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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