The Mac Lawyer : The Mac Lawyer : Ben Stevens : Using Macs In The Practice Of Law

The Mac Lawyer would like to wish a happy anniversary to my good friends at Rocket Matter, as it has been two years since their public launch.  My firm has been using Rocket Matter from almost the very beginning, and we believe it to be one of the premier online case management systems for attorneys.

As part of their anniversary celebration, Rocket Matter has launched Rocket Matter Professional Services, which can help minimize downtime as firms migrate from their old software to this Software as a Service (SaaS) platform.  If you want to know more about Rocket Matter, you can visit their website or visit with them in person at Virtual LegalTech, LegalTech New York, or the ABA Tech Show.

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PC users are still plagued by security threats from many sources – viruses, worms, and other malware.  Meanwhile, Mac users continue to rest easy because their computers remain safe and secure.

Macworld recently reported "we have yet to see any widespread malware for Macs; your risk of infection is essentially zero."  This information should make even the most paranoid among us more comfortable.  

You can read more about this topic in the Macworld article by clicking here.

Source:  "Mac Security: What You Can Ignore" by Rich Mogull, published at Macworld.com.

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This week marked the much awaited announcement of the Apple iPad. Considering that people’s mouths were watering over the non-event of the iPhone 3G S launch last year, the arrival of the tablet is garnering, as many have observed, the type of interest reserved only for other tablets delivered to the masses several millenia ago (though made out of stone).

Money is tight in 2010, so with a sense of sadness and impatience, we must often wait to own our beloved new gadget. Or we dip into college or retirement savings. The Onion hilariously captured our lemming-like excitement over new gadgets in this piece from December ‘09.

But consider this: you can add life to your existing gadget for little money, and have a sense of a new machine. I recommend the Gadget Spa Day, having done this recently with my iPhone. For instance:

1. Put a new screen protector in place. I prefer a matte finish so my fingerprints and face don’t muck up an otherwise beautiful machine. Learn how to place the screen on correctly and avoid trapping dust and making bubbles. It requires a little dexterity, and perhaps the technique is worthy of its own post. But if you get frustrated, take a deep breath, and say to yourself, “Yes we can!”.
2. Get a new protective case. Let’s face it. iPhone cases get scratched up easily and look nasty quickly. And that zebra pattern your using? SO 2009. I love the new iFrogz case I purchased, which is mostly hard plastic with a small rubberish section to keep it from sliding off smooth surfaces.
3. Clean up your apps. When’s the last time you played the bubble wrap or toilet paper game? If you or the kids haven’t used an app in a month, kill it, even if you paid for it. The Rocket Matter iPhone version is the only exception to this rule. Once you’re done, apply all the updates so you don’t have to stare at the annoying red number on the App Store icon.

Computer Spa Day

When you’re working on your actual systems, you can give them a performance boost just by turning off the amount of programs that run on startup. You’ll boot faster and run faster. Just be careful you don’t turn off anything important, like printer drivers or something. But c’mon, do you really need Quicktime and Java scanning for updates? Do Skype and Scansnap Manager really need to launch when your system does?

• Windows users can go to Start–>Run…, then type “msconfig” and type on the “Startup” tab. Don’t turn off anything important. When in doubt, leave it.
• Mac users can go to System Preferences -> Accounts, highlight an account, click Login Items, then remove the items you don’t want on the list.

Another way to revamp on Spa Day? Clean up your destkop. Remove icon clutter safely by reading this post. Get some cool new wallpaper. There are plenty of free sites, including Desktopography, Simple Desktops, or Interface Lift.

It’s like a fresh coat of paint for your trusted machine. You don’t have to waste time migrating data, you don’t get stuck with version one of the latest gadget, and you save a little dough as well.

Would love to hear your Gadget Spa Day tips! Leave a comment so we can hear your rejuvenation tips and tricks.

Source:  "iPad Envy? Save Money with Gadget Spa Day" by Larry Port, published at Rocket Matter's blog.

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I missed Steve Jobs' keynote address yesterday announcing the iPad, but I have watched Apple's video about the it (admittedly several times) in the last 24 hours.  Wow.  I was anxiously waiting to see what Steve had up the sleeve of his black turtleneck with regard to a table computer, but the iPad far surpasses my expectations.  I mean, I was expecting to pay $1,500 or more, but the prices start at $499?  How could you not get one?

I am prone to justifying seemingly needless expenditures on new Apple hardware, but with that being said, I can think of so many legitimate situations in which attorneys can use the iPad, and I expect it to be a huge sucess, perhaps even more so than the iPhone.  I don't have time to go into all its many features, but you can read them for yourself here, or take six minutes and watch the video.  I showed it to my nine year old son last night, and his mouth was open in awe the whole time.  Like father, like son.

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There are a number of ready-to-go applications for lawyers and law firms adopting the Macintosh platform. Here’s a snapshot of some favorite ones you can put to use in your daily practice.

If there is one consistent thing about law firms, and the lawyers in them, it is that they resist change. Whether it is a solo practice or a large national firm, that resistance seems to be ingrained in most lawyers’ psyches. Yet, surprisingly, we are now seeing greater numbers of lawyers and firms abandoning this stagnation when it comes to their computing platforms, as more and more lawyers adopt Apple Macs into their practices. This change seems to be going viral, and thus lawyers are more frequently asking what Mac programs they can put to use in their practices on a daily basis.

The following covers some of my favorites. Note that, since most converts to Macs are often embedded in a Windows law firm environment, I include, where possible, applications that allow transportability of information between the “two worlds.”

Daylite and Bento

Every law practice requires a good case management solution, and two affordable options stand out for the Mac. For the solo to small firm office, Bento, which requires a small amount of work to set up, does a great job of providing a networked custom client and case database. Created by FileMaker, Bento is truly just a personal database application. It allows the inclusion of media files such as video depositions or deposition transcripts and encryption for the entire database. While not as powerful as FileMaker, it also is not as expensive at only $49 retail.

More specific to the law practice is MarketCircle's Daylite. Daylite offers full integration with e-mail, a fully functioning iPhone app, networkable rules-based calendaring and delegation of tasks. Daylite has even provided a sample work flow with tips on how to customize Daylite to a personal injury, divorce, estate planning and general litigation practice. A great many lawyers already use this program in their practices, and it seems Daylite offers excellent customer support and is always looking to polish its amazing product.

TrialSmart and DepoSmart

Perhaps one of the true necessities for any litigator is the ability to display exhibits or depositions to a jury. Windows users who are familiar with Sanction or Verdical will find that two programs – TrialSmart and DepoSmart, both from Clarity Legal Software – offer the same functions as their Windows counterparts for displaying nonlinear presentations. DepoSmart covers annotations and links within depositions, preparing them for display in TrialSmart. Together, these two programs can tag portions of depositions with issue tags for later reference, synchronize video with transcripts and create links from a deposition to an exhibit. Furthermore, networkability is much easier than it is with their PC brethren, with full access and movement of database files a breeze.

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The latest episode of MILO Chat Weekly, Episode 14 – “I’m old. I’m tired. What can I say?”, has been released.  On this episode, Victor Medina, Grant Griffiths, and Finis Price discuss dissect the upcoming Apple announcement and give our opinions on the tablet.  Due to a scheduling conflict, I was not able to make this recording, but my co-hosts did their normal fantastic job in my absence.

Subscribe to this podcast using iTunes by clicking HERE.

Download the podcast directly by right-clicking and saving HERE.

Comments? Send them to milochat@miloweekly.com

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Spartanburg attorneys David Turnipseed, Doug Brannon, Brac Turnipseed and Ben Stevens have combined their practices to create Turnipseed, Brannon & Stevens.

“This new partnership provides a tremendous added value for all our clients,” said David Turnipseed, whose office at 128 Magnolia St. now serves as the new headquarters. “By joining forces, we will be able to provide additional levels of service while continuing our primary mission of protecting Spartanburg families’ rights during difficult times.”

Turnipseed, Brannon & Stevens is a full-service family law, criminal law and personal injury firm.

With more than 60 years of experience, the attorneys’ knowledge and integrated legal philosophies complement and enhance one other, the firm said. Stevens brings a technological interest to the mix, known nationally as “the Mac lawyer.” Brannon is a criminal defense attorney with a strong civic commitment to the Spartanburg community.

Source: "Spartanburg Attorneys Join Forces" published in GSA Business.

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Ultimately, you, the user, will have to determine if this “working in the cloud” is for you. Legitimate and less-legitimate concerns about the safety of your data and the security of your confidential information will be a topic for debate in another article. Consider, though, how much of your confidential life is already online—banks, insurance information, credit cards—and realize that security is generally as good as your passwords are. The tools for breaking free of the desktop--safely, securely, inexpensively, and collaboratively—are all there. The question is, do we want to use them.

Paul Meyerson has been a Macintosh consultant in the NYC area for more years than he wants to admit. His new company, www.macsupport.com, aims to take care of any and all Macintosh issues for the home or small business users. Using a combination of telephone support and remote control software, Macsupport.com is able to deal with a variety of home users’ issues quickly, efficiently, and inexpensively.

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Finally, for all the data flotsam and jetsam we accumulate, there’s an application to make your online life searchable. Evernote gives you a central database to keep accounts, passwords, bookmarks, notes, recipes or whatever you want. It stores them securely and keeps it all easily accessible in numerous ways. Evernote is an application you install on whatever platform you’re on (Mac, PC, iPhone, or access it via the web) and, using a free account, synchronize it all together.

Of the three Cloud applications I’ve discussed here, this is the one I use all day, every day. Although there is a free version (ad sponsored), the inexpensive pay account ($45/year) is a must if you intend to use this to its fullest extent. Evernote wants to consider itself your searchable filing cabinet, and its tools do exactly that. Tag notes with tags that you make up on the fly and then sort the whole system via those tags, or search for any text you might have in a note.

Many online applications have the ability to store notes and search them, there are two things that set Evernote apart: Integration into a browser and the ability to take pictures of anything and OCR it automatically. The picture part, although it’s very cool, I don’t use much. You use your iSight or iPhone camera to photograph nearly anything and save it to Evernote. When the item gets to Evernote’s servers they perform some impressive OCR voodoo to make those photos searchable. If there’s text, a general search of all your normal text documents will also find the photos with the text somewhere in them. For example, a picture of a map that had the words “New York” on it would show if you chose to search for the term “New York.”

The second exceptional feature of Evernote puts a small Elephant-shaped button right into your browser bar. Come across a page you want to have available to you later? Click this button and the entire page—pictures, text, whatever (not flash or other embedded things) as well as most of the formatting will pop right into a new Evernote note, along with the Title of the page and the link to the original. Unlike simply bookmarking a page in a browser, doing it this way makes that page completely searchable. Bookmarks are one thing, but this is far beyond.

Paul Meyerson has been a Macintosh consultant in the NYC area for more years than he wants to admit. His new company, www.macsupport.com, aims to take care of any and all Macintosh issues for the home or small business users. Using a combination of telephone support and remote control software, Macsupport.com is able to deal with a variety of home users’ issues quickly, efficiently, and inexpensively.

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