader, the best $5 an attorney can spend on an iPad app.  The easiest way to get the transcripts to GoodReader on your iPad is to use DropBox, a free service that allows you to create a folder on your computer, and any file you put in the DropBox is synced to a private space in the cloud.  You can set GoodReader to sync with your DropBox folders.  Thus, you can create a folder called “Smith v Jones Transcripts” in your DropBox, drag your searchable, full-page PDF files into that folder, and then in seconds the file will be in your DropBox.  In the GoodReader app, you can tap the sync button to quickly download all new files from your DropBox to the iPad.  I know that some attorneys have concerns about storing confidential documents in DropBox because of the (very slight) risk of third-party access, but transcripts are public documents anyway (unless it is under seal), so DropBox should be fine for virtually all transcripts.

With the transcripts on your iPad, you can easily read through the transcript, page by page.  To maximize the size of the transcript on your screen, top once in the middle of the screen to bring up the toolbars and then tap the button at the bottom middle of the screen.  You can then use the standard iPad pinch-to-zoom to make the document just a little larger, cutting off the space around the box around each page.  It is a minor change, but I find that the slightly larger text is even easier to read in court. 

As you read through your transcript and find something important, you can highlight the text just by holding your finger on a word for a second and then expanding the selection.

After you have highlighted key parts of a transcript, you can use the view annotations feature (tap the icon at the bottom of the screen that looks like an open book) to see every place in a document that you have highlighted.

And of course, it is often incredibly useful to search the transcript to see when something was said in the past and exactly what was said.  GoodReader does a good job of searching transcripts and allowing you to jump through every hit on your search terms.  Keep in mind that you often will not remember exactly when something was said in trial.  Thus, in addition to having every individual trial transcript on my iPad, every night in trial I have someone simply combine all of the PDFs to date into one big file and I drop that into the DropBox folder too.  This makes it easy to search through an entire trial.  I do the same with prior depositions so that I can quickly search through them during a trial.

Note that the search feature in GoodReader is simple, and doesn’t include features such as word 1 within a certain number of words of word 2.  Having said that, I’ve always found that the simple searches work fine.  Also keep in mind that it is best if you can just search for one word, because in a transcript if one word is at the end of a line and the next word is at the start of the next line, the trasncript will read the line number at the start of the next line as information between the words, so a search for the phase won’t always work.

Obviously, you can do much of what I am describing using a laptop computer instead of an iPad.  But as I’ve mentioned in the past, there are lots of things you can do with an iPad that you can’t do with a laptop.  An iPad battery will last all day; a laptop lasts just a few hours unless you plug it in, and plugs can be limited in a courtroom.  You can take the iPad with you when you speak from a podium or at a sidebar; that is awkward to do with a computer.  When the iPad is with you during your argument, if your opponent claims that witness X said Y a few days ago, you can quickly do a search and find exactly what witness X really said.

There are countless reasons that an iPad can be useful in trial, but even if the iPad just did this one thing — provide excellent access to trial transcripts and deposition transcripts — that would be reason enough to use an iPad in trial.  I’ve previously mentioned using an iPad to do legal research with WestlawNext during trial, and in the future I’ll provide more tips on making the most of your iPad in trial.

Click here to get GoodReader for iPad ($4.99): 

ABA TECHSHOW, held in Chicago every Spring, is the premier technology conference for lawyers.  There are tons of informative sessions (typically six tracks are going on at the same time) so you have lots of great seminars to choose from.  The conference has a great exhibit hall where you can see and try the latest legal technology.  And there are tons of opportunities to socialize with old friends or meet new people who share an interest in technology.  Next year, it takes place March 29-31, 2012 at the Chicago Hilton on Michigan Avenue.

I’ve participated in the conference for several years.  Back in 2008, I spoke about disaster preparation and recovery, a topic near and dear to New Orleans attorneys like me who dealt with Hurricane Katrina.  For the last two years I’ve talked about iPhones, and I’ll do so again in 2012.

Every year that I have attended, the focus on smartphones and tablets has increased, and 2012 looks to be the best year yet.  For example, on the first day of the conference, there is an all-day “Mobile and Smartphone” track.  I’m speaking in the first session which is titled “Shartphone Wars.”  I’ll be talking about the iPhone, Pennsylvania attorney/consultant Jennifer Ellis will talk about Android, and Toronto attorney and risk management specialist Dan Pinnington will talk about BlackBerry.  Readers of this website are likely to be iPhone users, and it will be interesting for us to compare and contrast the other devices that are popular for attorneys.

The three other sessions in this track the first day of the conference also look great.  Josh Barrett of Tablet Legal and Nerino Petro of Compujurist will compare and contrast the iPad and Android tablets in a session called “Tablet Wars.”  Then Dennis Kennedy and Sharon Nelson will talk about the ethics of mobile computing in the cloud.  Finally, Victor Medina and Ben Schorr will talk about keeping your documents synchronized across multiple devices.  And as good as those last two sessions sound, I will be tempted to also sit in on iOS-related sessions going on at the same time in the other tracks, such as the track “iWin: iPads for Litigators” by Tom Mighell and Paul Unger.

And that’s just the first day.  Friday, March 30th is full of other interesting sessions, such as an all-day track devoted to cloud computing.  And then on Saturday morning, I’m teaming up with Josh Barrett and Brett Burney for the third year of 60 iOS Apps for Lawyers in 60 Minutes, a session that is always a lot of fun and very informative — even for me because I always learn about great new apps from my co-presenters.

One of my favorite parts of TECHSHOW are the Taste of TECHSHOW dinners.  I’m sure I’ll once again host one for iPhone and iPad users.  It’s a good excuse to meet up with some like-minded folks.  Sure, we’ll talk about iOS devices, but mostly we’ll just trade stories and have some great discussions over good food and drink.

The keynote speaker for the conference will be attorney / economist / actor Ben Stein — sure to be a very interesting, and amusing, presentation. 

If you have never attended TECHSHOW before, you really should check it out.  It is by far my favorite CLE every year, and it will give you all of your CLE hours for the year.  I’ve met a ton of iPhone J.D. readers at prior TECHSHOWs and I look forward to meeting more of you in a few months.