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Category Archives: Apps

How TrialPad and Scannable Can Work Together for Lawyers

Posted on June 22, 2015 by Ben Stevens Posted in Apps, Guest Posts, iPad, Office Management, Software Leave a comment
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TrialPad and ScannableThe following Guest Post is provided exclusively to The Mac Lawyer by my buddy, Ware Cornell, a Board Certified Civil Trial Lawyer and 2015 Super Lawyer, who practices in Florida. Ware has been a long time reader of this blog, and he has provided several other great Guest Posts over the years which you can view and read here. He asked last week if I thought my readers would be interested in learning how he uses TrialPad and Scannable together to maximize his efficiency, and I’m pleased to present his article below. I hope it’s helpful to you and your practice.

Background

When I started practicing law, my first assignment relative to the courtroom was to lug in a couple of “trial bags” and organize the file on counsel table for my boss. By organizing and understanding the file in order to anticipate what would be needed and when it would be needed, I was taking an invaluable step on the road to becoming an actual trial lawyer myself.

Forty years later, I am still analyzing documentary evidence and organizing it for presentation. The forty pound trial bag is gone. When I go to trial these days, I take a notebook with hard copies of exhibits to be admitted, one legal pad, and my iPad Air 2.

I am still engaged in organizing evidence, examining witnesses, preparing instructions, and making opening and closing statements. But what replaces the forty pound trial bag? What functions as well as two paralegals and four file cabinets which were brought into the courtroom by a BigLaw opponent?

There are two principal apps that I use: (1) TrialPad from Lit Software and (2) Scannable from Evernote. I start using them at the beginning of the case and all throughout discovery. There are a few other apps that help me along, namely WD MyCloud which connects directly to the MyBook Live Duo, a network-attached storage device, which functions as our office network and storage center. Using the My Cloud app, I can retrieve any document from the office and view and save it on my iPad. So if an issue comes up in the trial over a discovery motion that is not already saved on TrialPad, I can quickly retrieve it.

TrialPad

TrialPad is my organizer. It forces me to think about the elements of my case and how I am going to present it. It also allows me to put documents in a central folder and in the witness folders for introduction or cross examination. Once in a folder my case looks like this:

Trial Pad 1

As you see, I use green internal folders with a Pi sign for the Plaintiff’s case and red folders with Delta embossed for the Defendant’s case. Normally I would have folders with significant orders, the pleadings, jury instructions, opening statement and closing argument. This particular case was a short arbitration and closing argument was submitted post hearing in writing.

TrialPad is very flexible and it is easy to add documents to witness folders for cross examination or to the argument folder for handy reference. As to closing argument TrialPad has an output feature where exhibits, powerpoint, and even video can be presented to the jury by projector or video link.

Scannable

Now what is Scannable and why do I put it in the same pantheon as TrialPad. Scannable is an Evernote app that uses the camera on an iPhone or iPad to capture a document and create a pdf file. Unlike other apps, the Scannable “finds” the four corners of a document and automatically snaps it. This means you do not have to focus or press the button to take a picture.

I use it in depositions extensively. As most trial lawyers of a certain age know, the days of making speaking objections or generally misbehaving are over. When your client is being deposed, you pretty much have to sit there, objecting only to the form and without the ability, except in areas of privilege to instruct a client not to answer. This is, for me anyway, a very boring time, listening to a client tell a story I heard on intake and in depo prep.

In order to avoid taking home lots of paper exhibits of which I probably already have copies I began to use Scannable to preserve the exhibit as a pdf. But then what, I needed to put exhibit numbers on each document. Then I remembered a TrialPad feature. TrialPad allows you to attach exhibit stickers to any document. Further more it numbers them consecutively (even if exhibits are alphabetically marked).

Scannable automatically saves to Evernote, and then asked if you are do or want to “Share Again”. Sharing again enables you to save to other apps including TrialPad. In the case folder in TrialPad I will create a deposition exhibit holder and export my Scannable pdf to it. I then add an exhibit sticker to the document and rename if necessary.

Trial Pad 2

Scannable is a free app but Evernote will sell you two feature packed versions for $29.99 and $49.99 annually, TrialPad is expensive at $129.99. It is well worth the price.

About the Author: G. Ware Cornell, Jr. is a 2015 Super Lawyer and Board Certified Civil Trial Lawyer in Weston, Florida. Ware graduated from Emory University and the University of Georgia School of Law. He served as a federal law clerk in the Southern District of Florida. Ware is AV®-rated by Martindale-Hubbell, a 2014 Super Lawyer in the field of Employment and Labor Law, and a Fellow of the Litigation Counsel of America. His interest in computers began in 1984 when he saw a commercial during the Super Bowl. He immediately bought the original 128kb Macintosh. He has reviewed computers, software, and gadgets of all kinds in addition to books as an Amazon top reviewer.

Great Resource About Dropbox for Lawyers

Posted on April 30, 2015 by Ben Stevens Posted in Apps, Office Management, Technology 1 Comment
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dropbox for lawyersDropbox is one of the most often discussed pieces of legal technology for lawyers, and their uses of and opinions about it vary wides. When I give presentations on cloud computing, it’s always among the most frequently asked questions. Some trust it completely and use it daily, some use it with overlays (like Viivo or Boxcryptor), while others take a wide birth or only use it for limited purposes.

What is Dropbox (and its companion Dropbox for Business)? Simply put, it’s a cloud-based service that allows you to save files on one or device and then access them from anywhere. In other words, you can save a file on your desktop computer, have it synch (virtually in real time) to your laptop, your assistant’s computer, your iPhone/iPad, etc. A copy of your files is also served on Dropbox’s server, so you have a backup there too, and you can log into and access your files from any computer anywhere.

Tim Baran recently published at article at the Legal Productivity blog about Dropbox for lawyers, in which he listed some of the leading tech gurus’ thoughts about Dropbox. My comments in his article were:

My firm has not had a physical server since 2009. Instead, we’ve relied on Dropbox to act as our firm’s “virtual” server, which has made us incredibly more productive. Having our documents stored in the cloud makes them accessible from anywhere and its smartphone apps enable us to literally have all of our files with us all the time. Knowing that a copy of our documents is stored offsite also provides peace of mind in case the unthinkable happens. Dropbox also has many built-in features, such as versioning, sharing, and searching and its integration with numerous other apps, all of which make it invaluable to us. Suffice it to say that we love Dropbox and it’s one of those tools that we can’t imagine practicing without.

Some of the other attorneys interviewed were Jeff Richardson, Lee Rosen, Tom Mighell, Jeffrey Lewis, Martha Sperry, and Scott Grossberg, and as mentioned above their opinions on Dropbox varied widely, with many different viewpoints offered on the issue of security. Is Dropbox right for you or your firm? Only you can answer that question, but even after surveying the other products and services available today, we still believe Dropbox for Business an invaluable tool in our arsenal and something that enables us to provide high quality legal services to our clients no matter where we are.

Source: “How Lawyers Use Dropbox” by Tim Baran, published at Legal Productivity.

Avoid Waiting on Hold via FastCustomer

Posted on January 28, 2015 by Ben Stevens Posted in Apps, Did You Know?, Office Management, Online Resources, Product Reviews Leave a comment
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fastcustomerDo you enjoy wasting time on hold while listening to elevator music? Me neither. FastCustomer can (thankfully) make that experience a distant memory.

Simply let them know the name of the company that you would like to talk with (via call, text, or search), and they will have a customer service agent from that company call you. Voila! No time wasted and no elevator music.

FastCustomer is available via website or its iOS and Android apps. Among the thousands of companies that participate in this service are Apple, Verizon, AT&T, Bank of America, Southwest, Citibank, Mastercard, Visa, Discover, Sirius/XM, USPS, Walmart, Costco, etc.

Great Resource About Evernote for Lawyers

Posted on January 21, 2015 by Ben Stevens Posted in Apps, Office Management, Technology Leave a comment
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evernoteYou use Evernote, don’t you? If you don’t, you’re missing out. Evernote is an easy way to help busy lawyers keep track of all sorts of information and easily find it when needed. It can be used for all sorts of things, as evidenced by Tim Baran’s recent article discussing how lawyers utilize it.

Tim asked legal technology gurus from all over how they use Evernote, and his list included my good friends Tom Mighell, David Sparks, John Harding, and Katie Floyd (among many others). Better yet, his article includes links to many other resources discussing many best practices and uses for implementing Evernote into your practice.

So what two things do I use Evernote for on a regular basis and what makes it invaluable to me? You’ll have to read Tim’s article to find out, but trust me, it’s well worth your time. I want to offer a huge thank you to Tim for providing this excellent article and resource about Evernote for lawyers.

Source: “How Lawyers Use Evernote” by Tim Baran, published at Legal Productivity.

Scanbot Pro Is The Best iOS Scanner App

Posted on January 14, 2015 by Ben Stevens Posted in Apps, Product Reviews, Technology 5 Comments
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scanbotThere are many iOS scanner apps, and I’ve previously blogged about my affinity for Scanner Pro. However, I’ve discovered a new app that’s a game changer – Scanbot Pro, and I believe that it is easily the best iOS scanner app available today.

What makes Scanbot Pro the best? It has OCR (optical character recognition) technology built in, so it can recognize and extract text from your scans. You can also annotate your scanned PDFs, including highlighting, notes, and signatures.

If you regularly work from your iPad or iPhone, this is a big deal. You are no longer dependent upon a desktop application to OCR text contained in a scanned document, and you can edit the PDFs within the same app.

I have been using it for several weeks, and I find it to be very accurate. Scanbot has a free version, but the OCR functionality is in its Pro version, which costs $4.99 (though it’s occasionally on sale). Trust me, this is money well spent, and I believe that you will find Scanbot Pro an invaluable tool for your iOS arsenal. You can learn more about this app here.

Where to Find the Best App Deals

Posted on December 23, 2014 by Ben Stevens Posted in Apps, Online Resources Leave a comment
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App DealsSanta told me that there’s a good chance that you may be receiving some iTunes gift cards for Christmas. Knowing that you will want to be a savvy shopper and get the most bang for your buck, we compiled a list of sites that are known to have regular sales. Check these out these sites for the best app deals, and let us know in the Comments if you have other favorites of your own:

AppShopper – Notifies you which apps (both iOS and Mac) are on sale each day and allows you to create wish lists containing the ones that you are most interested in.

AppSaga – Lists apps that are available for no cost, which includes Apps Gone Free (apps that are temporarily available for 100% off).

iOSnoops – Features lists of price drops, apps that are free for a short time, new apps, etc.

App Store – Apple’s old reliable offers one free app per week.

Put Items in Pocket and View When You’re Ready

Posted on December 10, 2014 by Ben Stevens Posted in Apps, Did You Know?, Offline Resources, Online Resources, Technology Leave a comment
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pocketPocket (formerly Read It Later) enables you to save things that you find online to review later. The most common use is to save articles, videos, recipes, and other items of interest to read when it’s convenient for you, even if you don’t have internet access (like when you’re on an airplane). You can send items to Pocket through plug-ins for most web browsers, numerous apps, or even via email. Follow the lead of the over 12 million users who have saved over 1 billion items to Pocket.

Take Control of Your Email with Boomerang

Posted on November 19, 2014 by Ben Stevens Posted in Apps, Office Management, Online Resources, Product Reviews Leave a comment
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boomerangWhat if you could take control of your email? You determine when emails appear in your Inbox or when they were sent to your recipients. What if your email could automatically remind you if don’t hear back from a recipient?

All of this – and more – is possible thanks to Boomerang, a plug-in for Gmail and Outlook that can help you transform from email novice to email ninja in no time. This plug-in helped me reduce the average number of emails in my Inbox to less than 10 (down from a number that I’d be embarrassed to mention).

It is not an understatement to say that Boomerang is one of the best and most helpful applications that I have ever found. It enables me to control my email instead of it controlling me. Boomerang has many more features than I can cover in this article, so please visit their website to learn what all it does and to view demonstration videos. However, I have highlighted some of the best features below:

boomerang 2Make emails reappear. One of the best features of Boomerang is its ability to take emails from your Inbox and then make them reappear at a later time. For instance, if you receive calling instructions for a meeting next week, you can set it to return 15 minutes before the start time instead of allowing that email to clutter your Inbox in the interim. You can even add a note to the email to remind you why you wanted it to be returned.

Send emails later. You can schedule an email to be sent at the perfect time. When you finish writing the email, the “send later” button enables you to determine exactly when the email will be sent. Even better, you can specify the desired time in many different ways, whether that’s “in 10 minutes”, “tomorrow morning”, or at a specific date/time (12/03/14 at 5:34pm).

Remind you to follow up. You can tell Boomerang to return an email to your Inbox if you don’t receive a reply within a specified time, if the email is not opened within a designated time frame, or if you just need to see it again as a reminder. It also enables you to get “read receipts” and track when emails have been opened – even in Gmail, which doesn’t provide this functionality natively.

Rocket Matter Releases iPad Edition

Posted on September 29, 2014 by Ben Stevens Posted in Apps, iOS, iPad, Office Management, Product Reviews, Software Leave a comment
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Rocket MatterRocket Matter created the first cloud practice management software for the legal community in 2008, and since then it has become the premier total law firm management software in the cloud. My law firm has used Rocket Matter since the day it launched, and we couldn’t be happier with it.

However, the folks at Rocket Matter are not ones to rest on their laurels, as evidenced by the numerous new features and refinements rolled out in recent years. Now, they have released their new iPad edition, and they are once again leading the way with the first and only tablet platform for today’s busy, mobile lawyers.

portriat-1This release (shown at right) heralds a new era of legal practice management software with a dedicated tablet platform that’s fast, easy-to-use, and accessible both online and offline. Lawyers can now enjoy legal iPad software that delivers incredible productivity gains and at the same time has the beauty and the simple elegance of the iPad itself.

Larry Port, Rocket Matter’s CEO, says

We’re excited to announce today our evolved platform and sleek new look. The Rocket Matter iPad Edition is not just a mere ‘app’ – it’s an entire tablet-based solution that ties into Rocket Matter’s cloud data storage. We’ve carefully watched how lawyers, law firms, and bar associations have all eagerly embraced the practical advantages that tablets can provide. We took these observations, combined them with direct suggestions from our lawyer partners, and did what we do best: built software that is simply unmatched in legal practice management.

You can learn much more about Rocket Matter’s iPad edition and see a video of it in action here. Lawyers with Rocket Matter subscriptions will be able to download the iPad Edition from the Apple iTunes store starting today.

Keep Your Computer Awake With Caffeine for Mac

Posted on July 8, 2014 by Ben Stevens Posted in Apps, Product Reviews, Software Leave a comment
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caffeineCaffeine comes in handy sometimes. No, not the kind in your cup o’ joe, but the free app for the Mac. If you aren’t familiar with Caffeine, it is an app that enables you to keep your computer awake for a specified length of time. In other words, it prevents your screen from dimming, your screensaver from activating, and/or your computer from going to sleep for a set period of time.

When you install Caffeine for Mac, it puts a little coffee cup icon in your menu bar, and you activate it by simply clicking on the cup. You can choose your default length of time, from five minutes to five hours to indefinitely. To turn it off, simply click the coffee cup again. This can come in very handy when you are transferring large files or even when viewing Netflix.

Again, Lighthead Software offers this app for free, and it’s available here. I first mentioned Caffeine in a blog post six years ago, and I’ve used it ever since. If you don’t have it, check it out, and I’m sure you’ll find it to be useful, like I do.

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