Earlier this week, I posted a review of the free U.S. Code app by FSU Law Professor Shawn Bayern.  That app contains the complete “official” U.S. Code, but a commenter correctly pointed out that this is not the latest version of the law.  As explained to me by Prof. Bayern, the official version is only updated every year or two and doesn’t contain changes to the law since then, which is the reason that people pay big bucks to services like West and Lexis for the USCA and USCS which are constantly updated as new public laws are enacted.  I posted an important update to my post yesterday that addresses this issue, and so if you read the original post, I encourage you to go back and read the update.  

This highlights a potential important advantage of the paid versions of U.S. Code apps versus the free version that Prof. Bayern created.  Developers of paid apps have a monetary incentive to try to keep their versions up to date as new laws are enacted.  For example, iPhone app developer Cliff Maier told me:  “I
believe all my USC apps are not the ‘official’ text.  In other words,
I’ve gone and updated all of them at least once to incorporate the
various changes that are found in 121-123 Stat.  In many cases I’ve
done this multiple times.  The better-selling apps and the apps that I
use myself are up-to-date as of 12/31/2009.”

The idea that you want to make sure you are relying on the current version of the law is certainly nothing new.  Just yesterday, I found myself thumbing through a softcover version of Louisiana federal court rules only to discover that it didn’t contain the new rules on counting days that accompanied the revisions to the Fed. R. Civ. Pro. in late 2009.  Fortunately, I quickly realized the error and jumped on the court’s website, which contained the updated rules.  If you are using an iPhone app to look up the law, pay attention to how recently the app has been updated so that you can be sure that you are looking at the latest law.

In addition to thinking about updates to statutory law this week, I also ran across the following iPhone-related items that may be of interest to you:

• The iPad is not even out yet, but we already have a website devoted to the use of the iPad by lawyers, a site called Tablet Legal.  The site was created by Portland, Oregon business attorney Josh Barrett, and even though it was just started on January 30, 2009, it already contains quite a few interesting posts.  I actually tried to register the domain iPadJD.com the day that Apple announced the iPad but someone in Calgary, Canada beat me to it by about an hour.  Hopefully, that domain will be put to good use, and as iPhone/iPad/iPod touch interest among lawyers grows, I hope we will see even more lawyers sharing their reviews, tips and experiences.
• iPhone Alley reports on a Bnet interview with Bill Gates in which he says that the iPad would be great if it just had a stylus and a physical keyboard.  With all due respect to Mr. Gates, I think he is missing the point.
• Google just announced Google Buzz, its attempt to compete with Twitter and Facebook.  iPhone Alley reports that it has a great iPhone interface.
• I recently wrote about law firms creating their own iPhone apps.  Lawyer and blawg guru Kevin O’Keefe makes the case for why law firms should not create iPhone apps.
• German statesman Otto von Bismarck reportedly said in the 1800s that those who love the law and sausage have never seen how either are made.  According to a post on kottke.org, as linked to by John Gruber on Daring Fireball, lawyers using iPhones in this cold weather may want to reach for a sausage.  It appears that sales of snack sausages are on the rise in South Korea because people use them as a stylus to operate an iPhone without having to remove gloves.
• Are you looking at something confidential on your iPhone and don’t want wandering eyes from the person in the airplane or subway seat next to you?  The iPhone Blog reports on (and sells) NLU Privacy ScreenGuardz for $19.99 that offer 4-way security (up, down, left and right)
  
  but are “crystal clear” when viewed straight on.
• If you are looking to get some new headphones for your iPhone, Art of the iPhone has complied a list of the 20 best headphones designed to work with the iPhone.
• AppleInsider reports that, according to ComScore, Apple’s iPhone now has 25% of the U.S. smartphone market.  RIM, Microsoft and Palm all lost marketshare, with RIM now at 42%, Microsoft at 18% and Palm at 6%.  Google has 5% and is the only company other than Apple to be growing in market share, according to this study.
• And finally, as I first saw reported on iPhone Savior, someone on Etsy was selling handmade felt keychains with iPhone icons on them (plus one Mac OS icon).  Unfortunately, the seller is now sold out, but while you wait for more to be made you can admire this picture of what they looked like:

Quickoffice has been on the iPhone, in one form or another, for over a year now.  The company’s first app, released at the end of 2008, was called MobileFiles Pro and it allowed you to view a variety of types of documents that were on your MobileMe account or that you had moved from a computer to the app, but the groundbreaking feature was the ability to edit Microsoft Excel documents.  Then in April of 2009, the developer added the ability to edit Microsoft Word documents, another breakthrough development because it was the only app at the time to do so.  The MobileFiles Pro app was renamed Quicksheet and the full app that could edit both Word and Excel documents was called Quickoffice Mobile Office Suite.  (The company subsequently released a slimmed down version that handled Word files but not Excel files called Quickword.)  In July of 2009, the developer added the ability to forward an e-mail to a special address, which would then allow you to access the attachments to the e-mail in the Quickoffice app.  In October of 2009, the developer added the sorely missed ability to view and add underlining.

Quickoffice Connect Mobile Suite.  Quickoffice has now come out with the third generation of its app, and once again we see some name changes.  The flagship app is now called Quickoffice Connect Mobile Suite.  It includes everything that had been in Quickoffice Mobile Office Suite, including the ability to edit Word and Excel documents and the ability to access files in your MobileMe account or someone else’s public MobileMe folder, and adds the ability to access files in more online accounts, namely the ability to access Box.net, Google Docs and Dropbox files.  These are many of the major “cloud storage” providers.  Users who previously had Quickoffice Mobile Office Suite were automatically upgraded for free to Quickoffice Connect Mobile Suite starting this past Tuesday, so be on the lookout for the upgrade if you already had Quickoffice on your iPhone.

I don’t use Box.net or Dropbox so I didn’t test those services, but Quickoffice has always worked well with my MobileMe account and it now seems to work just as well with my Google Docs account.  This is the point in a review when I would normally post pictures from my iPhone, but to do so I would have had to redact some confidential information, so instead I’ll just post these two pictures that Quickoffice provides on its website to give you a general sense of how these additional services appear in the app:

I am not an extensive user of Google Docs, but I do sometimes have people share Google Docs files with me.  It is very handy to now have the ability to access those files on the iPhone from within an app that I already know and enjoy using.

As for the other features of Quickoffice, such as the ability to edit Word and Excel documents, these features were addressed in my prior reviews so I will just refer you there:  2/20/09, 4/22/09, 5/5/09, 7/20/09, 8/4/09.  One big change since I wrote those reviews is, as noted above, the app now handles underlining in Word documents.

Five apps.  With this update, Quickoffice is now offering five different apps for the iPhone:

1. Quickoffice Connect — free — this app it includes all of the cloud services now available in the flagship product, but you can only view files, not edit them.
2. Quicksheet — $8.99 — adds the ability to edit Excel documents.  The current version can still only access MobileMe files, so it lacks the brand new ability to access Google Docs, Box.net and Dropbox, although it wouldn’t surprise me to see this added soon.
3. Quickword — $8.99 — just like Quicksheet except that this one edits Word documents instead of Excel documents
4. Quickoffice Mobile Suite — $7.99 — edits both Word and Excel documents, but doesn’t include the ability to access remote cloud service providers, not even MobileMe.  Thus, this app is sort of like the old version of Quickoffice Mobile Office Suite with the MobileMe support removed for $2 less.
5. Quickoffice Connect Mobile Suite — $9.99 — the new flagship product as described above

Quickoffice says that the $9.99 price for Quickoffice Connect Mobile Suite is a “limited-time introductory price” and
that the full price will be $19.99.  But you should know that they said the same thing about
Quickoffice Mobile Office Suite in 2009 and I don’t believe that I ever saw the
company increase the price above $9.99.  The only price change I saw occurred during sales.  For example, last month the price dropped to $7.99 for a short time, and on “Cyber Monday” in 2009 the price dropped to only $6.99.
I suspect that as long as DataViz is selling Documents to Go for $9.99,
Quickoffice will keep its top app at $9.99 as well.  (Note, however,
that DataViz also sells Documents to Go Premium for $14.99.)

Documents to Go.  It is impossible to discuss Quickoffice without also discussing Documents to Go from DataViz (and vice versa) because they are the two competitors in this field.  Quickoffice was first with the ability to edit Excel files (in late 2008) and the ability to edit Word files (in April of 2009), but Documents to Go came to the iPhone with Word editing features in June of 2009 and added Excel editing features in October of 2009.  Because they offer many of the same features, people often ask me which is the better one to buy.  [Disclosure: I purchased my copy of Documents to Go, but I received a free review copy of Quickoffice Mobile Office Suite, which like all other copies was upgraded this week for free to Quickoffice Connect Mobile Suite.]  I wrote an extensive comparison of the two apps in August of 2009, but both apps have been updated since then.  For example, at the very end of 2009, Documents to Go added the ability to edit and create PowerPoint presentations.  Some of my previous discussions of Documents to Go are here:  6/22/09, 6/25/09, 8/4/09, 8/17/09, 12/31/09.

As it stands now, if you use one of the four cloud services that Quickoffice now supports, then Quickoffice may be the better app for you.  Documents to Go doesn’t include the ability to access any of those services.  [UPDATE 4/24/10:  Documents to Go version 3.2 now supports Google Docs, Dropbox and Box.net]

On the other hand, if you use Microsoft Exchange (Outlook on your PC) or Gmail for your e-mail, then you might prefer Documents to Go Premium (which costs $5 more than regular version of Documents to Go) because it has the ability to directly access attachments to e-mails.  I love that feature.  Quickoffice includes a workaround noted above — you forward an e-mail with an attachment to a special Quickoffice address, which then makes the attachment available on your iPhone — but I find it more convenient to access attachments directly.  Also, and importantly for many attorneys, Quickoffice still lacks the ability to view or edit footnotes in Word documents, whereas Documents to Go handles footnotes very well.  Finally, Documents to Go does a much better job of viewing PDF files, including enhanced options for jumping to different pages in a long document such as the ability to see small thumbnails of different pages and the ability to jump to a specific page number.

The problem with trying to compare Quickoffice to Documents to Go is that both apps are frequently improved, often leapfrogging over each other in features.  For example, when I wrote my extensive comparison in August of 2009, Documents to Go couldn’t edit Excel files so that was a major advantage of Quickoffice.  Now, both apps can do this.  As of today, only Documents to Go can edit PowerPoint files, but Quickoffice says that PowerPoint editing will be added as a free update at some point this year.  I’m sure we will see many new features added to both apps over the course of this year.

In my mind, both apps are cheap enough and are so valuable that you might as well just get them both.  That way, whenever new features are added to either app, you will always have the ability to take advantage of the latest features.  But whether you get both apps or just choose one, these apps vastly improve your ability to access and view Word and Excel files on your iPhone, plus they add the ability to edit these files.  And let me underscore one of those points; even if you never plan to edit a Word or Excel document and just want to view those files, both apps do a much better job than the iPhone can on its own.  For example, Apple gives every iPhone the ability to view Word files, but the text is often so small that you need to zoom in to read the words, and then you need to use your finger to scroll back and forth to read the beginning and end of a line.  In Quickoffice and Documents to Go, you can pinch to zoom the text size and the document continues to fill the screen without making you scroll back and forth.  Reading a brief, Memorandum, etc. on the iPhone is infinitely better with either of these apps.

Quickoffice and Documents to Go are both great iPhone apps.  It is wonderful to see these latest improvements to Quickoffice, and I look forward to more improvements to both apps in 2010.  If you are a lawyer or other professional with a need to use an iPhone as a mobile office, even if it just an occasional need, these apps are great.

Click here for Quickoffice Connect (free): 

Click here for Quicksheet ($8.99): 

Click here for Quickword ($8.99): 

Click here for Quickoffice Mobile Suite ($7.99): 

Click here for Quickoffice Connect Mobile Suite ($9.99): 

Click here for Documents to Go ($9.99): 

Click here for Documents to Go Premium ($14.99): 

Even though you can access the U.S. Code on several free websites and in the free Fastcase app, it is often nice to have law on your iPhone in a dedicated app that is fast and doesn’t require an Internet connection.  There are several offerings in the App Store that contain part of the U.S. Code, but Shawn Bayern has just released an app called U.S. Code that contains the entire text of the U.S. Code, and it is free.  Bayern is an Assistant Professor at Florida State University College of Law, where he currently teaches Torts and Agency & Partnership.  He has previously taught at Duke Law School and U.C. Berkeley School of Law (Boalt Hall).

The app covers the basics and does it well.  Upon starting the app, you can either search by keyword or by citation.  So if you know the cite of a statute, you can just type it in and jump directly there.

When you view a statute, the text is easy to read, and even includes historical and revision notes.  You can tap arrows at the bottom left to browse backwards or forwards through statutes.  You can tap a plus sign to add a statute to a list of bookmarks for easy access later.  You can use the iPhone copy function to copy a part of a statute, or you can easily tap a button at the bottom right to create an e-mail with the full text of the statute you are viewing.

When you search by keyword, terms start to appear as you are typing the letters in your search.  If you enter multiple keywords, the app finds every statute that contains both terms (an AND search).

This app is very useful, and you can’t beat the price of free.  As noted above, several other developers sell individual titles of the U.S. Code.  For example, there are three different developers selling Title 28 of the U.S. Code at the prices of $0.99, $7.99 and $14.99.  With Prof. Bayern (pictured at right) offering the entire U.S. Code for free, those other apps will have to compete on features.

For example, Cliff Maier’s $7.99 version of Title 28 offers many features not contained in Prof. Bayern’s app.  First, you can view each section with an outline along the side that makes it easier to skip through the different subparts of a section.  Second, the search options are much more rebust.  Not only can you do an OR or an AND search for terms or a search for a phrase, but the search results show each section followed by an excerpts showing your search terms used and highlighted so you can quickly browse through results to find what you need.  In Prof. Bayern’s app, you just get a list of the statutes containing the keywords, and you have to view each statute individually to determine how the term is being used (although each keyword is in bold, which makes it easier to find).  Plus, by using an app dedicated to a particular title, you know that you are only searching within that title and not getting irrelevant hits from other titles.

Thus, if there is a particular part of the U.S. Code that is important to your practice, you may find it helpful to spend a few dollars on a dedicated app with more features.  If Prof. Bayern decides to add more features in the future, this app will become even more competitive with the paid apps.  But even in its current form, the free app is so useful and nicely done that I suspect that most attorneys and law students will want to download it for their iPhones.  Especially if you are a student of Prof. Bayern.

[UPDATE 2/11/10:  iPhone J.D. reader Jonathan, who runs the Used and Enthused website, notes in a comment to this post that this app does not contain the very latest version of the U.S. Code.  I asked Prof. Bayern about this, and here is his response:

For each release, the app will contain a current copy of the most recent electronic publication of the US Code by the Office of the Law Revision Counsel of the House of Representatives, which I understand to be the official version. For most titles at the moment, the last such update was in January 2009; for some titles, it was January 2008.

Of course, statutes have been passed since then which will eventually alter the “US Code,” and services like Westlaw and Lexis incorporate what amount to unofficial relevant running updates into their volumes — what they call the the USCA and USCS, respectively. But that’s not the “United States Code.”

More practically and less technically, I don’t think any app that doesn’t draw from either Westlaw or Lexis, under license, will have more up-to-date text. Of course, they could, if they independently edit the text of the code for each statute that’s passed, but one reason Westlaw and Lexis are so expensive is that kind of manual editing requires a lot of work.

I do plan to release updates as the official US Code updates become available. As Wikipedia describes it (I should be able to find a better source, but as I learned in practice, when this stuff is disputed it’s incredibly difficult to untangle):  “The [version published by the OLRC] may be as much as 18 months behind current legislation, but it is the most up to date official version.”

I didn’t realize that this is how this works, so thanks to the good professor for educating me.  Plus, this is an important caveat that you should keep in mind as you use this app.  Thanks to Jonathan for raising the issue.]

Click here to get U.S. Code by Shawn Bayern (free): 

[UPDATE 4/28/10:  The Wall Street Journal reports that Apple purchased Siri.  I can’t wait to see what Apple does with this great app.]

I still find myself in awe of the power of Dragon Dictation, the great (and free) app that I reviewed two months ago which quickly transcribes your voice into text.  What would happen if you merged the power of the Dragon Dictation with a really smart personal assistant who, thanks to the iPhone’s GPS, always knows where you are?  The answer is an amazing new app called Siri.  I cannot say enough about how impressive this app is, both because of what it offers right now and because of what it shows about the future of technology.

To use Siri, just start the app, press the “Say it!” button and ask a question.  (Or you can set a preference for the app to listen to you as soon as you put the iPhone next to your face.)  Siri then uses the same technology in Dragon Dictation — excellent technology — to translate your speech into text.  The app then parses your text and presents you with interactive information specially formatted for the iPhone’s screen.

For example, I asked the app “What is the best seafood restaurant in this city,” a question that could spark fierce debates among locals here.  Within a second or so, the app translated my speech, figured out that I was in New Orleans, determined that I was asking for recommended seafood restaurants in New Orleans, and came up with a list as rated on Gayot.  And frankly, it did a mighty fine job.  GW Fins is excellent for both local seafood and fresh seafood flown from around the world, Dante’s Kitchen and the Red Fish Grill are great for New Orleans seafood, and Drago’s charbroiled oysters are to die for.  Within a few seconds I had very credible answers to the question, and with just a tap of the button I can reserve a table using Open Table from within the app itself, or I can call the restaurant, or tap any restaurant name for more information such as address and map, reviews, etc.

Here is an example of what you see when you tap on a restaurant result.  The key information is presented in an easy to read format, and you can simply tap to get more information such as a map or to send info in an e-mail.

As another example, let’s say that I am trying to determine what is playing at Tipitina’s, a great music venue in New Orleans.  I just ask the app, and I instantly get results.

I then asked Siri “what is going on this weekend.”  The app quickly gave me a list of live music, Mardi Gras parades, etc.  You can ask Siri about restaurants, businesses, movies, events, the weather, flight status and booking, and a few other things, and for the categories where Siri has a good source of information, the answers it provides are generally excellent.  You can even ask Siri to send you reminders in the future, which it will do by sending you an e-mail.

The results are not always perfect.  I asked the app where to find the best burger in New Orleans.  The top result was Port of Call, an answer that I agree with, as would most locals.  But the second result was Burger King.  Hmm.  But the app is extremely fast, and the results are nicely organized on the screen.  And if Siri needs more information to answer your question, it will just ask you.  As you can see from the screen shots above, the app behaves as if you were having a text message conversation with the app.  And over time, the app gets to know what you like and improves its results.  Thus, even though the results are automated, because you talk to Siri using your normal voice and it responds to you in such a conversational way, you really do feel like you are talking with your own personal assistant.

In fact, it is difficult for me to show in simple screen shots how the interactive aspects of Siri work.  So instead, take a look at this promotional video:

Siri is not the work of two guys in a garage.  The technology has been in development for five years at SRI International, a nonprofit scientific research organization that has been around for 60 years and was originally called the Stanford Research Institute.  These are the folks that helped Walt Disney develop Disneyland in the 1950s, built the first prototype of a computer mouse in the 1960s, were the 8th registered “.com” name in the 1980s, and did a whole bunch of other impressive stuff as you can see in this Wikipedia entry.  According to tech journalist Harry McCracken, the app is the result of $150 million of research by SRI and DARPA (the Defense Advanced Research Products Agency).  Right now, Siri provides you with results by tapping into information sources including MovieTickets.com, TaxiMagic, Citysearch, Yelp, Yahoo Local, GAYOT.com,
Rotten Tomatoes, NYTimes.com Flix Movie Reviews, BooRah, WeatherBug,
AllMenus, LiveKick, Maponics, Flightstats, True Knowledge, Localeze,
West World Media, and Eventful, but more sources will be added every month so this app will only get smarter.  If you want to learn more, check out this great video that Robert Scoble posted yesterday interviewing the key developers.

Siri is so useful that I would definitely pay for it, but instead the app relies on referral fees.  So when you pay for a movie or show ticket, a percentage goes back to Siri.  The Siri folks say that they do not tailor the search results based on these fees, and add that if they do decide to allow sponsored results in the future, they will be very clearly marked, similar to how Google marks them at the top of its search results.

Right now, the developer says that the app requires the power of an iPhone 3GS, although the company is working on a version that will work on the iPhone 3G and I have heard reports that even the current version can run on a 3G.  I strongly encourage you to download this app today, not only because you will find it immediately useful, but also because I believe that this is a preview of the future of mobile technology.

Congratulations to the New Orleans Saints for winning Super Bowl XLIV.  Everyone in New Orleans and the entire Who Dat Nation will forever remember this moment, which has been a very long time coming.  A special thanks to our quarterback, Drew Brees, for being such a first class person both on and off of the field. 

After the last two weeks of preparation for the Super Bowl, it has perhaps become cliché to speak of the parallels between the rebirth of this unique city since 2005 and the rebirth of the Saints, but the comparison works because it is true.  In fact, my father, an architect and amateur musician, wrote and recorded a song shortly after Hurricane Katrina about the “New, New Orleans.”  If you are interested in an upbeat, toe-tapping song for your iPhone or iPod that captures the spirit and enthusiasm of this city, which now seems to be at an all-time high, you can download the MP3 for free at this page.  My father Bob Richardson is on guitar, Dave Carboni is lead vocal and on
bass, Jason Lohmeyer is on keyboard and Buzzy Beano is on guitar and banjo.

There has not been much iPhone news of note this week.  Partially that is because Apple’s upcoming iPad continues to dominate the conversations, and while much iPad news has an indirect connection with the iPhone, some does not.  Today, I am starting with the pure iPhone stories, and then I end up by listing the iPad stories that I consider newsworthy for iPhone users. 

Additionally, I don’t know what is in the news where you live, but here in New Orleans the news is pretty much all Saints, all the time, with just a little bit of Mardi Gras thrown in there as well.  This Sunday is, of course, the Super Bowl, and while most everyone seems to be picking the Colts to win (led New Orleans native Peyton Manning; we both attended Isidore Newman School in New Orleans, although he was seven years behind me and he is somewhat better at football than I am), the City of New Orleans and members of the “Who Dat Nation” around the world are hoping for something that not that long ago seemed truly impossible, the Saints winning a Super Bowl.  Indeed, one of our state court judges here in New Orleans recently continued a trial date because of the excitement, taking “judicial notice that Saintsmania permeates the City of New Orleans,” as reported in Above the Law and the New Orleans Times-Picayune.  But anyway, putting my black and gold mania aside for the moment, here is the notable iPhone news of the past week:

• Brad Stone of the New York Times reports
  
  that the SlingPlayer app for the iPhone will soon be able to stream
  
  video over 3G, not just Wi-Fi.  This feature was demonstrated well over
  
  a year ago, so as a technical matter it was possible, but AT&T
  
  wouldn’t allow it.  Now, AT&T has changed its mind.  A press
  
  release from AT&T quoted in the Times article states:  “Since
  
  mid-December 2009, AT&T has been testing the app and has
  
  recently notified Sling Media — as well as Apple — that the optimized
  
  app can run on its 3G network.”
• I have never jailbroken my iPhone, but according to iPhone Download Blog, people who did so were able to use an app called Install0us to install cracked versions of iPhone apps without paying for them.  The developer of Install0us wrote on his website
  
  that he is now shutting down shop because he finally talked to a lawyer
  
  and learned that “what we do would be very hard to defend against in
  
  court.”  Those lawyers are always ruining all the fun.  Ahem.
• Attorney Robert Ambrogi warns that the iPhone app FR Evidence by Tekk Innovations is missing Rule 502, which was added in late 2008.
• Attorney Christopher Small writes
  
  that if you are starting your own law firm, you should get an iPhone.  I will add that if you work at a
  
  large law firm like I do, you should also get an iPhone.
• If you are still in law school, Lauren Streib of Business Insider recommends 15 “must-have” apps for law students.
• I’ve written before about people using MobileMe to catch an iPhone thief.  Here is a tale of retrieving an iPhone stolen on a plane ride to Los Angeles.

• 

  And now, on to the iPad news that may be of interest to iPhone users.  The iPad is receiving both praise and criticism right now.  Harry McCracken of Technologizer takes a look at
  
  some of the early complaints when the original iPhone was released. 
  
  Some of the complaints were over issues that, frankly, don’t matter;
  
  other complaints were missing features that have since been added (such
  
  as third party software).  In a few years, it will be interesting to
  
  take a similar look back at the iPad critiques of today.
• Nicholas Bonsack writes for Macworld about the new Apple A4 chip in the iPad.  Similarly, Agam Shah of IDG News Services writes an article that appears on Macworld wondering whether the A4 could appear in a future iPhone.  The A4 is both faster and more efficient than the ARM chip in current iPhones.  The article notes that the A4 brought breathtaking speed to the iPad as it launched apps instantly.  Also:  “The iPad was also able
  
  to turn the screen to landscape mode almost instantly, something
  
  iPhones lag at.”
• For those spending the next two months trying to decide how much they would use an iPad, Chris Breen writes for Macworld about the many different ways that you might use an iPad in your daily life.
• I wrote last week that I can envision an iPad being very useful in the courtroom.  Seattle attorney Aaron Pelley writes on his Criminal Defense Law With an Apple website that he envisions the same thing.
• Apple’s new iPad is similar to the iPhone except that the iPhone is with you at all times.  Well, at least I thought that was a key distinction.  The ABA Journal reported that Scott Jordan, former Chicago lawyer and current CEO of Scottevest, has announced that his company will sell a $100 vest with an inside pocket large enough to hold an iPad and enough additional pockets to hold just about every tech device you could possibly imagine. 
• Indeed, Engadget reports Stephen Colbert demonstrated at the Grammys that you can keep an iPad in your suit jacket.  That must be a huge inside pocket.
• And finally, to wrap up this second week of iPad mania, the always funny web comic The Joy of Tech had this take on what an iPhone might think of the news of the upcoming iPad:

I review a lot of apps on iPhone J.D., but often after I review the app, I don’t use it again — not because the app isn’t good, but because it addresses a need that I do not have.  But then there are some apps that I find myself loving even more than I did when I first reviewed the app.  A perfect example of the latter is NotifyMe, an app I reviewed a few months ago from PoweryBase that you can use to quickly send yourself reminders.  NotifyMe was updated this week to version 1.5, adding the ability to edit the categories and some bug fixes, and a new version 2.0 with even more features (a free update) is in the works.  Maybe it is because I always have a lot of things going on at once, and maybe it is because I forget things more than I would like, but NotifyMe has saved me countless times from realizing that I just forgot something that I really wanted to do.  So when the folks at PoweryBase offered to send me a free review copy of their latest $1.99 app Bills ~ On Your Table, I said yes right away.  It is clear to me that PoweryBase has created yet another useful and beautiful iPhone app.

Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to give this app a rigorous testing because a year or so ago, my wife took over the responsibility for paying bills in our family.  (Thanks, honey!)  Instead, I just played around with this app to get a sense of what it can do.  From what I have seen so far, if you are the bill payer in your family, I think you would really like this app.

To make use of this app, you will want to enter all of your monthly bills.  For each bill you can select a name, category, average price, due date, whether the bill repeats and if so in what interval, whether you want an alert one or more days (or weeks or months) before the payment is due, and other optional information such as a note.  With this information entered, the main screen of the app will then give you a listing of what bills or coming up and which became past due.

As you pay your bills, just tell the app you have done so, or it can mark them automatically when they become due.  You can easily view a calendar to get an overview of what is coming up, or view bills by categories.

It appears that this app does a nice job of helping you to remember your bills.  When you start the app, you see what bills are upcoming, plus you can have the app send you push notifications to remind you what is due (a feature that reminds me of NotifyMe).  The app also includes a payment log, and you can even secure the app with a password.  You can also sync with a server so that you can manage your bills either online or on the iPhone (another feature that exists in NotifyMe).

And besides being useful, the app’s interface is so attractive that you might even find it pleasant to keep track of bills, strange as that may sound.

The current price is only $1.99, but PoweryBase says that this is just an introductory price and it will cost more in the future.  Unless I become my family bill payer again, Bills ~ On Your Table isn’t an app that I am likely to use, but if you have a need for this kind of app it looks like an app that you will really enjoy having, perhaps as much as I enjoy using PoweryBase’s NotifyMe app.

Click here to get Bills ~ On Your table ($1.99): 

 

Yesterday, Apple released iPhone Software 3.1.3, the first update for the iPhone since October 8, 2009.  It is pretty rare for Apple to go almost four months between iPhone updates.  The last time we had a really long gap was the time between 2.2.1 (released January 27, 2009) and 3.0 (released June 17, 2009). That delay of almost five months resulted in a ton of new features, many of which were major improvements to the iPhone, and even that delay didn’t really seem like five months because Apple actually previewed iPhone Software 3.0 on March 17, 2009. 

The changes in 3.1.3 are:

1. Improve the accuracy of the reported battery level on the iPhone 3GS.  (I never considered it inaccurate, and I’m curious whether I will notice any changes.)
2. Fixed an issue where third party apps would not launch in some instances.  (I don’t remember ever seeing this bug.)
3. Fixed a bug that could cause an app to crash when using the Japanese Kana keyboard.  (Um, okay.)
4. Fixed a security flaw in CoreAudio whereby a bad guy could create an MP4 audio file that would crash an app or possibly even run arbitrary code.
5. Fixed a security flaw in ImageIO whereby a bad guy could create a TIFF image that would crash an app or possibly even run arbitrary code.
6. Fixed a security flaw in Recovery Mode whereby a bad guy with physical access to a locked iPhone might have been able to bypass the lock and access a user’s data.
7. Fixed a security flaw in WebKit whereby a bad guy could set up an FTP server that, when accessed on the iPhone in Safari, could crash an app, obtain certain information from the iPhone, or even run arbitrary code.
8. Fixed a security flaw in WebKit whereby a bad guy could send you an e-mail and when you read the e-mail on the iPhone, another server could send audio or video to the iPhone

So in other words, Apple fixed three bugs that I have never myself encountered, or for that matter even heard of, and fixed five security flaws that I don’t believe have ever been exploited by a bad guy in the real world, but I suppose I can sleep a little easier knowing that they are fixed.

As for the new features in iPhone Software 3.1.3?  There are none. But there is strong evidence that new features are coming this year.  First, we know that Apple typically releases a major software update in the summer.  Software 2.0, which brought us the App Store and a bunch more, was released on July 11, 2008.  As noted above, Software 3.0, which brought us copy and paste and a bunch more, was released June 17, 2009.  This would lead one to believe that iPhone Software 4.0 will be released in June or July of 2010.

Second, we know that the iPad previewed last week was running iPhone Software 3.2.  Since Apple calls the iPad software “iPhone Software,” that leads one to believe that at least some of the new features that we saw in the preview of the iPad will also work on the iPhone.  I talked about this last week, and perhaps when the iPad is released at the end of March, we’ll also see another an update for the iPhone — unless Apple just decides to wait a little longer and put all of the new features for the iPhone in a 4.0 update this summer.

Should you update to iPhone Software 3.1.3?  Yes.  You won’t notice much of a difference, but now that Apple has confirmed to the world that there were five security flaws in the prior iPhone Software, I suppose it is possible that someone will now try to exploit those.  Just to be safe, I recommend that you update your iPhone by connecting it to your computer running iTunes.  And while you are at it, let iTunes update as well; iTunes was updated to version 9.0.3 the other day.

Yesterday I talked about the new Fastcase app for the iPhone, and I ended by wondering what Westlaw, Lexis and Google might offer in the future.  I see that the February edition of the ABA Journal will include a fascinating article about the future of legal research.  The article does not explicitly mention the iPhone, but it is still a great sneak peak into the future of legal research technology, some of which I presume will eventually trickle down to the iPhone.

The article talks about how Westlaw is about to make available its new WestlawNext system, which will be a paid upgrade.  (The service was officially unveiled yesterday at LegalTech New York.)  You can read more about WestlawNext in this preview by Robert Ambrogi and this one by Simon Chester.  I also recommend that you check out this page from Westlaw, which contains a nice video overview of WestlawNext.  Plus, if you watch the entire video (which is just a few minutes long) West will send you a $5 Starbucks card and enter you for a chance to win a Kindle.

Later this year, Lexis will debut the new version of its system, frequently referred to as New Lexis.  Like WestlawNext, the New Lexis will be much more Google-like in its searches.  Bloomberg is also testing its own legal research product that will be available later this year.  The article also discusses the much cheaper Fastcase system and the free Google Scholar system.

According to the article, Google’s Rick Klau indicated that Google has no current plans to do more with Google Scholar than is already available.  That was a big surprise to me because with Google’s current push into mobile devices (including smart phones that run its own Android operating system), I assumed that a mobile version of Google Scholar was being worked on right now.

I was excited to see the Fastcase iPhone app come out a few days ago, and it looks like this was just the beginning of an exciting year for legal research technology.

I will start this review with what probably belongs in my conclusion:  Every single lawyer using an iPhone should download the Fastcase app.  Moreover, the availability of the free Fastcase app is a compelling reason for any attorney not using an iPhone to purchase one today.  This app is that useful.

With that said, let’s talk about this app.  Fastcase is a legal research service that lets you search caselaw and statutes, an alternative to Westlaw or Lexis that has been around for ten years.  On a desktop computer, the main selling point is price.  At only $700 to $1000 a year for unlimited use, the service is a fraction of the cost of Westlaw or Lexis.  Indeed, 16 bar associations have purchased Fastcase subscriptions for all of their members.  The Louisiana State Bar Association, which includes all lawyers in Louisiana, is one such organization so I have been using Fastcase for free since 2005.  On a desktop computer, my opinion of Fastcase is mixed.  On the plus side, the service is fast and (for me) free, and I often use it to grab an opinion from another state when I have the cite and don’t want to have to pay Westlaw/Lexis fees to get the case.  On the other hand, when I am doing hard core legal research, I rarely use Fastcase because of the features it lacks as compared to Westlaw/Lexis including headnotes, Keycite/Shepard’s, locate, annotations, etc.  Thus, I use Fastcase as a supplement to my legal research, but not my primary research tool.

On the iPhone, however, I don’t need something as powerful as the full version of Westlaw or Lexis.  My research needs on the iPhone usually consist of pulling a case when I am out of the office and have a citation, doing a quick search for recent cases that contain a word or phrase, or pulling a statute.  Last week, for example, I was in trial and there were several times when I wanted to quickly pull a case at issue and read it.  I accessed Google Scholar using Safari (which I previously discussed here) and for the most part I got what I needed, but it would have been much easier to use a dedicated legal research app.  How I wish that Fastcase for the iPhone had been released last Monday instead of last Friday!  I would have made extensive use of this app during my time in the courtroom, and the app is so efficient that I would have been much more productive.  I know that I will be using this app a lot in the future when I am in court, a meeting, or otherwise out of the office and need to look at the law.

When  you first launch the free app, you are asked to create a Fastcase account (unless you already have one).  Fortunately, the iPhone account is free for everyone — even if you don’t practice in a state like Louisiana where the desktop computer version of Fastcase is free.  Once you have an account you are brought to the main screen that appears on every subsequent launch, from which you can search for caselaw or statutes.

The search feature works well,  You can search by terms, using operators such as AND or OR, quotes to search for specific phrases, w/# to search within a number of words, etc.  You can also just type a natural language search.  You can then select search options.  First, you select the jurisdiction, and the choices are comprehensive ranging from broad such as the entire database, all federal appellate or all state courts to very focused such as individual states or even an individual federal district court (something that, to my knowledge, you cannot even do on Westlaw).  Second, you have the option of selecting a date range.  You can also choose to sort your results by relevance, decision date, case name or authority check (more on that below).  Tap the search button and the app will query the Fastcase server and display your results.  In the settings you can choose to display just a list of results or to include below the cite either the most relevant paragraph of the opinion or the first paragraph of the opinion.

Tap a case in the list to view the case.  There are no West or Lexis style headnotes, but you do get the full text of the opinion, with hyperlinks to any cited cases.  The text is very easy to read, and in the app settings you can even choose a larger or smaller font.  Search terms are highlighted and West reporter pages and other appropriate page cites (such as Louisiana’s public domain citation pages) are indicated.  You can flick your finger on the screen to scroll up and down, plus you can slide your finger along the right margin of the case to very quickly scroll through the entire case — an incredibly useful feature.  A convenient “Most Relevant” button jumps you to the paragraph of the case that appears to be the best match for your search terms, and in my testing this feature worked rather well.  If you are looking at a case that you will want to come back to in the future, tap the Save button at the top right.  You cannot e-mail a case, but you can use the iPhone’s copy function to copy words, sentences or full paragraphs (or, I suppose if you have a lot of patience dragging the text selection handles, the entire case), which you can then paste into an e-mail or some other app.

As noted above, Fastcase lacks the Keycite feature of Westlaw or the Shepard’s feature of Lexis.  This is unfortunate; the ability to quickly determine whether a case is good law while you are in court would be very useful.  But to give you some search guidance, Fastcase includes a feature called Authority Check.  If you have the feature turned on when you run a search, you will see an orange bubble at the top right of each case containing two numbers.  The first number is the “Cited Generally” number, and it is supposed to tell you how many times this case has been cited.  The second number is the “Cited Within” number and it tells you how many of the cases in your search results cite that case.  In theory, Cited Within is supposed to be helpful because a case might be cited a million times for some other proposition, but cited within tells you how many times it has been cited by cases that meet your search terms and thus should give you an indication of how important the case is to the issue that matters to you.  While it is nice for Fastcase to offer these Authority Check features, my experience using Fastcase on the computer is that they are not very helpful, and in my limited tests on the iPhone this remained true.  Try them out and see if they work for you, but for me I think it best to just turn off the option to use Authority Check when you run your search, and you’ll get your search results a little faster that way.

Two very useful features of the Fastcase app are the “Recent” and “Saved” buttons at the bottom.  One button shows your recent searches, and you can simply tap a search to run it again.  The other button shows the cases that you have saved for future reference.

From the main screen of the Fastcase app you can also either search for or browse statutes.  (This feature is not available for a handful of states.)  Searching statutes is similar to searching cases.  Choose a jurisdiction and the set of law (such as a state’s code of civil procedure rules) and then run your search.  Unfortunately, when you are viewing a statute that you found in a search, you cannot advance to the next or previous statute in the books.  But if you instead choose the browse function for statutes, you can jump into a set of statutes by title, then chapter, then section and browse backwards and forwards through the statutes.  Unfortunately, when you are browsing there is no quick way to jump to a specific statute, such as 28 U.S.C. 1441, and instead you need to navigate to it by title and then chapter — information that you often will not know, although you can figure it out.

The Fastcase app is not perfect, but most of its shortcomings come from Fastcase itself, not from the iPhone implementation.  For example, the lack of Keycite/Shepard’s is a major limitation.  Also, you frequently see cases show up twice, once for the West reporter version and once as a slip opinion from the court itself.  The cases also don’t have the helpful editorial content such as headnotes that you get with Westlaw or Lexis.  Statutes lack annotations and historical information.  I doubt that these shortcomings will be addressed any time soon.  A key reason that Fastcase is so inexpensive is that the company doesn’t hire researchers to add editorial content such as headnotes and Keycite/Shepard’s.  As for the features that could be added to the app itself, my #1 request is the ability to e-mail a case or statute.  It would also be useful to have hyperlinks in cases to references to statutes; currently you only see hyperlinks to cases.

For accessing statutes, there are times when you will find it more useful to use a dedicated app such as the numerous legal statute apps sold by Cliff Maier, one example of which is his dedicated version of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.  Jumping to a specific statute, browsing and searching is faster and easier in a dedicated app, plus a dedicated app will work even if you don’t have an internet connection.  But Fastcase has the advantage of being free.

I presume that Fastcase is offering the iPhone app for free in the hopes that attorneys will enjoy using the iPhone version so much that they will sign up for Fastcase on their computer.  That’s not a bad strategy.  My opinion of Fastcase has gone up quite a bit as I have been using this app over the last few days, and I’m sure that I will find myself giving Fastcase a second look on my computer as a result.  If Westlaw or Lexis were to come out with a full featured app, then Fastcase would have some serious competition.  Lexis already has an iPhone app, and while it is free, it lacks so many important features that I find the current version of the app just plain frustrating.  Also, I suspect that at some point, someone will come out with a good iPhone app front end to Google Scholar, which would also give Fastcase some serious competition.  But unless and until we see something good and free from Westlaw, Lexis or Google, Fastcase will clearly be the research app of choice for all attorneys with iPhones.  Congratulations to Ed Walters and his team at Fastcase for creating an incredibly useful app that every lawyer should get immediately.

Click here to get Fastcase (free):