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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.

Amazon announced this week that the biography of Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson is the top-selling book of the year for 2011, according to a report in Forbes.  I recently finished the book, and really enjoyed it.  The unprecedented access that Jobs gave to Isaacson resulted in lots of great stories that I had never heard before and revealed fascinating insights and opinions of Steve Jobs.  I highly recommend it.  And now, on for the other iPhone and iPad news of the week:

• I find the iPad so much more enjoyable to use than a computer, and I am constantly finding new ways to use it instead of a computer.  Along these same lines, Harry McCracken of Technologizer wrote a great article about how he has started using an iPad instead of a computer.
• If you have an iPhone 4S, you probably already know how useful Siri can be.  Lex Friedman of Macworld has some great tips for getting more out of Siri.
• If you live in New York City, a cool new Apple Store opens today at Grand Central Station.  Philip Elmer-DeWitt of Fortune wrote a good overview of the store, including a video walk-through.
• Eli Milchman of Cult of Mac reports that if you are a customer of Chase bank, you can now use its free iPhone app to transfer money from your bank account to any other U.S. bank account (it doesn’t need to be a Chase account).  The Chase app has long allowed you to deposit a check just using your iPhone, thus saving you a trip to the bank.  Now, the app saves you a trip to the ATM when you need to pay someone.  Neat.
• David Pogue of the New York Times reviews the Epson Megaplex, a projector for the iPhone that can turn your iPhone into a home theater.
• Oklahoma attorney Jeffrey Taylor writes about using an Android tablet in court on his site The Droid Lawyer.  Everything in his post applies to an iPad as well, except that instead of the Android app RepliGo Reader, on the iPad you should use the excellent GoodReader app.
• What happens when you cross The Three Stooges with an iPhone?  Watch this trailer for the new Farrelly Brothers movie, around the 30 second mark.  (via TiPb)
• And finally, here is a story about an ill-fated iPad sale that, I’m embarrassed to admit, occurred in a town not too far from New Orleans, where I live.  Chealsea Gaudin of WWL, the local CBS affiliate, reports that a man was at a gas station in Slidell, LA when two other men approached him and asked if he wanted to buy an iPad for $120.  Our shopper tried to show some smarts by asking to asking to to see the iPad to check that it was real.  They showed him an iPad, and then our shopper went to the ATM machine to get money, at which point our mobile retailers swapped out the iPad for “a stripped Dell laptop with an Apple logo taped to it.”  I’ll put the picture below.  This led to a skirmish when the shopper realized what happened, and the sale went downhill from there … guns were involved, as was a pursuit by the police, and finally capture, at which point the police found in the vehicle “several fake laptops and fake Apple iPads.”  As you do your holiday shopping this year, I recommend that all iPhone J.D. readers consider shopping at the Apple Store, Amazon, or other fine establishments instead of your local neighborhood gas station.  As for that picture I promised you, I think it is a stretch to even call this a “fake Apple iPad”:

If you are a litigator, I’m sure that at some point you have been (or you will be) involved in back-and-forth settlement negotiations, such as during a mediation.  Whether you are on the plaintiff or the defendant side, the issue is the same — how much do I need to move to get the other party to move, is there any hope that we will reach a common ground, and what will that number be.

Don Philbin, an attorney and mediator in San Antonio, Texas, created a free iPhone app to help you with these negotiations.  The app is called Picture it Settled Lite, and it allows you to track every offer made by each side in a negotiation along with the date and time of the offer. 

 

Over time that app gives you a handy chart of each of the offers. 

Better yet, once you have a few offers and counter-offers in the app, you get to take advantage of one of the key features of the app, a graph that shows you offers over time along with a prediction of what offers will be in the future using an algorithm based on prior offers.  The app also predicts the dollar amount that you will eventually agree upon and the time that this will take place.

 

Just seeing offers on a graph like this can be helpful enough in planning your next move, but the app also helps you to plan that move by making it easy to make a new offer that matches the dollar amount or percentage change of your last offer, or the dollar amount or percentage change of your opponent’s last offer.

Note that while this is a “lite” app, there is currently no “full” version of this app.  Philbin tells me that his company is working on a browser-based, advanced product, due to be released next year, that will use sophisticated modeling, case diagramming and evaluation tools based not just on the amount and time of prior offers in a specific case but also based on the experiences in thousands of cases in a variety of disciplines and jurisdictions.  He already has a patent application on file on the algorithms he is using.  Indeed, you should keep in mind that when you use this app, some of the information that you enter is uploaded to add to this database.  Your case name is not uploaded (just a non-identifying number), but the offer history is shared.  Also, the app gives you the option of entering your jurisdiction (state and county), the type of case (such as products liability) and some basic information on the type of plaintiff and defendant.  If you choose to enter that information, it is also uploaded.  Just sharing that information is unlikely to breach any confidentiality, but fortunately you don’t have to enter any of that information to use this app.

Obviously there is no guarantee that past behavior will strictly determine future behavior, so an app like this can only go so far in accurately predicting how settlement negotiations will turn out.  Having said that, this could definitely be a useful tool during your negotiations.  And in my experience in mediations, I often spend a lot of time in a room waiting for the mediator to work with the other side, and during that down time you are often looking for something to do to plan your next move.  Why not use an app like this as yet another tool at your disposal that might assist you in your strategic thinking.

Click here for Picture it Settled Lite (free): 

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This article won the LitigationWorld Pick of the Week. LitigationWorld is a free weekly email newsletter that that provides helpful tips regarding electronic discovery, litigation strategy, and litigation technology.

One of the features I love about iOS 5 is the ability to get notifications on the iPhone screen when new e-mail comes in even when my iPhone is turned off.  To enable this, go to Settings -> Notifications -> Mail and turn on View in Lock Screen.  With this feature turned on, even if your iPhone is sitting on your desk in sleep mode with the iPhone screen turned off, you will see the screen come on for just a few seconds when an e-mail comes in with basic information about the new message.  I love that I can be working on something else, I see my iPhone screen come on for a second with the notification of the new e-mail, and then I can return to whatever I was doing unless that e-mail looks important enough to read right away.  This is much better than a simple beep or flashing light that doesn’t tell me anything about the importance of the e-mail.

Better still, if you get additional e-mails, notifications will build up.  Thus, I can always take my iPhone out of my pocket, tap the button to turn on the screen, and then I instantly see on my lock screen the new e-mails that have come in.  If nothing needs to be read at that time, I can return to whatever I was doing, and I only need to take the time to jump to the Mail app if I know that there is a new message that I want to see right away.

And here is where’s today’s tip comes in — when you see a notification on your lock screen about a new message that you want to read right away.  If your iPhone screen is locked, you know that you need to swipe the bottom of the iPhone’s lock screen to unlock the iPhone using the Slide to Unlock arrow.  But if you want to jump directly to one of the e-mails noted on your screen, instead of swiping at the normal location at the bottom of your screen, swipe on the icon right next to the e-mail that you want to read:

 

This performs the normal slide to unlock function, but additionally tells the iPhone to open up the e-mail that you selected.  I have a sense that this feature is not well known because I have frequently had other iPhone owners see me do that over the last few weeks and then ask me to explain so that they can do it too.

This trick works with more than just e-mails.  If another app gives you a notification that appears on your e-mail screen, you can slide the icon on that notification to unlock the screen and jump to that app.  But I find this tip most useful for e-mails considering the large number of e-mails that I receive every day.

The slide to unlock feature on the iPhone is so natural that it seems obvious, but it wasn’t always so.  In Chapter 36 of his biography of Steve Jobs, Walter Isaaacson describes the origin of this feature during the development of the iPhone:

Jobs spent part of every day for six months helping to refine the display [on the iPhone].  “It was the most complex fun I’ve ever hand,” he recalled.  “It was like being the one evolving the variations on ‘Sgt. Pepper.'”  A lot of features that seem simple now were the result of creative brainstorms.  For example, the team worried about how to prevent the device from playing music or making a call accidentally when it was jangling in your pocket.  Jobs was congenitally averse to having on-off switches, which he deemed “inelegant.”  The solution was “Swipe to Open,” the simple and fun on-screen slider that activated the device when it had gone dormant.  … In session after session, with Jobs immersed in every detail, the team members figured out ways to simplify what other phones made complicated.

One of the things that I love about the iPhone is that there are so many tiny features like this one that are so well-designed that they seem intuitive, and yet they are so useful and even fun to use that they make the iPhone delightful.

Every year, the ABA Journal looks at the 3,500 law blogs and prepares a list of their favorites.  Yesterday, the ABA Journal announced the 5th Annual ABA Journal Blawg 100, and I was pleased to see that iPhone J.D. was on the list for the third year in a row.  The ABA Journal asks you to vote for your favorites among the 100 by going to this page.  You have to register to vote, but it’s quick and easy, and the requirement is there just to prevent one person from voting multiple times.  After all, the ABA is based in Chicago, a city with a colorful history when it comes to elections.  I’d be pleased as punch if you voted for iPhone J.D. — last year enough of you did so for this website to win the legal technology category — and you get to vote for 12 sites, which can be difficult because there are so many good ones.  In fact, one of the best parts of this annual list is that it always helps me discover great sites that I had not run across before, so even if you don’t vote you’ll want to look at the list.

It has been a month since I’ve had a Friday “In the news” feature, so in addition to pointing out the iPhone and iPad news of note from the past week, I’m also noting some articles from the past few weeks that you might want to check out:

• I always hesitate before posting rumors on iPhone J.D. because they often are nothing more than someone just making something up.  I’d rather discuss real products once they are available.  But considering how important Microsoft Office is to lawyers, I couldn’t help but notice this article by Matt Hickey in the iPad-only publication The Daily claiming that Microsoft is “actively working” on Microsoft Office for the iPad.  And whether or not Hickey’s source is accurate, California attorney David Sparks provided a good analysis of why Microsoft would be foolish to not enbrace the iPad.
• Nick Wingfield of the New York Times wrote about how large companies that once stayed away from Apple products are now very attracted to the iPad and iPhone.  This has certainly been true in law firms.  Virtually no large law firms use Macs any more.  (My law firm was one of the last large firms to run exclusively on Macs; we switched to PCs a decade ago to take advantage of law-related software that worked only on the PC.)  But as I reported recently, recent surveys show that virtually all of the most profitable law firms in the country now support the iPhone and iPad.
• Tim Baran wrote about Shoeboxed, an app that helps you organize your receipts, on Legal Productivity, a good blog published by the folks who created Rocket Matter, time tracking software used by many lawyers.
• Oklahoma attorney Jeffrey Taylor of The Droid Lawyer published his list of 2011’s best apps for lawyers.  Why am I linking to a story about Android apps?  Because many of the great apps on his list also exist on the iPhone.
• The iSmashPhone website wrote about an (unidentified) lawyer’s view on using the iPhone 4S on Verizon.
• Harry McCracken of Technologizer wrote about Apple’s GarageBand app coming to the iPhone.  It seems bizarre to use a screen that small to create music, but this app is really fun, whether or not you have any musical talent.
• Susan Stellin of the New York Times wrote about using an iPhone as a boarding pass.
• St. Louis attorney Geri Dreiling reviews the Documents to Go iPad app, one of the essential apps on my iPhone and iPad.
• Matt Chandler of Buffalo Business First reports that the Damon Morey law firm purchased 100 iPad 2s so that every lawyer in the firm would have one.
• Cory Clements, a law student at BYU, shared with me this post by Greg Israelsen comparing the iPhone plans on AT&T, Verizon and Sprint.  The post includes some great charts that would be very useful if you, or someone you know, is trying to decide which carrier to use with a new iPhone.
• Here is a video clip of comedian Robin Williams talking to Ellen Degeneres about the Siri feature of the iPhone 4S.
• And here is comedian Steven Colbert talking to Siri.  Funny stuff.  (For a serious take on the silly news about Siri having a political agenda, Adam Engst of TidBITS wrote this good article.)
• Looking for a case for your iPad that is fit for a Commander in Chief?  Matthew Panzarino of The Next Web reports that President Obama uses the DODOcase for his iPad 2.  It does look like a very nice case.
• And finally, it is often said that the best thing about the camera on the iPhone is that it means that you always have a camera with you when you need one, even if you didn’t expect to need it.  So you have a camera when your child suddenly does something cute, when you suddenly want to preserve a memory, or when … SHARK!!! … an 18 foot shark suddenly starts circling your boat, which happened to this person.  CAUTION: The audio in this video is not safe for work because there are a lot of curse words.  (Frankly, I would have said a lot worse if I was suddenly this close to a huge shark.)  Whether or not you turn on the sound, this is a pretty amazing video; good thing he had an iPhone with him.  [via Daring Fireball]

When I started practicing law in the early 1990s, legal research often took place in a law library.   Nowadays, legal research almost always occurs on a computer on the desk of a lawyer’s office, accessing a service like Westlaw, Lexis or Fastcase.  But sometimes, you need to do legal research when you are outside of the office, such as when you are at trial — perhaps looking up a case cited by an opponent, or perhaps doing some quick research on a legal issue during a break in the proceedings.  You can certainly use a laptop computer for your legal research, but for over a year now, West has offered a version of WestlawNext for the iPad.  Although I’ve used this app in the past, I first gave the app a vigorous workout when I was in a long trial last month.  I was very impressed with the app, so much so that I started to find myself using the iPad app to do research even when I was back at my office.

The WestlawNext app is a free app, but you must be a WestlawNext subscriber to use it.  (West provided me with a free account to try out the app last month.)  One of the things that makes next generation legal research tools like WestlawNext and Lexis Advance so useful is that they provide a simplified “Google-like” interface.  You are presented with a single search box in which you can type just about anything — a citation, search terms, etc. — and then the service is smart enough to show you what you are probably looking for.  Simplicity is a virtue of WestlawNext on a computer, and this is even more so on the iPad app thanks to a minimal, clean but very functional interface:

Type some search terms and select a jurisdiction and you will see search results.  Cases are first, and the first few cases are listed on the right, but the column on the left side of the app shows you the number of hits in other sources such as statutes, secondary sources, briefs, etc.  I would often start a search thinking that I was interested in cases, but the helpful links on the side would remind me that I might find just what I need in some other set of documents.

Tap a case name to bring up the full case.  I love the way that WestlawNext displays a case on the iPad.  It is very easy to read the case.  Search terms are highlighted in yellow and easy to see, and arrows at the bottom make it easy to jump to search terms in the document.  You can even adjust font size and typeface.  All of these screenshots are in landscape view, but I often found reading a case easier when I turned my iPad to portrait view.

I love that it is easy to select text, either to copy the text (with or without a cite reference), highlight the text or add a note.  I frequently found myself highlighting the most useful cases, and then I would use the Tools button to save the case to a folder.  Thus, I might go through a dozen or so cases and quickly build up in my folder the two or three cases that are most useful to me, with the key passages highlighted for easy reference.

When you are researching you can use all of the normal WestlawNext filters, such as restricting by date, by jurisdiction, by judge, searching within your results to further narrow your search results, etc.

The WestlawNext app provides a clean and efficient interface for using Westlaw when you are on your iPad.  But why not just use the “full” version of Westlaw on a laptop computer?  In court, I actually find it much more powerful to use an iPad instead of a computer for legal research.  First of all, one thing I don’t like about using a laptop in court is that the screen creates a barrier between you and the judge and jury.  Those looking at you see the back of your laptop screen, creating a sense that there is something between you and them.  With an iPad that lies flat on a desk or at a slight angle, there is no barrier between you and the judge or jury.

Second, if you need to stand up and argue to a judge, it is awkward to pick up a laptop to walk to a podium and it is awkward to read off of a laptop screen.  But holding an iPad and reading off of the iPad screen is similar to holding and reading off of a legal pad — much more natural.  In an ideal world, you would have done all of your legal research before you entered the courtroom and you already have every relevant case or statute with you, either printed out or in a PDF format on your iPad.  But of course, things are not always ideal in trial.  Your opponent may mention a case that you have never read, or you may have to research a legal issue that you didn’t think about beforehand, and when that happens, finding a case and puling it up on your iPad, and then holding the iPad while you argue to the court, is almost as good as having brought the case with you in the first place.

I noted above that I found this app so useful in trial that I started to find myself using the app to do legal research even when I was out of the courtroom.  Doing legal research on a computer with a large monitor and a keyboard is usually the ideal, but sometimes you need to change your perspective.  Using an iPad to do legal research gives you the ability to step away from the computer and free your mind a little.  You can lean back in a chair, run some searches, and think creatively.  Eventually you may decide to move back to the computer, but you can easily switch back and forth between the WestlawNext iPad app and WestlawNext on a computer.  Plus, sometimes it is useful to have one screen (your iPad screen) focused on doing legal research while another screen (your computer screen) displays the brief that you are writing.  The iPad turns into a sort of second monitor.

The WestlawNext app only works on the iPad, but if you need to access WestlawNext and all you have is your iPhone, you can launch the Safari app and go to https:/m.next.westlaw.com to access a mobile browser version of WestlawNext.  I’ve used the Fastcase app on an iPhone in court in the past, and while legal research on an iPhone does work in a pinch (and has even helped me win some arguments in the past), the larger screen of the iPad makes the iPad infinitely more useful than an iPhone for legal research.

The WestlawNext app is a brilliantly designed and incredibly useful app.  The interface is simple enough to be intuitive and to not get in your way, but the app is powerful enough to satisfy all of your legal research needs.  In the courtroom, this may be the best way to do quick legal research.  In your office or at your home, it is nice to be able to lean back in a chair and run searches or read cases and statutes.  If you already subscribe to WestlawNext, you need to download this app.  If you don’t subscribe, this app provides a strong argument for doing so.

Click here to get WestlawNext (free):