How Lawyers Practice Law and Serve Clients with Macs — Really!

As my readers are aware, I presented two seminars at the ABA TechShow 2008 this past March in Chicago.  One was "How Lawyers Practice Law and Serve Clients with Macs — Really!" which I co=presented with Jeff Richardson.  Our written materials from that session were recently republished in the September 2008 Law Practice Today webzine, as follows:

While most lawyers are
wedded to the PC, these two lawyers enumerate the advantages of the
Mac, for work, for home, and for the pure enjoyment of it.

For over a decade, every one of the hundreds of press releases issued
by Apple has ended by noting that “Apple ignited the personal computer
revolution in the 1970s with the Apple II and reinvented the personal
computer in the 1980s with the Macintosh.” Apple’s critical role in the
early days of personal computers is beyond debate, but for a period of
time in the 1990s, Apple seemed to have lost its way. Its computer
lineup was confusing, its market share reached an all time low, the
company’s stock price fell to $5 a share (in current share prices), and
Dell CEO Michael Dell famously quipped that if he owned Apple, “I’d
shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders.” 

Since then, the company has had a resurgence. Apple’s computers and
software have received rave reviews, its market share is at the highest
point since the Mac was first introduced in 1984, Apple has taken over
the digital music market with the ubiquitous iPod, the company is
already a formidable presence in the cell phone market with the iPhone
introduced just last year, and at the time of this writing (January of
2008) Apple’s stock price has risen to over $200 a share.

With a record number of people now switching from PCs to Macs, the
question for lawyers is: should you switch too? And if you do, should
you maybe just switch for your home computer, or also for your office
as well? Most importantly, what do you gain and what do you lose by
making the switch?

I. Reasons to Consider Switching to Macs
 

There are a number of reasons for switching from a PC to a Mac. First, many find that Macs are more reliable
than PCs. Macs have long been known as computers that just work,
without hassles or headaches. Mac users rarely have to deal with the
day-to-day frustrations that most PC users must endure, such as
“freeze-ups” or the infamous “blue screen of death.” By utilizing tight
hardware integration and a rock-solid operating system, Apple makes
computers that rarely crash and that are always ready to work when you
are. 

Macs are also famous for being easier to use
than PCs. Both the Mac itself and its software are designed for
consumers, not for techno-wizards. The operating system is very
intuitive, and most programs can be used without having to first read
an instruction manual, you simply start using them and being
productive. Apple software has long been praised for its integration;
the menu structure is similar no matter which program you are using,
making it easier to get things done. Most new Mac users are up to speed
and comfortable with their Mac within a day or two of beginning to use
it. Some people confuse this with meaning that Macs are “simple” or
“toys,” but nothing could be further from the truth. To the contrary,
many people find that they can actually do more sophisticated tasks
with a Mac than with a PC because the well-designed interfaces hide the
complication of those tasks from the user.

A huge advantage for Macs is that they are far more secure
than PCs. Because the Mac operating system (OS X) was designed from the
very beginning with security in mind, you are not susceptible to
viruses. There are reportedly well over 100,000 viruses for PCs. How
many viruses are there on the Mac? The answer is amazing – zero! Most
Mac users don’t even bother running antivirus software or other
software to protect from malware. Any lawyer using a PC without such
protection should probably be fired for malpractice. Thus, while PC
users must spend money each year for anti­virus software to protect
themselves, Mac users are safe without that added expense or extra
software. Further, because Macs require you to enter your password
before installing any programs on it, you are protected from spyware,
Trojan horses, and other programs that might try to sneak their way in
without your knowledge or consent.

Another advantage of using Macs is the Apple Stores.
Around 200 stores are located around the country, including large
flagship stores in places like New York, Chicago, and San Francisco.
These stores provide a great shopping experience for purchasing a Mac,
but even more important they provide daily, free seminars aimed at
beginning, intermediate and advanced users, and they include a free
“Genius Bar” where you can ask any questions about using the computer.
Thus, with an Apple Store nearby, you have free tech support for your
computer. The welcoming style and impressive design of the Apple Stores
led Michael Gartenberg, vice president and research director at Jupiter
Research, to recently predict that the New York City stores “are going
to become iconic places that people go to see when they come to New
York. Rockefeller Center, Radio City Music Hall and Apple’s great glass
cube on Fifth Avenue.”

One factor that makes it easy to switch to a Mac is that, for the most part, Macs work with your existing hardware.
Even though you may want to buy a sleek new monitor, keyboard, or mouse
from Apple, you will not have to do so. Macs will work just fine with
most of existing peripherals and most printers, scanners, and
multi-function machines. Even better, you will not have to waste your
valuable time searching for drivers for these items. Your Mac will
recognize most peripherals when you connect them, and you can then
begin using them without even having to reboot.

Another Mac advantage is price.
This one catches some people by surprise, because historically Macs
were more expensive than PCs, but this is no longer true. Macs now cost
about the same as similarly-equipped PCs. Macs also come with many
built-in features, such as the seamless ability to create PDFs, which
require add-ons for the PC. (When you print in any application,
built-in software gives you the option to save a document as a PDF
file, email to someone else as a PDF file, and even encrypt as a PDF
file.) Even better, Macs tend to hold their value over time much better
than PCs do. Mac laptops that are over two years old can still sell for
approximately 60% of their original purchase price. Not that you will
probably be looking to sell your Mac, but the high resale value is
evidence that the computers maintain their usability for a long time.
And because Macs are more stable and more secure than PCs, you are less
likely to lose time due to your computers not working properly or your
computers being infected by a virus. You will also avoid the “joy” (and
expense) of seeing your technical support person on a regular basis.
Wouldn’t you rather spend your hard-earned money on something other
than paying to repair or maintain your computer system?

Many PC users accurately note that there is a lot more software
available for PCs than for Macs. Frankly, this is true. But it is also
largely irrelevant. There are still thousands of programs available for
the Mac, and all of the core features – word processing, Internet
access, e-mail, graphics, personal finance, etc. – are well
represented. And while there are some great programs only available on
the PC, there are also lots of great Mac-only programs, such as Circus Ponies’ Notebook do-it-all organizer and Apple’s Keynote presentation software.

Even if you need to run that one unique program that is only available on a PC, you can still do so on a Mac because all new Macs can run Windows
and thus Windows software. And to the surprise of many, they do so
quite well. PC World recently reported: “The fastest Windows Vista
notebook we’ve tested this year – or for that matter, ever – is a Mac
[the Apple MacBook Pro]. Not a Dell, not a Toshiba, not even an
Alienware.” You can either use a built-in technology called Boot Camp
to boot your Mac into running Windows XP or Vista (which you must
purchase separately), or you can purchase a third party virtualization
program such as Parallels  or VMWare’s Fusion
to run a Windows program in a separate window at the same time that you
are running the Macintosh operating system. For many, this is the key
selling point, because by purchasing a Mac plus a copy of Windows and
perhaps also Parallels or Fusion, you essentially get two computers (a
Mac and a PC) for barely more than the price of one.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, a wonderful Mac advantage is that many people find Macs simply more enjoyable to use
than PCs. This may sound somewhat strange, but people who have used a
Mac frequently comment how “enjoyable” their experience was. Apple’s
desktops, laptops, and peripherals are all very elegant, yet simple and
functional – can you say that about your PC? Some would go so far as to
say that Macs have a certain “coolness” factor about them, which might
appeal to your ego. As much time as you spend working on your computer,
shouldn’t it be as beautiful, cool, and fun as possible?

II. Using Macs at Home … Even if You Use PCs at the Office

For all of these reasons, you may now be tempted to try out the Mac. If
you are a PC user at work, the easiest way to introduce yourself to the
advantages of a Mac is to get a Mac for your home. Once you have used a
Mac at home for a while, you will probably want to use one in your
office as well. But even if you never make the switch in your office -
many law firms require only the use of PCs – many attorneys find that
they prefer to use Macs at home. There are many advantages to using a
Mac for your home computer, and even with a Mac at home you can
continue to get your work done with an office PC environment.

A. The advantages of using a Mac at home

We’ve noted above many of the general advantages of using a Mac over a
PC, and these are all reasons that a Mac is good in your home. Indeed,
many of these factors are even more important in your home. For
example, your office may have an IT department to help you when you get
a virus, but the IT department in your home is likely to be just you.
Having a home computer that doesn’t have viruses or other malware can
be a real boon. But in addition to the reasons noted above, there are
some additional specific reasons that a Mac is a particularly good
computer for you and your family to use in your home.

One of the main uses of a home computer today is to manage your digital
life – your digital photographs, video from your digital camera, your
digital music, etc. In these areas, the programs that come built-in and
free with every Mac shine, especially the suite of programs that Apple
calls iLife.
As Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal said it: “Out of the box,
the Mac has better photo, music, video and DVD-creation software than
any Windows computer I’ve seen.”

For digital photographs, Apple’s iPhoto is
an easy to understand but powerful program for organizing your digital
photographs. It automatically launches when you plug in your digital
camera and allows you to perform all of the basic edits to your
photographs (red eye, cropping, exposure, contrast, etc.) and even some
more advanced editing techniques (such as a simple levels adjustment
tool). It also allows you to easily print photos, order prints of your
photos from Apple, or turn your photos into projects such as soft and
hardcover books, calendars, etc. Just like on a PC, if you want to do
more advanced editing, you’ll need to purchase extra software (such as
Adobe’s Photoshop Elements for about $80), but having the essentials
built in with iPhoto is very powerful.

For digital movies, Apple includes iMovie,
an easy to use editor which allows you to quickly make short videos and
then upload them for free to the web to a site such as YouTube or to
your own website, which Apple will provide you with for an additional
$80 a year via its .Mac service. Or you can save the movie to a DVD.
iMovie is too limited to create sophisticated movies – for that you
will need to pay to upgrade to a more powerful program such as Apple’s
$200 Final Cut Express-
but it has the advantage of being very fast, allowing you to get from a
movie file on your video camera to a video that you can share with a
minimum of fuss. If you are just looking to clean up and edit the video
you took with your camera, maybe add a soundtrack and some special
effects, and then share the video with your friends and family, iMovie
will be all you need.

Another major use for a home
computer is digital music, and it almost goes without saying that Apple
is a leader in this field. Its iPod
music player revolutionized the digital music market, and even many
years after the iPod was introduced, Apple’s iPod still enjoys around
75% market share of all MP3 players. Apple’s iTunes software
easily manages all of your digital music. Of course, you don’t need to
own a Mac to use an iPod and iTunes, both of which have been available
for PCs for many years now. However, with iTunes built-in with every
Mac, every other program on the Mac that deals with music will always
work with iTunes giving you a seamless environment.

Besides using home computer to manage your digital life, the other main
uses of a home computer are browsing the web, word processing and
e-mail. As Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal puts it, the Mac also
“has a better free email program and Web browser than Windows does, a
better free word processor and much better search capabilities.”

The Mac’s built-in web browser is called Safari.
Safari is a powerful browser, but honestly, Safari has few unique
advantages over similar PC programs when it comes to using the web.
Safari is regularly updated with new features, but so are the primary
Windows web browsers, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and Mozilla’s Firefox.
Indeed, for those who like Firefox, it is also available on the Mac,
and just as many PC users prefer Firefox over Internet Explorer, many
Mac uses prefer Firefox over Safari.

Unfortunately,
there are also sometimes problems using a Mac to surf the web. A small
number of websites are designed to work only with Internet Explorer
because, for example, they depend upon Internet Explorer technologies
such as ActiveX. Other times a website will not load properly in
Safari, but it will load on the Mac version of Firefox. You don’t
encounter these websites very often, and as Mac market share has
increased over the last decade, even fewer companies are mandating the
use of such technologies for their websites. But unfortunately, these
sites still do exist.

As for word processing and
e-mail, included free with every Mac is a powerful word processor
(called Pages) and a powerful e-mail client (called Mail), but for
reasons discussed in the next section, you’ll probably want to use
Microsoft Office instead.

In short, for the main
things that you will look for in a home computer that you and your
children will use, the Mac will, almost always, truly shine. The
built-in programs are easy to use and powerful. And because other
programs know that these programs are built-in, other programs will
virtually always work with them. The result is that all of your
programs work well with each other, which makes it faster to do things
and allows you to do even more with your computer.

B. Working at home on a Mac

So if a Mac is the perfect computer for you and your family to use at
home, how does it hold up for those times when you want to get your
work done at home? For the most part, it works great. There are some
issues that you need to be aware of, but in our opinion, the advantages
easily outweigh the disadvantages.

The one essential product for using your Mac as a lawyer is a copy of Microsoft Office.
It sometimes surprises people that Microsoft has a long history with
Mac. Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel were originally created not for
Windows (which didn’t even exist at the time) but for the Mac back in
1984, the same year that the Mac itself was introduced. Microsoft has
updated this software for over two decades, and the current version,
introduced just a few months ago, is Office 2008. Office 2008 costs
$400 and includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Entourage. There is a
“Home and Student edition” for only $150, but it does not include
Entourage, which you will need if you want to connect to your office’s
Exchange server. If you are looking to save money, find out if your law
firm participates in Microsoft’s Home Use Program. Through that
program, the site license for Microsoft Office that your law firm
already pays for will entitle you to get a copy of Office for home use
– even the Mac version of Office — for only $20. It’s a great deal.

One of the main things that you will want to do at home is keep up with
your office e-mail. Depending upon the mail server that your office
uses, you may be able to use the program that Apple includes for free
with every Mac, called Mail.
Mail is a very powerful and easy to use program. Unfortunately, if your
office uses Microsoft Exchange, Mail may not work very well. Mail works
okay if your office has enabled something called IMAP, but many
businesses consider this a security risk and disable the feature.
Without IMAP, if you try to connect to your office’s Exchange server
using Mail, you will be able to read messages in your inbox, but
messages that you delete in Mail will still show up when you use
Outlook on your Office PC, sent mail will be saved to a different
folder, and there are other quirks. Thus, while Mail is a very nice
general purpose e-mail program, it is best to avoid using Mail if your
law firm uses Exchange.

Fortunately, there are two
other ways to use your office e-mail even if your law firm uses
Microsoft Exchange. First, if your office has a web portal, you can use
Safari or Firefox to access your e-mail on the web. Second, as noted
above, the Mac version of Microsoft Office includes Entourage.
Entourage allows your Mac to do just about everything that your PC can
do with Outlook. You can use e-mail via your office’s Exchange server,
you can use your office calendar, you can use your office address book,
etc. Entourage is a solid program with a nice Mac interface.

When you are working at home and not using e-mail, you will most likely
be using a word processor. Just as Microsoft Word is the dominant word
processor for PCs, it is also the dominant word processor for Macs. The
Mac version of Microsoft Word is powerful and works seamlessly with
documents that you create on a PC. Moreover, the Mac version of Word
keeps a Mac-like appearance, so you won’t feel like you are running a
Windows program.

Office for the Mac also includes
Excel and PowerPoint. Our experience is that Excel documents, like Word
documents, work fine on a Mac. PowerPoint files open and edit just fine
on the Mac, but you will need to be careful about adding graphics to a
PowerPoint file on the Mac because some graphics formats won’t work on
your PC. Thus, there is some trial and error involved with using
PowerPoint on both platforms on a single file, but in general it does
work fine.

You may also want to use your home computer
to do online research, and now that Westlaw and Lexis are almost
universally accessed via a web browser, you’ll find that accessing them
on your Mac is really no different than accessing them on a PC.

The one area in which using a Mac at home can be an issue is if your
office relies upon specialized software that is only available for the
PC. For example, your firm may have contact management software that
requires a PC client. Or your firm may use document management software
such as Interwoven or DOCS Open. Even though many of these programs
have web portal interfaces, those web portals often rely upon Internet
Explorer-only technology. The only real solution is to use the
solutions noted above for running Windows on your Mac. Fortunately,
with those solutions, you can easily run your document management
program (using Windows) in one window while the rest of your computer
is Mac. Beware that when you run Windows on your home computer, you are
subject to all of the problems of Windows, including viruses. The
viruses won’t touch your Mac programs, but the will cause the same
interference with your Windows programs that you would see if you were
running a normal Windows computer.

While the Mac
version of Office is a great product, note that there are some
important differences between Office on the PC and Office on the Mac.
For example, your firm may have add-on programs for the PC version of
Office such as a metadata filter, connectivity with a firm-wide contact
management system, or connectivity with a document management system
such as Interwoven or DOCS Open; those add-ons will not work with
Entourage on the Mac. Also, Office for Mac does not support Visual
Basic. If you really need to use those features on your Mac, you will
have to run those programs in Windows, using one of the techniques
noted above. Or, if you use a PC laptop and you have it with you at
home, you may find it just as easy to use your work laptop for those
features.

One of the realities of being a lawyer is
that the work doesn’t stop just because you leave the office.
Fortunately, you can make your home computer a Mac and continue to get
your work done when you get home. There are a few tradeoffs, but there
are also many benefits, and overall you are likely to come out ahead by
using a Mac at home.

III. Using Macs at Your Office

If you decide to switch your office computer to a Mac, here is what you will use:

A. Hardware Options

One thing that you will notice is that everything is easier with Macs.
If you’ve ever had to buy a PC, you are faced with literally thousands
of hardware options from hundreds of manufacturers. Should you buy a
computer made by Dell, Sony, HP, Compaq, or your local computer guy?
Even worse, you then had to worry about which components would actually
be inside the shell and whether they would all work together? I
remember how frustrating and confusing it was to sort through the
myriad of choices, and it routinely took me many hours over several
weeks – when all I wanted to do was just get a new computer.

By way of contrast, your choices when buying an Apple computer are very
easy to navigate and understand. Apple’s entire computer line can be
summed up in a few sentences. For the most part, you just have two
simple choices: (1) do you want a desktop or a laptop? and (2) do you
want a “regular” model or a high-end model? By answering those two
questions, you will narrow your Mac decision down to one or two
options, and then you choose a screen size, decide how much RAM you
want, and select a hard drive size – and you’re done!

Since most attorneys prefer laptops, they will basically be choosing (as of early January, 2008) between the MacBook and the MacBook Pro. The best options for desktop models for themselves and/or their staff generally are the iMac  or the Mac mini. The iMac features a one-piece unit containing the monitor and CPU, and it is quite stylish. An ultra-powerful Mac Pro  is also available for those that need eight-core power.

B. Software Options

The software that most attorneys use in their day-to-day practice falls
into the categories listed below. The examples listed under each
category are those with which your presenters have hands on experience.

Case Management Software

Daylite from Marketcircle Inc.
is a full-featured customer/client and project/case manager for the
Mac. It is fully customizable, and it manages your contacts, calendars,
tasks/to-do’s, notes, etc. Daylite allows you to connect various types
of documents (such as .doc, .xls, .pdf, .jpg, web links, etc.) to
specific client files and then to organize and even open those files
from within Daylite. You can schedule and delegate appointments, create
to-do’s, print reports, and send emails all from within Daylite. It is
fully networkable so you can connect to it locally, through your office
network, or over the Internet. You can even create offline databases
that can be modified on the road and later synchronized with the main
database.

Another viable option for case management is LawStream Pro from PowerSoft Innovations Corp.
This is an all-in-one office management program that does the
following: scheduling (limitations, appointments, rules-based
reminders, shared reminders), communication (quick letters, notes,
memos, envelopes), document control (including variables, and
organizing and management of document status), contact management
(including conflict avoidance), detailed reporting capabilities, and
much more.

Other Organization Software 

If there is one product that can best demonstrate the creative possibilities the Mac allows, it is without a doubt Circus Ponies’ Notebook,
which is described on its website as “a combination outliner and
free-form database that lets you clip, annotate, and share unstructured
information.” Notebooks can contain outline pages, free-form pages, or
any combination. Its pages can contain text, graphics, audio, video,
imported data — virtually anything you can imagine. You can copy and
paste items into the pages, type information in directly, or even use
“clipping services,” which allow you to automatically insert data into
a specified notebook page, even if you are not using Notebook at the
time. Notebook features automatic indexing of all information, which
means that everything placed into a Notebook is automatically placed
into 14 indexes for easy location and retrieval later. Notebook can be
used to organize information in the office or for use at trial. All of
a file’s documents can be attached to a specified page, such as
correspondence, pleadings, orders, etc. Witness outlines can include
links to other pages or items (both within and outside Notebook). For
instance, your notes on a given topic can include images, charts, audio
clips, video deposition snippets, and other items for quick and easy
retrieval. Notebook makes it easy to concentrate on what you need to
present, rather than on how you should present it.

Apple’s operating system (OS X Leopard)
includes some basic organizational tools that may be sufficient for a
very small firm or solo practitioner. Address Book keeps track of
contact information, such as address, telephone numbers, email address,
and comments. Apple Mail now includes the ability to easily create
to-dos and notes, which can include links, attachments, and data from
emails. You can also schedule appointments in iCal and/or set alarms
for yourself, all from within Mail. Finally, iChat gives you the
ability to have free video conferences, and it comes standard as part
of OS X. 

Time & Billing Software

In addition to its case management capabilities listed above, LawStream Pro
also has the following functions: timekeeping (including multi-timers,
disbursement tracking, productivity reports), billing (detail bills,
narrative bills, individual billing, bulk billing), accounting (trust,
general ledger, payables, receivables, management reports),
productivity control (including reports that relate recorded time,
billed time, billable time, fees billed, and cash received), and much
more.

Marketcircle, the creator of Daylite, also makes a program called Billings 2,
which handles basic time and billing functions. This program is still
fairly new, and major improvements have been made over the last year.
The major drawback to this program is that it is not multi-user or
networkable at present, which is a major limitation to all but very
small firms and/or solo practitioners.

EasyTime
is being actively developed by Bright Light Software, and new features
are being added on a consistent basis. This program is specifically
designed for law firms, and it is networkable. The developer’s stated
goal is to develop EasyTime into a full time billing, case and document
managing system.

A completely different option that firms may want to consider is FreshBooks.
This product is a web 2.0 application, meaning that it runs online with
no software to install on your own computer. Being cross-platform, it
will work on both Macs and PCs, and it is accessible from anywhere with
internet access. FreshBooks can be configured to enable your clients to
access and pay their bills online, and it will even print and mail your
invoices for a nominal cost.

Word Processing and Spreadsheets

As noted above, if you are familiar with the Windows version of Microsoft Office
(Word, Excel, and PowerPoint), then you are familiar with the Mac
versions. These programs work the same in both operating systems, and
the files are interchangeable between the two. In other words, if you
want to open a Word document that someone created on a PC using the
Windows version, you will have no problems at all doing so.

While you are most likely to use Microsoft Office applications, there are alternatives that some people prefer. NeoOffice
is a free, open-source set of office applications, including Writer
(word processing), Calc (spreadsheet), and Impress (presentation). This
full-featured program allows you to import, edit, and exchange files
with other popular office programs such as Microsoft Office. Nisus Writer Pro  also has a lot of fans because of its simple interface and powerful text management features.

Apple’s iWork software package
includes Pages, Numbers, and Keynote. Pages is a word processing and
page layout program that can create stunning letters, reports,
proposals, and other office documents. Files can be imported, exported,
or saved in many formats, including .doc, .rtf, and .pdf. Numbers is a
spreadsheet program that many users find easier to use than Excel. As
with Pages, you can import, export, or save your spreadsheets in many
different formats including .xls, .csv, and .pdf.

Presentation

If you purchase Microsoft Office, then you will have PowerPoint. This software is just as useful on a Mac as it is on Windows.

Having said that, we believe that PowerPoint is vastly eclipsed by Apple’s Keynote.
This program, part of the iWork suite, enables you to make Hollywood
quality presentations, quickly and easily. Forbes.com asked back in
2003, “How does Keynote stack up against PowerPoint? The snapshot
summary of our head-to-head user test of the two programs is that they
fundamentally do the same thing, and do it well, but Keynote does it
with a superior elegance and simplicity of use that is Apple’s design
trademark.”
Now, quickly imagine how much progress has been made in the four plus
years since that article was written. For instance, Keynote now allows
you to animate elements within slides; edit elements to remove
background items; save Keynote presentations in cross-platform
QuickTime movies; export them to Apple’s iDVD, while preserving chapter
breaks between slides; and even to export your Keynote presentation to
the PowerPoint format.

TrialSmart
is a trial presentation package that enables transcript-to-video
synching, exhibit presentation, and video clip editing. The Exhibit
Presenter component allows you to redact or callout information, insert
notations, use arrows/lines, zoom or magnify, rotate, and highlight.
Also support use of Apple’s dual-monitor capabilities to enable only
you to see your work until you’re ready for your audience to see it.

iMovie,
part of Apple’s iLife suite, can be used to conduct your own video
depositions. Imagine being able to show video clips at trial to impeach
a witness instead of simply reading from a transcribed deposition.
Which do you think would get (and hold) a jury’s attention better? With
Apple’s built-in software and a minimal hardware investment, you can
begin taking video depositions tomorrow.

Preview
is an application included as part of Apple’s OS X that acts as a
“jack-of-all-trades” viewer. It will open and view most file formats,
including .pdf, .jpg, and .png. It allows you to zoom in and out,
rotate the images, and save your changes. There are basic features for
adding annotations and highlighting, and it can even serve as a very
basic presenter.

Practice-Specific Software

Attorneys
that specialize in a particular area of the law will undoubtedly have
certain software programs aimed at their area of practice. For
instance, family law attorneys use child support calculators, real
estate attorneys use different packages to assist with their closings,
and bankruptcy attorneys have programs to assist with their filings.
These programs tend to overwhelmingly be “Windows-only” programs, which
can be frustrating. However, through the use of virtualization programs
noted above, Mac users can run any Windows program when necessary, all
while still being able to enjoy all the benefits that Macs provide.

About the Authors

Ben Stevens practices family law in Spartanburg, SC with Stevens – MacPhail, P.A.  Ben publishes The Mac Lawyer blog, and he frequently speaks on legal technology topics, including using Macs in the practice of law.

Jeff Richardson is a partner in the New Orleans office of Adams and Reese LLP, where his practice areas include class actions and other complex litigation.  He is the chair of the Louisiana State Bar Association‘s Technology Committee.