Josh Barrett who runs the great iPad for lawyers site Tablet Legal reminded me that a year ago, heand I posted statistics on how people were accessing our websites, inspired by a similar post by John Gruber on his Daring Fireball site. Given the rise in popularity of the iPad over the last year, Josh thought it would be interesting to see what the numbers look like now. Here are my updated stats, and Josh is running a similar post today.
A year ago, 56% of people accessing iPhone J.D. used Windows, 26% used a Mac, 13% used an iPhone and under 3% used an iPad. Here are my numbers from the past 30 days:
OS
Percentage
Windows
52.98
Macintosh
21.80
iPhone
14.98
iPad
7.82
Android
0.84
Linux
0.57
iPod
0.43
(not set)
0.35
BlackBerry
0.16
FreeBSD
0.03
If you find it easier to review a picture than a table, here is the same info in a pie chart. Windows is blue, Mac is green, iPhone is Red, and iPad is the larger yellow slice:
So how do these numbers compare to last year? The big change was the increase in use of the iPad and to a lesser degree, the iPhone. Around 8% of iPhone J.D. readers who had been using a PC or a Mac to access this website are now instead using an iPad, or in some cases an iPhone. Not a major shift, but still an interesting change that matches my experience in the real world, where I see more attorneys using an iPad.
Just looking at iPad and iPhone use as a percentage of devices used to access iPhone J.D., here are the monthly trends that I’ve seen over the last year:
There was a big spike in iPhone and iPad users in mid-2010, but that was an anomaly. On June 30, 2010, I posted a tip about creating a folder on the iPhone with an Apple logo, John Gruber linked to my post that same day, about 40,000 of his readers came to iPhone J.D. to read that post, and apparently a high percentage of his audience was using an iPhone or iPad at the time. If you ignore that spike, you see a slight increase in access to this website from iPhones since January of 2010 and a more substantial increase in access to this website from iPads over that time period.
The numbers that Josh Barrett is posting on Tablet Legal today are in some ways different from mine. The biggest change he saw was a smaller percentage of folks using a Mac and a larger percentage of folks using a PC. That makes sense because most attorneys use PCs, so as more attorneys are reading his site at their office, he is seeing more views from PC users. But on the iPad and iPhone front, his results are similar to mine; a small increase in access from iPhones, and a larger increase in access from iPads.
How representative are iPhone J.D. and Tablet Legal readers of any larger population group? Who knows. But I do know that my core audience is attorneys who use the iPhone, and these statistics provide additional evidence that over the last 14 months, more and more attorneys using iPhones have started using iPads.
There have been lots of new visitors to iPhone J.D. lately, so I thought that this would be a good time to remind everyone that while I love it when you visit this website, there are also two easy ways to have iPhone J.D. come directly to you. First, if you use an RSS reader such as Google Reader, you can easily subscribe to the iPhone J.D. RSS feed. Second, you can have all new iPhone J.D. posts automatically show up in your e-mail inbox every morning by clicking here and providing your e-mail address. Frankly, I prefer it when people come to the iPhone J.D. website because I have various ads along the side. The ads don’t bring in much revenue, but it is enough to offset the hosting fees for this website, which is nice. I don’t put ads in the RSS feed or the e-mails because I don’t want to be annoying, but if you would prefer to subscribe that way, I’d love to have you do so — especially if it prompts you to send me e-mails from time to time with topics that I should address here. I love getting great tips from iPhone J.D. readers! And now, my tip to you is that you should check out some of these iPhone and iPad stories of note from the past week:
Analyst Horace Dediu notes that in the first quarter of 2011, the iPhone had 5% of the mobile phone market by volume, 20% of the market by revenue and 55% [gulp!] of the market by profit.
New York attorney Niki Black of Legal iPad argues that we are about to reach the “tipping point” for iPads. Given the large number of lawyers I now see using iPads, I agree with her.
Niki Black also discusses the Rules of Professional Conduct applicable to the use of cloud computing services on her Sui Generis blog.
Similarly, the Babbage Blog of The Economist has an interesting article on the security of storing confidential information in a cloud service such as Dropbox.
Pastor John Chandler discusses formatting PDF files to the right size so that he can use his iPad for speaking notes. (Via TabletLegal)
Josh Barrett of TabletLegal also reviews Exhibit A, a trial presentation app for the iPad. I’m just starting to try out this app myself; Barrett thinks that the user interface needs improvement.
In his Time Magazine column, Harry McCracken reviews Peel, an innovative $100 device that turns your iPhone or iPad into a universal remote.
Rob Dean of WALKINGOFFICE explains the three steps for moving your Facebooks contacts to your iPad’s Contacts app.
If you own an iPad 2, I strongly encourage you to get an Apple Smart Cover. Should you get a polyurethane or a leather one? I really like, and recommend, the black leather version, but John Brownlee of Cult of Mac makes the case — if you’ll excuse the pun — for the polyurethane version.
Tony Bradley of PCWorld discusses using Google Docs on the iPad.
Justin Kahn describes some iPad keyboard shortcuts on his iPad Notebook blog.
Killian Bell of Cult of Mac describes the Seagate GoFlex Satellite, an external hard drive that connects to the iPhone or iPad over WiFi so that you can carry around an additional 500GB of photos, movies, music or documents.
Peter Coons, a computer forensics expert who regularly works with attorneys on ediscovery issues, explains some of the information that a forensic investigator can recover from an iPhone.
If you like to try different wines, you should read this article by Bob Tedeschi of the New York Times about apps that you can use to keep track of wines.
And finally, here is a cute iPhone-inspired doormat being sold by the German company getDigital.de for only 19,90 €, about $28.50 at the current exchange rate:
Don’t get hot and bothered by the title; this is not a post about pornography on the iPad, although I do know that Playboy is today unveiling a website formatted for the iPad (i,playboy.com) that gives you access to every page of every edition of the magazine ever published for $8 a month (or less if you start a yearly subscription). Instead, this post is about using the iPad in business meetings.
Like all of you, I have attended countless meetings, conferences, seminars etc. over the years, and seeing laptops at these meetings has been a very familiar sight. However, since Spring of 2010, and especially in the last few months, I have seen an increasing number of attorneys using iPads at these meetings, leaving the laptop at the office. An obvious advantage is that the iPad is so much smaller and lighter than a laptop, making it perfect for travel. Also, the iPad gets much better battery life than a laptop; you can probably attend an all-day meeting without needing to even plug in your iPad to a power outlet. But in many ways the biggest advantages of using an iPad at a meeting are privacy and intimacy.
Privacy. One problem with using a laptop in a meeting or other larger gathering is that if there is anyone sitting behind you, they can easily see your screen. This gives rise to serious confidentiality concerns if you are exposing privileged attorney-client communications to others, but even if you are just typing notes during the meeting, there is something unsettling about others seeing your work. When you are writing notes on a legal pad, you can tell if someone is close enough to stare at your notes. With a laptop, you never know when it is happening, which leads me to assume that it is always happening. I realize that you can use a privacy filter on your screen to reduce this risk, but I don’t like how they make the screen darker, and I see very few people use those at meetings.
With an iPad, on the other hand, you are likely to have it flat on a table or perhaps propped up at a very slight angle using an iPad case or (for the iPad 2) the Apple Smart Cover. In this arrangement, it is possible for someone to see what is on your screen if they are at the correct angle, but it is much harder to do. You can take notes on your iPad using the on-screen keyboard, an external Bluetooth keyboard, or using a stylus and an app that lets you draw on the screen without having to worry so much about privacy.
Intimacy. Another advantage of using the iPad either flat on a desk or propped up at a slight angle is that it is not a barrier between you and whoever is in front of you. Even if there is nobody behind you and thus no privacy concern, you will obviously be talking or listening to someone in a meeting. With a laptop in front of you, there is a barrier between you and the other person. It is not a big barrier, but much like the old Battleship game that you played as a child, it is enough to give the impression that you have something that you are not showing the other person.
When you use an iPad, you have a more intimate connection to others in the room because that barrier is gone. Others are unlikely to be able to see what is on your iPad screen unless they are close and at the correct angle, but even if they are not seeing what is on your screen, the absence of a barrier provides you with more of a connection with the others in the room.
I’ve mentioned some of these advantages in the past in the context of using an iPad in court, but if your law practice is like mine, you find yourself in meetings with others far more often than you find yourself in court. Using an iPad gives you most of the advantages of having access to a laptop without the compromise of privacy and the barrier to intimacy.
NotifyMe is an app that I reviewed back in 2009, and almost two years later I still use it all the time. Whenever I need to remember to do something at some point in the future, such as remember to call someone, pick up dry cleaning, etc., I just launch the app, type a quick reminder and enter the time and date. At that time, the app plays a sound and pops up on the screen and tell me what to do. I mention the app today because the main version of the app normally costs $2.99, but it just went on sale for $0.99. The app also has a nicer interface than when I posted a full review back in 2009 and the current 2.0 version has additional, sophisticated features.
The version that is now on sale for a buck syncs with a cloud service, so you can go online to manage your reminders if you want. And there is also a $7.99 iPad app that gives you some of the same control. But I also see that there is a free version that doesn’t sync with the cloud and doesn’t allow you to set up sophisticated repeating reminders, but it does make it easy to provide simple reminders. Frankly, that free version seems to include everything that I do in the paid version, so if $0.99 is too rich for your blood, I encourage you to download the free version and see what you think. Hopefully the app will help you as much as it helps me.
[UPDATE 5/21/2011: Note that while the developer calls the app “NotifyMe” and that’s how I have always referred to it as well, make sure that you don’t confuse this app with another app on the App Store called “Notify Me.” The full name on the App Store of the app that I use is called “NotifyMe 2: ToDo in cloud.” Make sure that you get the correct one, and if you click any of the below links, you will.]
Click here for NotifyMe (on sale for $0.99):
Click here for NotifyMe Simple (free):
Click here for NotifyMe Control Center for iPad ($7.99):
A big part of my law practice is collaborating with other attorneys, whether they be co-counsel for the same client or counsel for co-defendants. Accordingly, one feature that I use heavily in Microsoft Word on my computer is the track changes feature to suggest improvements to documents. As you know, edits show up in redline in Word on your computer and look something like this:
The iPhone generally does a good job of reading Word files. If one is attached to an e-mail, you can just tap the attachment to read it. But be warned that if the document has the track changes feature enabled to show edits, you don’t see the edits on the iPhone. You instead just see what the text would look like with the redline edits accepted. Thus, if I e-mail a Word document containing the text in the above example to my iPhone and tap the attachment, here is what I see:
Note that if I hold down on the attachment and view it in another app, I might be able to see the redline edits. For example, if I open the Word file in Documents to Go, I correctly see the redline edits:
Documents to Go cannot create redline edits on the iPhone or iPad — indeed, there is currently no app that does so, and I hope that this changes soon — but it is nice to be able to see the redline edits when someone asks you to review them.
If you try to view the file in Office2, you see all of the text (both the deleted text and the new text) without any indication of what is old and what is new. Rather confusing:
I wasn’t able to try this redline file with the Quickoffice app. A few days ago, that app was upgraded to version 4.0.0, and unfortunately on my iPhone it now crashes every time I try to start the app. I’ve been in communication with Quickoffice about this bug and they are investigating it. If you use Quickoffice and you have not yet upgraded, consider waiting to upgrade until this bug is fixed.
[UPDATE 5/24/11: A new version of Quickoffice is now out. Unfortunately, I confirmed that Quickoffice Pro handles track changes the same way as Office2, i.e., not well at all.]
Accordingly, there are two things that you should be aware of. First, if you want to view redline edits, purchase and use Documents to Go on your iPhone or iPad.
Second — and this is the really important one — be aware that when you are viewing a Word file using the iPhone or iPad’s built-in viewer, you are not seeing redline edits even if they are there. Thus, if you forward that file to opposing counsel, you may not realize that you are showing the opposing counsel not just the modified version of the document but also the original version of the document with the modifications noted in redline. Depending upon the edits, this could be disastrous for you and your client.
Under the ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct, there is nothing unethical about your opposing counsel reviewing those redline edits that you sent him, although if he knows or reasonably should know that the transmission of this metadata was inadvertent he does have a duty to notify you. And apparently in some states, such as Maryland, there is not even a duty to disclose. Take a look at this helpful page from the ABA for a comparison of the ethical duties of attorneys in various jurisdictions.
There are companies such as 3BView that offer a service to remove metadata from files on your iPhone. That can be useful if you know that the metadata is there, but my main concern is for lawyers who view and forward Word files on their iPhone or iPad without realizing that the track changes features was in use. Of all of the metadata that exists in a Word file such as author and date of creation, it is redline edits that have the biggest potential to cause headaches when you share them without knowing it.
So my advice to you is to be aware of this possibility, and take a look at a file with Documents to Go if you want to check for the existence of tracked changes in redline.
Mikael Ricknäs of IDG reports that, according to a survey by Ericsson, 35% of iPhone and Android owners use their smartphone before they get out of bed in the morning. So if I may address 35% of you right now: Good morning! Instead of rushing into work on this Friday the 13th, why don’t you first check out these news items from the last week:
Lex Friedman of Macwold wrote a good article on how to transfer files to and from an iPad. As he writes, and I completely agree: “Unfortunately, transferring and synchronizing files between the Mac and the tablet isn’t easy. There are several different ways to do it, but none are perfect, and each has its deficiencies. Frankly, this is one area where Apple could vastly improve the iPad experience.” Amen.
Mary Kate Sheridan wrote a good article for the ALA publication Legal Management about using an iPad in a law practice. Unfortunately, the article is only available in PDF format, so to read it you can go to this page and then scroll down to the article link, or click here to directly download the PDF file.
You may have heard that Microsoft paid $8.5 billion this week (gulp!) to purchase Skype. According to Gregg Keizer of Computerworld, Microsoft plans to continue to support Skype on non-Microsoft platforms such as the iPhone and Mac. I hope that is true.
I always love a good Find My iPhone story, and here is a new one. According to AP, a thief in El Paso stole a truck from Joshua Mitzelfelt, who left his truck running and unattended in his driveway (bad move) but also left his iPhone on the front seat (good move). The owner tracked his truck’s location using the Find My iPhone feature and gave updates to the sheriff, who eventually found the stolen truck seven miles away and arrested the thief.
Alabama attorney Clark Stewart had the misfortune of dropping his iPhone in a “water-centric room” in his house (ahem) and the wet iPhone stopped working, but as he details in this blog post on his site The Soul Practitioner, he was able to save his iPhone with rice. Read his post now so that you know what to do if this happens to you. By the way, as Andy Ihnatko of the Chicago Sun Times wrote a few years ago, if you use the rice trick make sure that you also use an airtight container like a Ziploc bag or Tupperware, and if you don’t have rice, kitty litter can also work.
In another post on The Soul Practitioner, Clark Stewart explains how he used the Noterize app on his iPad to present evidence in trial.
For those of you who enjoy reading The New Yorker, you’ll be pleased to learn that you can now subscribe to the magazine on your iPad. Peter Kafka of All Things D reports on the negotitions between Conde Nast and Apple to make this happen.
When you click the button to agree to the iTunes terms of service, you are agreeing to a 56 page document. Umika Pidaparthy of CNN takes a look at what is in that agreement.
Ready for a bunch of links from the New York Times? Okay, here we go. First, David Pogue of the New York Times writes about iPhone apps that will translate a word on a menu that you may not know — such as “brodo” or “Pancetta” or “aioli” — into plain English. Neat idea.
John Markoff of the New York Times reports that an iPad 2 is as speedy as the fastest Cray supercomputers in the world in the early 1980s. Something about this story makes me think of the 1983 movie War Games. Shall we play a game?
If you want to put a custom photo on an iPhone case, Roy Furchgott of the New York Times recommends some options.
Matt Richtel of the New York Times writes about a free app called SFpark that can help you find a parking spot in San Francisco.
David Pogue of the New York Times reviews a version of Al Gore’s Our Choice book for the iPad that uses “revolutionary” technology to bring the story to life.
David Pogue also posted this useful tip on Twitter: “iPhone tip: in the Search Contacts box, you can type initials with a space (like “D P”) to jump to a contact, just like on the old Treo!” That’s handy.
Jason Snell of Maworld writes about the Eye-Fi, a card that you place your digital camera. As you take pictures, the Eye-Fi automatically sends the pictures, in full resolution. to your iPhone or iPad, where you can do all sorts of things with your picture like edit them, e-mail them, etc.
LegalPlayground asked me to announce their new social networking site for lawyers and their current and prospective clients. You can use the service either through the website or through a free iPhone app:
Legal Easy Technologies asked me to announce their new app LE Dictate, a $9.99 dictation app for the iPhone:
And finally, Apple’s marketing has been so good for so long that we pretty much expect that if Apple makes a TV commercial or other video, it is going to be great. Apparently, this was not always the case, as the following Apple video from 1984 demonstrates. (Link via Cult of Mac.) I find it hard to decide what is more awful about this video — the blatant rip off of the Irene Cara hit disco song “What a Feeling,” the actors, the graphics — it just all combines into one horrible mess that is so bad that you cannot help but watch:
Adam Lashinsky, a Silicon Valley business journalist, wrote a long article for Fortune magazine this week called “Inside Apple — From Steve Jobs down to the janitor: How America’s most successful – and most secretive – big company really works.” The article got some good press so I wanted to read it, but on the Fortune website you can only read the first few paragraphs of the article. To read more, you need to go to a newsstand and buy an issue of Fortune, or you can download the free Fortune Magazine app for the iPad and then purchase the May 23, 2011 issue for $4.99. (You can download issues for free if you subscribe to the magazine; I do not.) However, I looked at the Table of Contents for the issue and the Apple story was really the only one that interested me. True, in the past, I have certainly purchased an entire magazine just because one story caught my eye, but it seemed a little much to pay $5 for one article.
However, I saw that Fortune is also selling that single article for the Kindle on the Amazon website for only $0.99. I don’t mind spending a dollar for something good, and given the quality of Lashinsky’s prior writings, I figured that this would be a good read. I have the Kindle app running on both my iPhone and my iPad (although I haven’t used either one very much), and on the Amazon website just below the “Buy now with 1-Click” button there was a pop-up menu letting me select either my iPhone or iPad for delivery. I selected my iPad, clicked the button, and I was told that the article would load on my iPad the next time I started the Kindle app. Sure enough, I fired up the Kindle app, the article automatically started to download, and in a few seconds it was there.
Reading the article using the Kindle app on my iPad was a pleasure, much better than reading it on a website. For one thing, I could sit back on my comfortable couch and read on my iPad, far more enjoyable than sitting at my desk and staring at a computer screen. Also, the text and layout is very nice in the iPad Kindle app.
You can adjust the text size to whatever feels comfortable for you, so here was the default size:
…and here is what I increased it to because I prefer a larger font:
Whenever pictures appear in the article, you can pinch to zoom. For example, here was an interesting organization chart of VPs and Senior VPs that Lashinsky pieced together based on interviews and limited public information on the topic, and it was nice to zoom in and see all of the names and positions:
Once you have purchased something in Kindle format, you can read it on any device. I don’t own a Kindle, but since I have the Kindle app on both my iPad and iPhone, I was also able to download the article in the iPhone app and view it there. Had this been a longer article or a book, it might have been nice to catch up on a few pages on my iPhone while waiting in line somewhere, even if all of my heavy reading would have been on my iPad. (Click here for my review of the Kindle app for iPhone from early 2009 when the app was first released.)
I can’t say that I look forward to a world in which I have to pay $0.99 every time I read an article, especially something short. But even though the web has conditioned us to believe that we should be able to read anything that we want for free, as a lawyer who is paid to write advocacy pieces for my clients, I certainly understand the value of paying for high quality content. Indeed, although it has been years since my wife and I subscribed to the New York Times, we recently started a Sunday Times subscription, in small part because we thought it would be nice to read that physical paper on Sunday, but mostly because that way we can also read the Times on the web, in the iPad app or in the iPhone app without having to worry about the paywall that the New York Times erected a few weeks ago. I’m also currently paying a buck a week for The Daily on my iPad. The content of The Daily is in many ways the opposite end of the spectrum from the New York Times, but so far I am finding the content just interesting enough to justify the cost, and whenever I want a more in depth story than The Daily provides I just jump over to the New York Times.
And by the way, although my focus in this post is on the technology involved, I will add that the Inside Apple article is worth reading. Lashinsky clearly did a lot of research to write this behind-the-scenes peak at how business is done at Apple, a fascinating company, and the role of Steve Jobs, a fascinating CEO. I encourage you to download the article and read it yourself.
Click here for Kindle for iPad or iPhone (free):
Click here for Fortune for iPad (app is free; issues cost $4.99 each):
Click here for the Kindle version of the Inside Apple article in the May 23, 2011 issue of Fortune.
Click here for the New York Times for iPad (free, but subscription required for most content):
Click here for the New York Times for iPhone (free, but subscription required for most content):
Click her for The Daily for iPad (free, but subscription required):
Megan Erickson is an associate in the Des Moines, Iowa office of Dickinson, Mackaman, Tyler & Hagen. Her primary practice area is employment law, but she also has a general practice including areas such as commercial litigation, constitutional law and business law. Erickson is a longtime reader of iPhone J.D. and tells me “I don’t know how I survived before I had my iPhone!” Erickson was kind enough to share this story with me about how she has used her iPhone in her practice:
During opening remarks in a hearing last year, opposing counsel misstated a key legal issue in the case. Our lead counsel leaned over, asking me to run back to the office (about 3 blocks away … and it was raining that day) to print off the case we both knew was directly on point – he wanted me to pull out the key quote and get him the citation for the court. As much as I love sprinting in a suit and heels, in the rain, in 80-degree weather, I whipped out my iPhone instead. I pulled up Google Scholar on my browser, quickly typed in the case name, and had the case I needed within seconds. I jotted down the crucial sentence and case citation, and passed it to my colleague. He grinned. I got ‘cool associate’ points. And I chalk that up as a happy ending for all.
I have used my iPhone in court many times in very similar circumstances, although instead of Google Scholar I prefer to use the Fastcase app.
Erickson has an interest in social media, and she publishes Social Networking Law Blog, a great website devoted to the “intersection of technology, social media, Web 2.0 and the law.” The iPhone helps with her blog, as Erickson explains:
Particularly for my blogging, I love having so many news sources at my fingertips. In addition to my own blog (www.socialnetworkinglawblog.com), I also contribute to two others – so it’s important to stay current! The free AP Mobile app is among my favorite news sources, and I like the MobileRSS app [Free version with ads: ; $2.99 version without adds: ] (but admit I need to get in a more regular routine of keeping up with my reader). Twitter has also become a great source of news and legal trends. Shameless plug: follow me @erickson_meg!
I also use an RSS reader and Twitter on both my iPhone and iPad to help me produce iPhone J.D. For example, I am always on the lookout for articles to link to in my Friday “In the News” posts. My favorite RSS reader is NetNewsWire. On my iPhone I use the $4.99 premium version that doesn’t include ads , and on my iPad I use the $9.99 NetNewsWire for iPad . My favorite Twitter client on the iPhone is Twitterific .
I asked Erickson about her favorite iPhone apps, and while (like me) she has trouble picking favorites, she named these four and gave me these reasons:
Nolo Law Dictionary – until Black’s price comes down, this is a nice free tool to have handy. [My review of Nolo is here; my review of Black’s Law Dictionary is here.]
Mr. Number – reverse phone number lookup that (at least in my experience) even finds cell phone numbers. [This free app is new to me: ]
LawStack – I like having the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure, and Federal Rules of Evidence at my fingertips via this free app. [My review is here.]
Court Days – useful app to calculate court days/calendar days (although, I always double-check when I’m calculating a filing deadline). [My review is here.]
Thanks so much to Megan Erickson for sharing some of her lawyer iPhone stories with all of us. I’d love to hear from the rest of you as well! You can send your stories about how you use the iPhone and/or iPad in your practice to jeff@iphonejd.com.
Aside from the critical built-in iPad apps such as the Mail client and Safari, GoodReader is the most valuable app that I have on my iPad. It is the top app that I recommend to every lawyer who asks me what they should get for their new iPad. For that reason, I’m a little amazed that I am only now writing a review on iPhone J.D. Indeed, I have so much good to say about this app that I could probably justify a week of posts on everything that I do with GoodReader. Instead, let me try to hit the highlights to share with you the ways that I use this app most often.
GoodReader manages all kinds of files such as Word documents and pictures, but where it really shines is as an app to handle PDF files and that is how I use it the most. Virtually all of my important files are in PDF format. Any documents filed in federal court must, of course, be in PDF format, I use PDF to share files with other counsel, I download cases from Westlaw or Lexis in PDF format, when I get transcripts from a court reporter I export them into a PDF format, etc. Once a file is in a PDF format, there are lots of ways to get it into GoodReader. One easy way is if the PDF file is attached to an e-mail; simply hold down your finger on the PDF icon for a second and a pop-up menu allows you to open the file in any app that handles PDF files, such as GoodReader.
Another easy way to get a document into GoodReader is to use the free Dropbox service. Any file in the Dropbox folder on your PC or Mac can be synced to GoodReader. Just tap the button to connect to your Dropbox and select the folders in your Dropbox that you would like to sync. All of the contents (including sub-folders and their contents) are synced into GoodReader. You can make changes to files in GoodReader, or make changes to files on your computer, and then by pressing just a single “Sync” button in GoodReader, all of the latest changes on both ends are synced to each other. So for example, I might take a bunch of pleadings and drop them into one folder and a bunch of cases I downloaded from Westlaw or Lexis and drop them into another folder on my computer, and then with the tap of one button in GoodReader on my iPad they are brought to my device. Any file that you have not yet opened in GoodReader has a blue title; files you have opened already have a black title:
Once a file is opened, you can easily manipulate it in many different ways. A slider on the left lets you quickly jump between pages. Buttons along the bottom let you do many tasks such as dim the screen, add or jump to a bookmark, extra the text from the PDF file, rotate a file, view all comments, go to a specific page number, find text in the file, export the file, etc.
After a few seconds these buttons will disappear and the PDF file will fill your screen, or you can just tap in the middle of a document to clear the buttons. One button that I use quite a bit to make files easier to read on my iPad is the Crop Margins button, the sixth button along the bottom of the screen. If you have a file with a lot of white space on the sides, instead of having to manually pinch to zoom every time you turn the page to make the text larger, you can crop all pages. Just tap the button and on the next screen you can either manually drag the four sides to add crop margins, or even easier, you can just pinch to zoom the page to how you like it and then tap the “To Current View” button at the top right. For example here is a page without crops from a Supreme Court brief I was recently working on:
…and here is that same page after I cropped most of the extra white space. The text is larger, and the file is now much easier to read on the iPad:
I have been discussing how to get documents into GoodReader and how to crop them, if necessary, to make them easier to read. GoodReader handles those tasks very well, but where GoodReader really shines is in reading and manipulating PDF files. GoodReader is one of the fastest PDF viewers on the iPad, so it is easy to swipe back and forth to read a case, a pleading, etc. You can even just tap on the right side of any page to advance, tap on the left side of the page to go back. Whenever I see something that I want to highlight, I just tap my finger on a word and hold down for a second and the familiar selection sliders come up so that I can adjust the words in my selection. A pop-up menu appears giving me tons of choices for what to do with the text including copy the text, add a comment, highlight the text, underline (straight or squiggly line), strike-through text, add note to insert or delete text, draw a line or arrow near the text, and draw a box or oval or draw freehand:
Once you have made any of these annotations you can adjust them in lots of different ways, such as change the color of a highlight or an arrow, move or adjust the size of something that you drew, delete the annotation, etc.
For example, a typical workflow for me might be to download some cases from Westlaw or Lexis in PDF format into my Dropbox, then press the button to sync all of those cases to GoodReader, then take my time to go through the cases on my iPad, marking them up with highlights or any notes I want to make on them (I find it easiest to do this with a stylus), and then when I am done I tap the sync button again so that the PDF files on my computer now contain all of my highlights, annotations, etc.
There are lots of iPad apps that you can use to sign your name to a file. Josh Barrett at Tablet Legal just discussed one such app called iAnnotate. But when I have a PDF file that requires my signature, I just open it in GoodReader, tap to select the freehand annotation tool, turn my iPad into the landscape position, and use the full length of the screen to sign my name. Then I can tap on my signature to change the size to make it the right size for the line, move my signature so that it is on the line, change the color or the line width if I want to do so, and then I’m done. I can send off the file as an e-mail attachment, put it in Dropbox, or just keep a copy on my iPad for when I will need it next. The iPad lacks a built-in file manager, but GoodReader does a good job of storing folders, and folders within folders, so you can keep all of your files organized.
GoodReader does not have the ability to OCR a file. So for example, an opposing party may send me a file in PDF format that is just an image of a pleading. I will use Acrobat on my computer to OCR the document before I send it to my iPad. That way GoodReader will recognize the individual words in the document, making it easier for me to highlight, circle, underline, draw an arrow, or add a “this is crazy!” note in the margin when that is appropriate.
And I’m only scratching the surface of what GoodReader can do. You can maximize security by adding a password to the app and encrypting the files, you can change a file’s name or move it to another folder, you can search for files in GoodReader by name or by date read or added, you can bring up a mini-browser to download a webpage as an HTML file so that you can later launch the page even if you don’t have Internet access (such as you are on a plane) or if the original webpage has changed, you can flatten a PDF file with annotations, you can connect to an external monitor, etc.
And as if all of this was not enough, this app is constantly updated to add significant new features. A few days ago, the developer revamped the annotations system, resulting in the powerful and easy to use popup menus shown in the pictures above. In the past the developer has updated the app to add syncing features, the typewriter tool, faster PDF management, and many other significant features. This is truly an app that gets more useful over time.
There is also a version of GoodReader for the iPhone, but this is not a universal app so you need to buy it separately for each device. I don’t use my iPhone to read and annotate long PDF files, and whenver I do read a PDF file on the iPhone, the built-in PDF viewer is good enough for me. Thus, I haven’t tried the iPhone version of the app and I doubt I will ever need this app on my iPhone.
My only real gripe with GoodReader is that the interface is confusing. There are buttons everywhere and menus everywhere and especially when you are first getting started it is hard to find what you need. One might argue that some of this confusion is necessary because the app is so powerful. Programs like Microsoft Word and Photoshop are plenty confusing when they are brand new to someone, but you learn to use the programs over time. Fortunately, GoodReader’s developers seem to recognize the need to improve the interfae. As noted above, just a few days ago the popup menus for PDF annotations were redesigned from scratch and they are now much easier to understand than they were last month. Hopefully further such improvements are in the works.
The iPad is a great device for a lawyer to use to read and highlight or otherwise annotate documents. GoodReader is my favorite app for making this possible. If you don’t have the app yet, I strongly encourage you to get it.
If you have an iPad, a stylus is a nice accessory to have for apps that let you write or draw on the iPad such as Note Taker HD, Adobe Ideas and Penultimate, or for an app that lets you draw on a PDF file such as GoodReader. A stylus is far more natural than drawing with your finger. I have reviewed four styluses in the past: the BoxWave Capacitive iPad Stylus and the Ten One Design Pogo Sketch Stylus (both reviewed on 12/12/10) and the Kensington Virtuoso Touch Screen Stylus and the BoxWave Capacitive Styra (both reviewed on 3/30/11). Of those four, the Kensington Virtuoso is my current favorite; I like the weight, the length, and the fact that it also includes a regular pen for when you need that. Click here to get the Kensington Virtuoso on Amazon (currently $19.27).
A few days ago, Serenity Caldwell of Macworld reviewed 12 different styluses in this comprehensive post plus a video that goes along with the post. Caldwell likes to draw cartoons, so she was mostly interested in a pen for that task whereas I am most interested in a pen that I can use to take notes (which I suspect will be true for most iPhone J.D. readers). Caldwell likes the Pogo Sketch better than the Kensington Virtuoso because she prefers the foam tip of the Pogo Sketch to the silicone tip used by the Virtuoso and many other models. In this picture, the Pogo Sketch is on the right:
Also, Caldwell thinks that the Virtuoso is too long “for navigation, sketching, or detailed line work.” That may be true for drawing cartoons, but for taking notes I prefer using something the size of a regular pen. Caldwell’s favorite of the bunch is the Wacom Bamboo Stylus for iPad, and she also posted a separate review of that model. I haven’t tried the Wacom model yet, but Caldwell’s review makes it sound pretty good.
Yesterday, New York attorney Patrick DiDomenico posted his own review of five different styluses on the iPad4Legal site. Like me, he thought the Kensington Virtuoso was the best of the bunch. Having said that, and like me, he also did not review the Wacom Bamboo Stylus for iPad (which goes on sale on May 13, 2011).
Click here to get the Kensington Virtuoso on Amazon ($19.27).
Click here to get the Ten One Design Pogo Sketch Stylus on Amazon ($6.85)
Click here to get GoodReader for iPad ($4.99):
Click here to get Note Taker HD for iPad ($4.99):
Click here to get Penultimate for iPad ($1.99):
Click here to get Adobe Ideas for iPhone or iPad ($5.99):
