Scanner Pro On Sale Now

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Scanner ProWouldn’t it be nice to have a scanner in your pocket? How many times have you wanted (or needed) to scan something on the go – documents, receipts, etc.? Well, now you can have a scanner with you all the time, and a pretty good one to boot.

I have used Scanner Pro for sometime as my “go to” scanner app, and it works great. I use it when I’m out of the office and sometimes even when I’m in the office. Apparently, I’m not the only one – as Readdle is celebrating 6 million downloads by offering Scanner Pro for less than half price.

Scanner Pro enables you to scan paper documents into PDFs using the built-in iOS camera. Its unique technology automatically detects the edges, fixes geometry, removes shades and other visual defects to achieve clean and professional scan. Once you have scanned your document, you can easily share the PDF via e-mail or upload to Dropbox or Evernote. The New York Times said “Scanner Pro is perhaps the best app for quickly scanning and saving a digital version of a paper document.”

For a limited time, you can get Scanner Pro from the App Store for only $2.99 (instead of it’s regular $6.99). At either price it’s a bargain. If you don’t already have it, get it now! Trust me, you won’t regret it.

4 Great Reasons to Attend MILOfest 2014

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MILOfestMy friends at CHL Software, the developers of Doc Moto document and email management software for Macs, have graciously agreed for me to republish their blog post about MILOfest 2014, which will be held October 23-25, 2014, at Disney’s Yacht Club Resort in Orlando, Florida:

For once this isn’t an article from CHL about document and email management. This article is about why, as a Mac using lawyer, attending the forthcoming MILOfest event in Florida can reap benefits to you and your business that go beyond the material covered in the presentations.

Just in case you don’t know, MILO stands for Macs In Law Offices, and it’s a group of individuals and organizations who delight in getting the very best return from their decision to adopt Mac in the work place.

Reason 1 – The rise of the Mac

Macs and other Apple products are on the ascendancy in law firms. This trend looks set to continue with Apple’s continued focus on ease of use and the subsequent gains in productivity this delivers. Even today no other manufacturer produces tablets and laptops that can be so easily used wherever you are.

Reason 2 – The knowledge share

Apple products are packed full of tricks and features that can make a big impact on productivity. But finding the time to discover these for yourself can be difficult. At MILOfest you meet people who simply love pushing their Apple devices to the limit, they know all the tips and tricks to improve your productivity.

Reason 3 – The Vendors

Of course there are always a small number of hand picked vendors at the event too. All of them are like us, focused and committed to developing and delivering the very best productivity tools and services for the Mac user. MILOfest is just the perfect event to meet these vendors, and put forward your suggestions and requirements. I know in our case that a great many of DocMoto’s most productive innovations have come from the people we have met at MILOfest.

Reason 4 – The sum greater than the parts

Mac usage within the legal world continues to rise and MILOfest more than any other event drives the force of change. As more and more lawyers see the benefits of using Mac for business so vendors respond with more and better developed products. Overall that has to be good for everyone.

Begin your journey and register now. To book your place at MILOfest 2014 just click here to register.

Source: “MILOfest 2014 – Four good reasons to attend” published CHL’s DocMoto Blog.

Review of the Transcend Jet Drive Lite

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Transcend Jet Drive LiteOne of the few deficiencies associated with solid state drive equipped Macs is the comparatively small size of internal storage. In an era where 500 GB is the norm and even 1 TB is common, a 256 GB drive is small.

When I bought my 15 inch Mac Book Pro with Retina Display, I rationalized that with iCloud and other cloud storage options the loss of half of my hard drive would be find compensation in the increased speed and reliability of a SSD. To some extent those assumptions were correct. Nonetheless I often found myself managing drive utilization trying to keep at least 10% of the total storage space open.

Transcend provides a solution. For slightly less than $80 and a Jet Drive Lite 350, I have increased my drive space by fifty percent. The Transcend Jet Drive Lite is essentially a High Capacity SD card which installs into one of the existing SD ports on MacBook Air and MacBook Pro. 

There are four different model cards, and you should carefully consider the chart before ordering. Each card is tailored for specific machines and is designed to be inserted into the port and lie more of less flush against the case, not sticking out like a normal SD card. The normal card can be spring ejected. This is not so with the Jet Drive Lite. It is very difficult to remove, and since it is in effect a secondary SSD that permanency is a virtue. I have inadvertently “ejected” the card in the Finder only to discover it simply disconnects. The simplest recovery mode is to log out and then log back in and the drive is automatically recognized.

The card comes in a box, with warranty information, and nothing else. The limited lifetime warranty, if you can read it without an electron microscope, is quite good. You should make sure however that your card data on it is being backed up regularly. I use Time Capsule and the setting on  installation excluded the Jet Drive Lite. I think the reason for this is that the drive  appears to your Mac to be no more than a temporary SD card and SD cards are not backed up unless you change your settings.

So having a card and an open port I pressed it in. Since the card doesn’t eject, there is no “click” associated with my effort. However an icon appeared immediately on my desktop, and I knew my MBP was reading the drive.

My first thought was that I would move all my photos and videos to the Transcend Jet Drive Lite 350. Immediately I received a message- “The destination disk is not properly formatted.” Indeed it was not, and that is peculiar. We are looking at a product designed exclusively for newer Apple laptops, and the card was FAT formatted. It takes less than a minute to reformat the card to Mac OS Extended (Journaled).

Once the disk was reformatted I moved my entire Aperture Library to the Jet Drive Lite . I am a lawyer, not a technician, but it seemed to me that the transfer speed was quite fast, at least as fast as my USB 3.0 flash drive and possibly as fast as a Thunderbolt device. All in all, the Transcend Jet Drive Lite meets a lot of my needs. The price and the huge capacity should justify you giving it a try.

About the Author: G. Ware Cornell, Jr. is a 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.

Facts About Cloud Computing for Attorneys

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cloud computingCloud computing can, without a doubt, help attorneys be more efficient, productive, and profitable. The software that my firm uses is almost entirely cloud-based, with the “big three” being Rocket Matter for case management / time & billing; Google Apps for Business for email; and Quickbooks Online for accounting.

I have given presentations all across the country about the benefits of cloud computing for attorneys, but despite my advocacy for this technology, some lawyers are still skeptical, suspicious, or fearful of implementing cloud computing in their law practices. I found the following statistics, which may help ease some of those lingering concerns that have prevented them from taking the plunge:

• A survey of over 3,500 IT decision makers from a variety of enterprises revealed that 82% of the companies saved money and cut costs, with 80% seeing improvements within the first 6 months of adopting the cloud.

• 90% of IT decision makers found improvement in at least one of the following areas of their IT department: efficiency, quality, and security.

• Banking has the most activity in the cloud (64%), which is even more than social media (58%), photos (29%), and file sharing (19%). In fact, cloud demand for banking almost doubled in 2013 with the introduction of mobile banking.

• Over 50% of the United States government is in the cloud, and experts say it is the biggest cloud user in the world.

Source: “7 Statistics You Didn’t Know About Cloud Computing” by Maria Santacaterina.

Review of STM’s Laptop Messenger Bag

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trust medium laptop messenger bagSTM has been creating comfortable, secure, and stylish ways to transport laptops and other digital gear since 1998, and I have used (and reviewed) several of their products over the years. They were kind enough to send me one of their new Trust Medium Laptop Messenger Bags a couple of months ago to review.

Since receiving the Messenger Bag, I have put it through its paces. For instance, it has traveled with me on a week long trip to Mexico, a few days out West, an overnight trip in SC, and everywhere in between. The short review is that I thrilled with it and highly recommend it, but keep reading to let me explain why.

First and most importantly, it provides outstanding protection for your laptop and other tech gear. the protective compartment is designed for a 15″ laptop, but my 11″ MacBook Air fit just fine without too much wiggle room around the edges. It is padded on both sides and is accessible from the top without opening the front flap, which comes in handy when going through airport security checks.

The protective front flap has a lined pocket on its outside, which is a great place to store your iPhone, headphones, sunglasses, or other items that you may need while on the go. Upon opening the flap, you immediately see two easy-to-access zippered compartments, one of which has dividers for pens, business cards, etc. along with a clip for your keys.

Fully opening the flap reveals the cavernous interior – I mean that in the best possible way. It is easy to fit a change of clothes or two (including a pair of shoes) inside. However, if you don’t need all that space, the bag is made in such a way that it folds to help minimize it. In other words, it doesn’t seem like a huge bag, but it has the space there if you need it. The interior also has a padded pocket that is perfect for an iPad or iPad mini, along with more dividers for power cords, batteries, etc.

The Messenger is much lighter than you would suspect, weighing a mere 2.5 pounds. The zipper and pulls are high quality, and the padded, non-slip shoulder strap is comfortable and easily adjusts to accommodate both shoulder to cross-body wearers. The water resistant exterior features side water bottle pockets, reflective loops for better night safety, and an exterior pocket for quick access to legal pads, magazines, etc.

Previous reviews of STM products:

7 Tips to Help Keep Your iPad Secure

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ipad securityiPad use continues to increase in the legal field, and millions of attorneys use them to work on their clients’ cases every day. In light of our ethical obligation to safeguard and protect our clients’ information, we should take all reasonable steps to ensure that the information on our iPads is secure and out of the reach of thieves and hackers. The following tips and suggestions can help you keep your iPad secure:

1. Don’t leave it lying around. iPads are easy targets for thieves, so don’t let yours out of your sight when in a public place. Also, don’t leave it in plain view in your car or you might end of up with a broken window too.

2. Use a passcode. Although it’s not 100% hacker-proof, it will block unauthorized users from accessing your information.

3. Consider enabling automatic data erasing. You can configure your iPad to erase your data after 10 failed pass-code attempts. However, this may not be a good solution for anyone who constantly forgets a password or for those who have kids trying to log in repeatedly.

4. Encrypt your hard drive. On your iPad, simply enabling the password will turn on encryption. All iOS devices also come with a second layer of encryption (called data protection) that protects your e-mails and attachments. This protection can’t be broken, even if the passcode is stripped.

5. Enable iCloud Find My Phone. This is a valuable tool to use if your iPad is misplaced. With it, you can log in and find your iPad and/or remotely wipe it if you have sensitive data on it.

6. Install software updates. As with all software, make sure you have the latest iOS security updates installed to protect against hackers and viruses.

7. Only connect to trusted WiR networks. Public WiFis are open territory for hackers and identity thieves. Whenever you connect, make sure it’s a legitimate, secure connection.

This article was excerpted from the Technology Tips newsletter published by Tom Lambotte, President of GlobalMacIT, an Apple-centric IT firm in Northeast Ohio that specializes in business solutions for law firms, small businesses. Their monthly newsletters are an excellent resource for Mac users, and you can access their archive of past newsletters here.

A Presentation on Presentations, or How to Avoid Death by PowerPoint

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how to avoid death by powerpoint

Randy Juip‘s one hour master class on presentations dazzled crowds at TECHSHOW in Chicago and MILOfest in Orlando over the last several months. I’m thrilled to announce that I have managed to get Randy to come give an expanded two hour version of “A Presentation on Presentations, or How to Avoid Death by PowerPoint” at the South Carolina Association for Justice Annual Convention in Hilton Head, SC on August 7, 2014.

Anyone giving presentations in this day and age – whether to clients, groups, judges, or juries – have to live up to high standards. Today’s media-savvy clients, judges, and juries expect clean, coherent, and logical presentations.  Unfortunately many attorneys return, time and time again, to a “Death by Powerpoint” style of presentation, replete with 12-point font, bullet point after bullet point, and text-dense incoherence.  This presentation will explore the art of slide design, the science of proper presentation, and the mechanics of giving your audiences the slick, professional, and visceral presentations they crave.

This seminar will obviously be a tremendous benefit to trial lawyers, as it will give them practical tips and techniques they can immediately implement in their practices. However, having already seen this presentation myself, I am confident that every attorney in all practice areas will benefit from seeing it, because whether we realize it or not, lawyers give presentations every day. All communication involves some sort of “presentation” and knowing what works (and what doesn’t) can be a very helpful tool and provide you with a working advantage.

If you want to find out more or register for the South Carolina Association for Justice Annual Convention, you can click here or call (803) 799-5097. Trust me, you do not want to miss Randy’s presentation, so make plans now to attend. I look forward to seeing you there.

Rocket Matter Now Features Evergreen Retainers

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Rocket MatterRocket Matter has long been the best case management software for attorneys (bar none), but today, it released a new feature which takes things to an entirely new level – Evergreen Retainers. This feature will enable attorneys who do hourly billing (like me) to be exponentially more productive and efficient.  I have used evergreen retainers in my family law practice for years, and having this process automated is literally a dream come true.

For those unfamiliar with the concept, evergreen retainers are an amount that a client is required to maintain in the attorney’s trust account until the case is concluded. Invoices are generated each month and paid from the trust account, with the client then replenishing the amount disbursed whenever the trust balance dips below the mutually agreed upon amount.

This enables the attorney to maintain a source of working funds to ensure payment for the services rendered, and it significantly decreases the headaches of unpaid bills, collections, and write offs. Without a doubt, I believe that requiring evergreen retainers in my family court cases was one of the best things I ever did for my practice (along with beginning to use Rocket Matter over six years ago).

“Law firm realization rates have been declining, and Evergreen Retainers are another tool for attorneys to minimize their economic risk,” says Larry Port, CEO of Rocket Matter. “Our clients asked for the flexibility to set up Evergreen Retainers, so we worked with them to design a system that would accomplish their objectives.”

This new release also features two new analytics reports and numerous behind the scenes optimizations, which have resulted in a speed increase of over 60% across the program. If you want to learn more about these new features, you can view the short video below or visit Rocket Matter’s website.

 

Rocket Matter Evergreen Retainer from Rocket Matter on Vimeo.

Review of Aduro’s Rotata Rotating iPad Mini Case

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I first saw Aduro’s Rotata case on a friend’s iPad mini at a convention and decided I had to get one to review. The rotating screen feature was just too cool – and I could already think of a half-dozen ways that one feature could come in handy.

Luckily for me, I found a Groupon deal offering this case, and I snapped one up. I have been testing it thoroughly over the last week or so, and here’s my take on this unique product:

PROS

Colors, patterns, and designs, oh my! I absolutely love the array of choices in color and design with this product. Some of the product reviews I read online indicate that the colors wear off easily, but that has not been my experience thus far.

The rotating screen feature is very nice and makes it easy to switch between apps which may be landscape or portrait specific. The case allows for easy access to the device portals, though depending on which way you rotate the screen, the camera on the back of the iPad will lose visibility.

CONS

There are two grooves which allow for the iPad to sit at two different angles. The first one (the one which holds the iPad at the most upright position, is sturdy and deep enough to hold the iPad secure, however the lower position is much more shallow and therefore, the iPad can easily slip out if moved or pushed too hard.

As an avid reader, I like to be able to hold my iPad easily in one hand while reading an ebook or document. This case does not allow for that as the cover does not fold back behind itself as many cases are designed to do.

The Aduro Rotata iPad mini case retails for approximately $30.00, but by checking sites like Amazon, Ebay and Groupon, it is possible to get the case for as little as $10.00 – $12.00.

How to Print Documents Without Opening Them

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printerDid you know that Mac OS X will allow you to print documents without opening them? It’s really easy, and (as with most things on a Mac) it works exactly the way that you would expect.

To print a document, select it in the Finder, and then press Command + P and it will print to your default printer using your default settings. You don’t have to do anything else except get your document off the printer.

If you want or need to print multiple documents, just hold down the command key and select on the desired documents before clicking Command + P. All of your desired documents will then print to your default printer easy as pie.