TechnoLawyer: SmallLaw

Originally published on August 9, 2011 in our free SmallLaw newsletter. Instead of reading SmallLaw here after the fact, sign up now to receive future issues in realtime.

At the risk of being accused of sexism, I suspect female SmallLaw subscribers are more conversant than readers of the male persuasion with the concept of "shopping in your closet." But with hard times for many solo and small law firms (not to mention your stock portfolio), "shopping in your software closet" may, at least in the short term, prove a wise option.

This particular trek down memory lane may revive not only fond memories of software long since abandoned, but in fact may restore to your consciousness a particular species of software much needed, but which was not yet ready for primetime when you originally purchased it at Egghead on floppy diskettes.

A History of the PIM and Super PIM

Take personal information managers for example. The DOS program Sidekick — a "TSR" (terminate and stay resident) program now long-since dead and buried — was perhaps the first widely used PIM, and although fairly rudimentary in its functions, it laid the inspiration for what was to come.

The ensuing history of PIMs is littered with the dead and dying remains of a special breed that actually went far beyond serving as repositories for addresses, telephone numbers, appointments and the like thanks to "customizability." With these programs, we could actually organize our information in a way that made sense for our law practice rather than in a manner dictated by the software publisher. Let's call these "Super PIMs."

Foremost among the now nearly extinct Super PIMs (more below on the survivors) may be the well-loved and greatly lamented Ecco Pro. Originally written by Robert Perez and Pete Polash, founders of Arabesque software, Ecco Pro was later sold to NetManage, which (despite Perez's continuing involvement) ceased further development of the software in 1997 (see the TechnoLawyer Archive for several Ecco Pro eulogies).

Ecco Pro was the finest, most versatile, and most powerful information manager easily accessible to the rank and file of computer users (as opposed to the technologically elite who could master the much steeper learning curves of more demanding idea and information managers such as Lotus Agenda — not to be confused with Lotus Organizer — and GrandView).

Ecco Pro was and, thanks to a cult following, remains a strong favorite of software cognoscenti. Although it served also as a repository for the usual contact and appointment information, its greatest value was found in its outlining function, which permitted assigning any outline item to nearly any number of "categories," which could (at the user's option) be shown as columns containing information of specified kinds (e.g., text, dates, drop-down choice lists, check boxes) about any (or all) individual items appearing in the outline, and could link any outline item to any external file.

Among its many other features, Ecco Pro installed an icon (the "Shooter") into other programs so that you can add text highlighted in the other program to your Ecco Pro outline. And better yet, the information stored in Ecco Pro could be synchronized with the then nearly ubiquitous PalmPilot hardware PIMs. The software has languished for more than a decade. Yet so fanatical are Ecco Pro die-hards that volunteers have continued to develop and update the program (including a 32-bit architecture), which remains available for download.

A visit to this page is worthwhile regardless of your interest in Ecco Pro as it will show you what really good software was like "back in the day," and will doubtless answer any questions you may have as to why so many thousands of very experienced users still quest for "modern" software that will live up to the standards of usability and value so long ago set by Ecco Pro.

The demise of Ecco Pro was blamed by many (including the publishers of Ecco Pro themselves) on Microsoft's decision to bundle Outlook with Office at no extra charge. And while that was undoubtedly part of the problem, Ecco Pro also failed by marketing itself as merely a fancy PIM to lawyers and others then lacking technological sophistication sufficient to permit them to appreciate that the value and functionality of the product went so far beyond that of supposedly "free" Outlook that the two might as well have originated on different planets.

Other legendary Super PIMs are similarly admirable, although not as realistically usable in today's law firm even if still available. For example, the remarkable DOS-based Lotus Agenda written by Lotus co-founder Mitch Kapor was described by Scott Rosenberg in his excellent article reviewing the evolution of PIMs, From Agenda to Zoot as the "granddaddy" of the free-form PIM. If you're still grokking DOS, you can dowload a copy.

Agenda was abandoned by Lotus after only a single upgrade in favor of the inferior (but more easily marketed to the masses) Lotus Organizer — a move that contributes to my view of Lotus as a company with the "reverse Midas touch" given the number of excellent programs that met their demise under the company's stewardship.

Symantec, another software publisher I regard as too often traveling in the wrong direction on the road between the ridiculous and the sublime, was also a player in the Super PIM arena with its 1987 acquisition from Living Videotext of the excellent outlining and information management software GrandView. Symantic, however, then beset by financial difficulties and the exodus of the founders of Videotext, discontinued the product in the early 1990s.

Back to the Future: Today's Super PIMS

While the Super PIMs never attained mass market appeal, they paved the way for Super Specialized PIMs — databases with a friendly user interface designed for a specific type of information. For example, LexisNexis' CaseMap is a Super Specialized PIM on which I rely to manage the information in my litigation matters. Sadly, the price of CaseMap has rocketed into the stratosphere, and thus unattainable for many new solos.

But what if you're not a litigator? Or what if you are a litigator who needs to store non-litigation information? Fortunately modern-day Super PIMs of the general variety still exist. You may not have heard of these products, but it's likely that one of them could boost your productivity at a relatively low cost.

Among present-day heirs apparent, look for Zoot XT soon (TL NewsWire will no doubt keep you apprised of its launch). Zoot was very slow to blossom into the Windows era (having long retained a rather DOS-like look and feel), and has only just recently become a 32-bit product now that we live in a 64-bit computing world.

Zoot is pretty much a one-man-show — that man being Tom Davis of Vermont. While this might seem like a downside at the outset, Zoot's survival suggests that big-company backing may not be such a big plus after all. And Zoot certainly enjoys strong (nearly cultish) user loyalty and support. I will review Zoot XT here in SmallLaw shortly after it becomes available.

What's that? You use a Mac? Once in a while, a software program makes me question my dedication to PC over Mac. OmniGroup's OmniOutliner is just such a product. Catering to my Ecco Pro nostalgia (but in the most thoroughly modern way), OmniOutliner permits the creation of columns, each of which can contain different kinds of information (e.g., pop-up list, checkbox, numerical value, dates, duration, text, and even calculated values) concerning the corresponding outline item. You can separately format rows and columns. And a batch search will instantly collect all instances of a specified search term. You can embed or link to any type of file online or off. The Pro version even records audio. In short, OmniOutliner is the 2011 reincarnation of Ecco Pro — only better.

Obviously, I have hard choices in my immediate future. Should I buy a Mac for this killer app, and install and run VMware Fusion for all my Windows software, or just use the iPad version of OmniOutliner, which in its present iteration, falls far short of its Mac counterpart?

Software Lessons for Small Law Firms to Heed

The moral of this story is that "newer" is not always "better." "Old" software need not necessarily be abandoned on an ice floe — at least until a truly capable replacement arrives to save the day. And most importantly, good ideas never die though they may take a decade or two to realize their full potential and attract a large enough audience to support them.

Written by Yvonne M. Renfrew of Renfrew Law.

How to Receive SmallLaw
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Originally published on August 2, 2011 in our free SmallLaw newsletter. Instead of reading SmallLaw here after the fact, sign up now to receive future issues in realtime.

Watch the Video

TechnoScore: 1.5
1 = Lowest Possible Score; 5 = Highest Possible Score

The first problem I noticed with this video by Houston employment law firm Oberti Sullivan was the "poster frame" (aka "splash image" or "video thumbnail"). This online video term of art refers to the static image that YouTube displays before you click play and in search results.

Professional online video producers often use a specially-created poster frame that isn't even in the video), but YouTube grabs a frame from the middle of the video unless you instruct YouTube to use a different frame. The poster frame image in this video is odd. It shows two heads positioned in the bottom half of the photo — you cannot see or distinguish their facial features.

The headline — Houston Employment Lawyer Discuss The Top 10 Texas Employer Mistakes — grabbed my attention, but I knew immediately from the poster frame on the YouTube search results page that this video likely had significant problems. I clicked play. Unfortunately, my premonition was right.

The video starts with a lively animated graphic introduction that transitions to a URL and then an abruptly stops. "Huh? That's weird." I thought.

Next, you see two lawyers wearing suits sitting next to each other. Their heads are floating in the bottom half of the frame. They are not centered or illuminated. The upper half of the room and the background takes up most of the video frame. It's bizarre. No one bothered to see what the video looked like before uploading it to YouTube.

I was also shocked by the video's length — nearly 15 minutes! Argh. That's a deal breaker. No way was I going to sit through a 15 minute video, even if I lived in Houston and had legal questions about employment law.

You can tell that the attorneys are using a Webcam. Video quality is poor. Nor are they using any supplemental lighting. Another bad move since no one can see their faces. Nor are they using an external microphone, which means their audio is low and muffled.

On the plus side, they know their stuff. They provide useful information that potential clients would find helpful. However, the poor technical execution of the video undermines their legal expertise.

Five Tips to Improve This Video

1. Use a real video camera. Not a webcam or Flip camera or a Kodak Zi8 or Zi10. A real, honest to goodness camcorder. It need not be expensive. Any camcorder will shoot video that is exponentially better than that shot by a webcam.

2. Use a wireless microphone. In this case, you would need two microphones connected to a balancer so the sound is even. Otherwise, one mic may be stronger/louder than the other. If your resources are limited, buy a wired microphone from Radio Shack and hand the microphone back and forth every time you want to speak. That will get you better audio than the built in mic on a computer.

3. Use external lights. You cannot use your fluorescent overhead office lights. They cast awful shadows on your face. If your viewers can't see you, you're just wasting your time.

4. Make sure you are properly framed and that your faces are toward the top of the camera frame. If your face is in the middle of the frame, you've done it wrong. Move the camera down more to fill the frame.

5. Why a 15 minute video? That's just painful. The only time someone might watch a 15 minute video from a lawyer is when (1) it's entertaining, (2) the quality of the video is outstanding, and (3) it's extremely relevant to their legal problem. This hat trick is very difficult if not impossible to pull off. Keep in mind that a network sitcom costing millions of dollars per episode to produce runs about 22 minutes when you exclude the commercials. Instead of creating a long video, break the content up into bite-sized chunks no more than 2-3 minutes long. That's the typical attention span for the majority of online viewers. The two lawyers here could have created 10 videos with much more search engine visibility.

Till next time, see you on video!

The Back Bench

TechnoLawyer publisher and online video producer Neil Squillante says: "This video is so bad I don't know where to start. The fact that the framed Longhorns T-shirt is more prominently featured than the two lawyers? The terrible lighting that makes the two lawyers look like they're in a cheap knockoff of a Caravaggio painting? The sheer audacity of the 14 minute running length? What was Oberti Sullivan thinking?"

Written by Gerry Oginski of The Lawyers' Video Studio.

How to Receive SmallLaw
Small firm, big dreams. Published first via email newsletter and later here on our blog, SmallLaw provides you with a mix of practical advice that you can use today, and insight about what it will take for small law firms like yours to thrive in the future. The SmallLaw newsletter is free so don't miss the next issue. Please subscribe now.

Originally published on June 21, 2011 in our free SmallLaw newsletter. Instead of reading SmallLaw here after the fact, sign up now to receive future issues in realtime.

Another day, another article about lawyers using the iPad, right? Wrong! And yes, I'm back baby! I'm the founding columnist of SmallLaw (originally called Crazy Mazy). My "reunion" column is not so much about how lawyers use or should use the iPad, as it is about my experience using it as a suburban middle-aged founding partner of a small law firm. Something tells me most SmallLaw subscribers fit this same profile.

First, by way of full disclosure I own more than one iPad, Mac, and iPhone. Don't let that fool you though. Read my previous SmallLaw columns and you'll find that I'm no technology pushover. I'm not some Apple fanboy with a photo of Steve Jobs over my fireplace and a collection of black mock turtleneck shirts. I'm a managing partner just like you — a ping away from the disaster du jour at my law firm. I'm not looking for another way to surf the Web, exchange messages, connect with clients, or watch videos.

Did I need to buy an iPad 2? Should you consider buying one? As it happens, my answer to both questions is yes because this device is a game changer. It's to this decade what WordPerfect was to the 1980s when many of you started law practice (or started thinking about becoming a lawyer).

The New Normal

Let's begin with the obvious — the iPad2 is the bomb when it comes to content. Text, audio, video, whatever — it all looks better on the iPad 2. And thanks to its incredibly slim, light form factor I can experience my favorites in ways I previously couldn't.

Once I got used to the way in which the iPad 2 connected my content, I started to expect the same fluidity from all my information sources. But nothing came close to the effortless way in which I could find all three media — audio, text, and video — in one place on my iPad. In short, I felt entitled to a better information experience across the board.

But something was still missing. Don't get me wrong. The Safari Web browser is impressive. Clio's optimized Web site looks gorgeous for example. But as good as Safari is, dedicated native apps are even better.

Just then, as if on cue, one publication after another started to retrofit or radically alter its format for the iPad 2 in the form of native apps (though I'm still waiting on TechnoLawyer — ahem). At first it was form over substance, but soon the publications learned to make the most of the iPad format. The iPad 2 literally created the new normal, which I prefer to the old normal.

Apps such as The Daily, FlipBoard, Newsy, Qwiki, The Economist, and TrialPad take full advantage of the iPad 2. By serving up content in native apps, they kick the iPad 2 into overdrive.

So how does the iPad 2 compare to print, eReaders, TV, the iPhone, or my iMac? Let's just say that none compare. I refuse to read books and magazines in print. No more squinting my way through a post on my iPhone or hunching in front of my iMac to browse the Web. Sure, an eReader like the Kindle or Nook is great for books. But that's like filling up on breadsticks before going out for dinner. The iPad 2 simply has so much more to offer that mere eReaders simply don't rate.

The Hardware Is Slick, but the Software Is Genius

Granted, the content-management and display superiority of the iPad 2 has caused a seismic shift in the way I consume information. But has the iPad 2 "changed everything" as Steve Jobs likes to say? Has it made a difference in how I deal with information? Or is it just an overgrown iPhone?

After all, the just-released Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 has a crisper displays and smaller dimensions than the iPad 2, while the Kindle and Nook are even smaller and lighter. In fact on nearly all counts you'll find tablets that are competitive with Apple's — hardware-wise.

So what makes the iPad 2 a big deal? In a word: Apple's iOS. Of course it's hard to give credit to an operating system when the hardware on which it resides is so damned cool, but iOS is what makes all the difference when it comes to what you can do with your iPad 2. It makes the hardware melt away much like you don't notice the piece of paper you're reading, just the printed words on it. The only difference is that with a few simple gestures I can annotate, highlight, save, share, or jump between sources without leaving the page (or the couch).

What About Law Practice?

The iPad 2 is not yet ubiquitous. But with more than 25 million units sold already, it's off to a much faster start than the PC. Judging by the number of apps that transform our iPads into trial assistants, telephones, secure workspaces, deposition readers, eDiscovery tools and more, law practice has already changed. Thanks to the plethora of remote control apps such as iTeleport, you can even control your PC from your iPad if a substitute app doesn't yet exist.

Expect this trend to intensify. Thus, my advice is to get your hands on an iPad 2 to see if it doesn't enhance your own reading, browsing, surfing, viewing, and listening experience. You may want to pick up Tom Mighell's new ABA book as well, iPad in One Hour for Lawyers. As I said at the outset of this SmallLaw column, my bet is that you will find the iPad 2 transformative. If I'm wrong, feel free to complain to this fine publication.

Written by Will County bankruptcy lawyer Mazyar M. Hedayat of M. Hedayat & Associates, P.C.

How to Receive SmallLaw
Small firm, big dreams. Published first via email newsletter and later here on our blog, SmallLaw provides you with a mix of practical advice that you can use today, and insight about what it will take for small law firms like yours to thrive in the future. The SmallLaw newsletter is free so don't miss the next issue. Please subscribe now.

Originally published on June 14, 2011 in our free SmallLaw newsletter. Instead of reading SmallLaw here after the fact, sign up now to receive future issues in realtime.

Watch the Video

TechnoScore: 1.5
1 = Lowest Possible Score; 5 = Highest Possible Score

It's all about Me! Family law lawyer Sheryl Moore has created a technically beautiful video. Nice background music, fast pace, good lighting and audio all packaged in just under one minute. She even uses some black and white images as B-roll footage.

The problem?

She continually refers to herself or her firm. Some examples:

"I'm a small law firm."
"I give small law firm service."
"I give big law firm results."
"I practice …."
"I focus mainly …."
"I believe that I'm a zealous …."
"I'm also compassionate."
"I'm very involved in …."
"I sit on the CLE committee …."
"I think it's very important that …."

Tip #1: Nobody Cares About You

I've said this for years. Stop talking about "Me." Really. Nobody besides your family and close friends care about you.

So why would you spend your time and resources telling people you don't know all about you, your philosophy, your approach to practicing law, and how you represent your clients? How does that differentiate you from your colleagues and competitors?

Assume for a moment that a good friend of yours from law school has similar credentials and experience, and that you both compete with each other (on a friendly basis).

If a prospective client were to come into your office and ask how you differ from your good friend whom they are also considering hiring, would this video would provide them with an answer?

The inherent problem with this style of video is that it fails to take into account the typical person searching for a family law lawyer in Florida. It fails to understand what these people seek.

Tip #2: Message Before Method

The most important component of a video is not the production values, although clearly that's important. Instead, it's the content contained within your message. If you have the wrong message, no one will watch your video.

Successful videos have four critical components:

1. People must find your video when searching for the type of law you practice. Understanding how to optimize your video so that people can find it either on Google or YouTube is vital.

2. You must write a compelling title for your video. What is compelling about a title with the name of an attorney and the geographic area and type of law they practice? Not much.

3. Your video must be engaging and interesting. If your video is boring, few will watch it and nobody will watch it till the end.

4. You must have a call to action. What is the purpose of creating a video? To persuade a prospective client to contact you. It's not for recognition, or to win an advertising award, or to promote yourself. It's to get more clients. What action you want the viewer to take next?

Tip #3: People Want Information

People who need a lawyer want to better understand their problem. They want answers. They want to find someone who can help them.

The problem for us as lawyers is that we cannot create an attorney-client relationship with the people who watch our videos. Nor can we dispense legal advice in a video. We do not want a viewer to rely on information in our video since they may apply it incorrectly or may not understand how and when it applies. Alternatively, the content we provide may be outdated by the time someone watches our video.

"If I can't talk about the law and I can't talk about myself, what can I talk about?" That's what every lawyer asks me. You need to change your perspective from "Me, me, me" to "You, you, you." Then you'll better understand what to discuss in your videos.

Till next time, see you on video!

The Back Bench

Certified Family Law Specialist and online video producer Kelly Chang Rickert says: "Ms. Moore tripped up her most important line — "I give big law firm results" — she actually stuttered over it, but had no problem talking about herself as a "small law firm." Okay, I will be blunt. I found her presentation to be monotone and boring. There is absolutely nothing worse than a boring talking head, except a boring talking head talking about her family law firm. The music was also distasteful and boring. And the video marketed Findlaw more than it did her firm. Sorry, but it's a pass for me."

TechnoLawyer publisher and online video producer Neil Squillante says: "Sheryl Moore's video lacks compelling content, and contains a bunch of platitudes. Nonetheless, it may work for her. Why? Moore's video is extremely well-produced, while Moore herself is articulate, attractive, and well-dressed. Polish and poise matter in marketing — especially in video marketing."

Written by Gerry Oginski of The Lawyers' Video Studio.

How to Receive SmallLaw
Small firm, big dreams. Published first via email newsletter and later here on our blog, SmallLaw provides you with a mix of practical advice that you can use today, and insight about what it will take for small law firms like yours to thrive in the future. The SmallLaw newsletter is free so don't miss the next issue. Please subscribe now.

Originally published on June 7, 2011 in our free SmallLaw newsletter. Instead of reading SmallLaw here after the fact, sign up now to receive future issues in realtime.

There are many things my mother didn't tell me that I had to learn the hard way — that is, in real life. In all fairness, however, my mother was not a lawyer so I cannot hold her accountable for not better equipping me for law practice when I was starting out. Having now practiced since Moses was a baby, I impart here a few handy hints (a la Heloise) from which lawyers starting their own practices who take heed will benefit greatly over the years. However mundane or retro these tips may sound right now, you'll thank me later.

1. Your First Purchase

You won't believe me, but your most important acquisition (definitely long before Black's) should be a business card scanner — preferably a small one that you can have at hand all the time, including when you go to conventions, professional programs, etc.

DYMO, which acquired CardScan, sells a variety of these with appropriate software that capture the information printed on the card, an image of the card, and your notes. The more annotations you add to each card the better (where you met the person, anything they said of note, brief physical description, existence or name of wife or kids if mentioned) because (1) you will not remember later, and (2) this information — and more importantly this store of information — will prove invaluable over the years.

If you're smart, you will not waste any time after the meeting dropping your new acquaintances an email (or even an old-fashioned snail mail note), and then from time to time stay in touch.

Of course now "there is an app for that" since iPhones (and others) can scan cards using their camera as the scanner. Just make sure the $5 app you buy works as reliably as the gold-standard CardScan. Either way, get back to your hotel room as quickly as possible to scan each business card before you forget anything.

2. Don't Run a Paper-Based Office, but if You Do …

A. Paper Punching

Buy one (or better yet two) GBC 150-sheet Electric Punches if you can find them. You can vary the punch location, so I bought two, set one up as a 3-hole and one as a 2-hole punch to avoid the annoyance of constantly changing punch locations. When I made the purchase, I suspected I might be losing my mind — nearly $600 with tax for a hole puncher! But I often thought over the years those had been, in the final analysis, two of my most astute purchases because they permitted my small law office to prepare (including punching) expeditiously huge paper submissions, and huge trial exhibit sets, for huge cases that we could not otherwise have handled.

Other electric two-hole punches will function only to place two holes at the top of the paper (as needed for court-filing), but will not place those two holes on the long edge of the paper (as is needed for European File systems and the like). But the GBC monsters can handle anything.

Nowadays, of course, your court filings can be uploaded to a service leaving all the pesky punching and tabbing to others, but at a significant financial cost. Similarly, you can engage services to assemble (copy, punch, tab, and insert in notebooks) your trial exhibits — but again at a rather fancy price.

Those who cannot afford such services will ultimately come out way ahead by investing in the GBC monster punches or their modern day equivalents.

For those with more modest budgets, high capacity manual punches are available, such as the Swingline Heavy-Duty High Capacity Hole Punch at $264.99 from Staples. Alternatively, for 3-hole punched trial exhibits and the like, purchase pre-punched papers and (assuming you have your exhibits already imaged) print your trial exhibits onto the pre-punched paper.

B. Exhibit and Declaration Tabs

Can't tell how much money you have invested in pre-printed exhibit pages that eat up storage space and yet never seem to include all the exhibit designations you actually need?

Buy what used to be called Redi-Tags and are now sometimes marketed as Medi-Tags. Each individual tab consists of (1) an area on which you can print (yes, with your printer or God forbid type) your exhibit or declaration designation, and (2) a gummed portion which can be invisibly affixed to the appropriate page in your papers, for either bottom or side tabs. These come in various sizes (suitable for just letters, numbers, or longer "Exhibit "#" or "Declaration of "#"). Because you can print them yourself, you can always have exactly the right tabs, and your entire collection takes up just a smidgen of space in a single drawer instead of an entire file cabinet.

3. Avoid "Groundhog Day" Scanning

For those who have switched over to scanning instead of squirrelling away paper, but have not yet fully succeeded, avoid the scanner's "Groundhog Day" trap of not knowing for sure (especially in the long run) what has already been scanned, and thus repetitively scanning documents "just to be sure."

The cure is simple. Buy an inked stamp (I use one which is just a red star). When a document has been scanned, stamp it with a red star on the front. If the document is "original," "certified" or otherwise unsuitable for stamping, then stamp a small post-it with your red star and staple the stamped post-it to the front of the document.

4. In Praise of Labels

While shopping at DYMO or the like, get yourself two printers (or a DYMO Turbo, which is essentially two side-by-side label printers in a single chassis) that you can set up so that your mailing labels print out on the left, while your postage stamps (from Endicia) print out on the right.

And now for the tip that will save you the most money and grief over the course of your electronics-buying career! While you are still dropping bucks at DYMO, buy yourself yet another label printer that creates vinyl labels with peel-off backs. Then, every time you purchase a computer or other electronic device, immediately (i.e., before you let yourself sit down and play with it) print and affix a label to every single cord and other accessory and miscellaneous piece — including most importantly the AC power adapter — that came with your new toy.

That label must show the name of the main product to which this piece is appurtenant, and its function. And do not forget to label the main gadget, including its serial number, and other essential information. This regime is the only cure known to man or woman for the calamity that will ensue when you move or otherwise need to store and later re-connect equipment.

5. Your Own Private Law Library

When conducting legal research on a particular point, I often stumble across really fabulous authority for other and different points which are likely to arise, either next Tuesday or a year from next Tuesday. For a while I deluded myself into believing that I would be able easily to find these authorities again. Not so — and especially not if the point appears nested in language that contains few distinctive words providing fodder for a future search. And even when I could find the desired authority again, it was only with the expenditure of significant additional time.

I constantly express thankfulness in my prayers for the day that it finally hit me that I should create a special directory that I could treat as my own personal law library (e.g., \LEX). Now I don't know about you Westlaw folks, but on Lexis.com I can download and save the single case authority containing my newly discovered nugget, and can do so without interfering with my ongoing research on the original point.

So now I save that little gem of authority while I have it in front of me. But think through and adopt a naming convention for your collection of downloaded cases, the idea being that you should make them easy to find by a simple file-name search when you need to locate "that great case that held X" or which "dealt with procedural scenario Y."

Now I am not, of course, talking about saving cases saying that it is possible to demur to a complaint, but rather cases (and statutes) which either (1) deal with points which have a high recurrence rate in your practice, or (2) which might prove difficult or even impossible to find again in the future. Even so, my own "private library" now contains over 3,500 cases and statutes.

Once again — you will thank me later.

Written by Yvonne M. Renfrew of Renfrew Law.

How to Receive SmallLaw
Small firm, big dreams. Published first via email newsletter and later here on our blog, SmallLaw provides you with a mix of practical advice that you can use today, and insight about what it will take for small law firms like yours to thrive in the future. The SmallLaw newsletter is free so don't miss the next issue. Please subscribe now.

Originally published on May 31, 2011 in our free SmallLaw newsletter. Instead of reading SmallLaw here after the fact, sign up now to receive future issues in realtime.

In September 2010, the ABA's Commission on Ethics 20/20 set into motion a process that could have negatively impacted the ability of sole practitioners and small law firms like yours to compete with the Legal Zooms of the world, which are not bound by the Rules of Professional Conduct. Fortunately, activists within the solo and small law firm community have fought for your right to compete on a level playing field. Herein lies their story thus far, which I will continually report on here in the SmallLaw newsletter.

Creation and Purpose of the ABA's Commission on Ethics 20/20

In early 2009, then-ABA President Carolyn Lamm appointed the Commission, asking that it investigate ways to enable American lawyers to compete with legal providers in other countries while continuing to protect the public and the core values of the profession. At the time of its creation, Robert Mundheim, the Chair of the Standing Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility issued a memorandum to the Commission's co-chairs, Jamie Gorelick and Michael Traynor, asking them to consider additional points, one of which was the impact of further regulation on the solo and small firm segment of the legal profession (the largest and fastest-growing segment), and lawyers in rural and remote areas.

The purpose of any revisions to the Model Rules would be to identify and address the expanded opportunities for ethics violations resulting from the adoption of newly-emerging practices, such as cloud computing or legal process outsourcing. What resulted was an either a perceived or real effort to increase regulations on law practice by revising the Model Rules related to confidentiality, competence, conflicts of interest, and other ethical obligations.

As reported in BlawgWorld, on September 20, 2010, the commission released the first two of their initial papers:

For Comment: Issues Paper Concerning Client Confidentiality and Lawyers' Use of Technology

For Comment: Lawyers' Use of Internet Based Client Development Tools

The papers requested comments on both the form and substance of how the Commission could extend the protections of the Model Rules to current practices, offering such ideas as imposing an obligation to negotiate the terms and agreements with Web application vendors and making the assumption that cloud computing "is arguably a form of outsourcing." The Commission concluded that "lawyers must take reasonable precautions to ensure that their clients' confidential information remains secure" and that the goal is to "identify the precautions that are either ethically necessary or professionally advisable."

With respect to online client development, the Commission examined ethics issues arising out of four common online methods of client development: (1) social and professional networking services (such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter), (2) blogging, (3) pay-per-click advertising (e.g., Google AdWords), and (4) law firm Web sites.

On September 29, 2010, the Commission also announced that a public meeting would be held in Chicago on October 14, 2010. If you wanted to attend and present, supporting papers were due October 4, 2010. Given the short notice, solos and small firms found themselves at a disadvantage. As a result, only five witnesses signed up to testify — one law firm, one representative from the Legal Marketing Association, and three vendor representatives.

Reactions From the Solo and Small Law Firm Community

Immediately after the release of the Commission's papers, Larry Bodine, an authoritative legal marketer, proclaimed Red Alert: The ABA Wants to Regulate Online Lawyer Marketing — citing the deleterious effects of increased regulation on law firm marketing.

At MyShingle, solo evangelist Carolyn Elefant sounded the alarm too. "[T]his is a critical time for solos and small firms to step forward and make our voices heard," she wrote. "We cannot allow vendors and marketers to dominate this rulemaking; we need to let the Commission hear from real lawyers in real practice."

These rallying cries did not fall on deaf ears. The information circulated throughout the legal social media community. Stephanie Kimbro (creator of VLO, a Web-based practice management system acquired by Total Attorneys) railed against the whole idea that anyone would think the review was necessary ("The basic principles are there and easy to comply with.")

At the same time, the lack of solo and small firm representation at the public hearing, and concern that members of the commission lacked an adequate understanding of technology, led Carolyn Elephant to conduct a teleseminar to educate small firms and emphasize the importance of activism on the issues.

Carolyn also combined a 300-page collection of comments by lawyers, associations, and service providers in response to the issues paper, voicing a wide array of opinions.

Jack Newton of Clio, Richard Granat of DirectLaw, Larry Port of Rocket Matter, and David Dahl of Total Attorneys — Web-based practice management competitors that had recently joined together to form The Legal Cloud Computing Association — submitted a joint paper in response to the Commission's call for comments. They recommended the creation of an online educational resource for lawyers (identifying measures lawyers could take to comply with Model Rule 1.6), and refuted the idea that using Web applications should be considered outsourcing.

If the ABA hadn't been paying attention before, it had no choice given this response.

The ABA Listened! They Really Listened!

On May 2, 2011, the Commission issued its Initial Draft Proposal — Technology and Confidentiality — to the Standing Committee on Ethics pending comments received by July 15, 2011.

Carolyn Elefant shouted on her blog, They Listened, They Really Listened!

The Commission proposed four actions:

1. The ABA Center for Professional Responsibility should work with relevant entities within the Association to create a Web site providing the most current information on client confidentiality.

2. Two of the ABA's working bodies should centralize their data and collaborate on their efforts to provide updated technology-related resources.

3. An amendment to Comment [6] of Model Rule 1.1, making it clear a lawyer's need to have a basic understanding of technology's benefits and risks.

4. An amendment to Model Rule 1.6(c) to clarify that lawyers have a duty to take reasonable measures to protect client data.

Jack Newton believes the proposed actions represent Increasing Clarity on the Ethics of Cloud Computing by being tool-neutral to accommodate for the inevitable evolution of technology systems.

In Clouding the Issue, Mary Grady observes that Commission member Frederick Ury said the recommendations strike a balance between the legal profession's need to tap the benefits of technology while protecting clients.

Don't Let Your Guard Down

We're still in the early innings regarding emerging law practice trends such as alternative business structures, multi-jurisdictional practice, and virtual law firms — not to mention the final verdict of the Commission. All of these trends concern solos and small firms in their efforts to compete in an increasingly globalized legal marketplace. I think it wise that the rules be reviewed in light of these new trends, but I hope the Commission's adoption of an "educate, don't regulate" approach continues, as it is the only reasonable path.

As Solo Practice University founder Susan Cartier-Leibel states, "The Rules are the Rules. We have to comply with the same rules of professionalism regardless of what the media is." Stephanie Kimbro advises that the legal community stay engaged. "My impression is that the ABA realizes that their membership has changed dramatically as solos and small firms are now the growing majority of legal practitioners. I think they understand that they have to address this more than they have in the past. That said, it's important that solos and small firms continue to provide the Commission with their comments and feedback throughout this process and make sure that any proposed changes to the Model Rules have the solo and small firm perspective."

Staying involved in the Commission's work during this process is essential as the future of law practice becomes the present. Your involvement will also enable the ABA to learn more about the needs of the profession it serves, and encourage it to continue development of tools and resources to support the solo and small firm segment.

How to Receive SmallLaw
Small firm, big dreams. Published first via email newsletter and later here on our blog, SmallLaw provides you with a mix of practical advice that you can use today, and insight about what it will take for small law firms like yours to thrive in the future. The SmallLaw newsletter is free so don't miss the next issue. Please subscribe now.

Originally published on May 24, 2011 in our free SmallLaw newsletter. Instead of reading SmallLaw here after the fact, sign up now to receive future issues in realtime.

Last year in TechnoLawyer's BigLaw newsletter, columnist Liz Kurtz profiled my move from one of the world's largest law firms (Latham & Watkins) to one of the world's smallest (Joshua Stein PLLC, a solo commercial real estate practice in New York City).

My solo days were short-lived. Now I run a small law firm. Translation — I'm an employer. When you hire your first employee, you stop being a sole practitioner and start being a small business. And when you hire lawyers, you're a unique type of small business. In this issue of SmallLaw, I discuss the lessons I learned during my transition from solo to small law firm.

Establish Workflows and Make Sure People Follow Them

You can't work amidst chaos — not even organized chaos. I use a serious online document management system (NetDocuments) to keep documents under control. Any documents that we plan to edit always stay in NetDocuments. I am absolutely manic about how we name documents and versions of documents. I know we will inevitably receive requests for a copy of some document, marked to show changes from some specific previous version. We have to service these requests quickly without any detective work to make sure we show changes from the right draft.

For other documents — scanned correspondence, previous agreements, notes — I established a somewhat standardized file structure on my file server. Everything needs to go in the right place with a name that communicates what it is. We all have access to the same files.

Online document management and a robust email system (a business-grade hosted Microsoft Exchange server from Intermedia) take us most of the way to a "virtual office," which means that anyone who works with us can perform all their work on any computer as long as they have an Internet connection.

To take us the rest of the way, I set up remote access to most of my computers, and also bought a Pogoplug, an oddly named and odd-looking device that enables all of us to access one or more of my hard drives over the Internet as if it were a local drive, though the connection is much slower. I can also, at least in theory, offer clients secure access to specified subfolders on the same device. It has a sound and well-structured user interface, and works well for our internal e-filing.

Don't Change Your Workflows Too Much

Once I figure out a good workflow for a task, I've found it pays to stick with it unless there's a compelling reason to change it. You don't want to keep retraining people, or trying to catch up with whatever new system you've put in place.

To help me define and remember my workflows, I maintain a formal Office Procedures Manual, which is over 80 pages. I don't require anyone (least of all me) to memorize it. In fact, some of the people who work for me don't know it exists. I maintain it because I find it's a good discipline to memorialize how I want to run my firm. If I change my mind, I change the words.

Get the Equipment You Need and Then Some

Don't cut corners with your computers and accompanying technology. I have 10 computers in my office of five people. This excess capacity leaves room for errors and extras. I have boxes and boxes of extra cables neatly sorted, some extra monitors, and more scanners than I strictly need. And I have three heavy-duty color laser printers — incredibly helpful when one of them temporarily breaks or someone prints a long document. Each printer represents less than one billable hour of my time, a remarkable fact on both sides of that equation.

What happened to the paperless office? I've made great strides in eliminating paper. Nearly everything arrives in electronic form. We try to keep it that way rather than print it. All our files for completed and pending work are electronic. We store very little paper. But if I need to review something very carefully, I've found I just can't do it on the screen, even though I have eight monitors and a laptop on my desk and two more monitors in another corner of my office. I have to print it out, turn on a bright light, read it on paper, and write notes in the margin. I can't do that on a computer.

So I've learned to buy paper by the case at Costco. I try to buy laser toner cartridges by the case as well. Once you stray from the original brand name, though, the quality varies. When I figure out a good supplier, I'll stick with it, and undoubtedly qualify for a bulk discount.

Forget Secretarial Support — Use Smart College Graduates

Lawyers don't need secretarial support if they are comfortable and facile with computers. As you hire associates, make sure they meet that test. A few still don't.

With no need for a legal secretary, I hire recent college graduates who got high grades from great schools. They have no bad habits or bad attitudes. They are enthusiastic, smart, cheerful, and very computer savvy. I can teach them everything they need to know fairly quickly. They answer the phone, keep the office organized, handle filing, make coffee, answer the door, and take care of special projects.

I tell them they can freely go out on interviews for a "real" jobs. When one of those interviews results in an offer, I hire their unemployed friend, with a day or two of overlap for training. It has worked very well so far. I think one member of my little alumni association will come back soon.

Attracting and Retaining Clients: Share the Wealth

When you hire junior lawyers, you can't control all the client communications. You have to let your staff work directly with your clients. And you have to live with the risk that your clients and the lawyers who work for you will figure out a way to not need you at all. It's up to you to protect your position by providing the value that junior associates cannot — making sure the client realizes that, but without undercutting your subordinates — and building and preserving client loyalty and staff loyalty.

Going a step further, it's up to you to grow and preserve your practice by attracting new clients. If you try to "protect" the client relationship by having important communications go through you, you will make everyone crazy, including you.

Payroll Is a Pain; Payroll Services Are a Pain Reliever

The various levels of government impose so many withholding requirements, reporting requirements, forms, and adjustments that you do not want to go anywhere near the process. Hire a payroll company. It will cost more than $20 per paycheck — an expense that adds up over the course of a year just for the privilege of hiring and paying staff — but it's worth the money.

If you get any piece of the payroll puzzle wrong, some government agency will fine you — in effect a tax on starting a new business because you might foolishly hire people before you have fully set up all the insurance coverages and filings that various laws require. In particular, you need to have a workers' compensation policy in place before the first day someone sets foot in your premises as an employee. New York State, for example, may fine you $2,000 for hiring just one part-time employee for one day without such coverage. It's apparently better if you don't hire them at all.

Beware Independent Contractors

We have all heard that you can avoid some of the burdens of having employees if you instead hire "independent contractors." Don't count on it. Thanks to continuing revenue crises, many states have cracked down on the use of independent contractors, conducting extensive (and often ultimately expensive) audits of employers who try to use this technique.

You often can't treat someone as an independent contractor if they provide services that you resell to your own clients. People in this category must be treated as employees, with all the burdens described above. It's a category that includes hourly attorneys whose services you might resell to your own clients. So if you hire hourly attorneys, even if they intuitively seem to have many characteristics of independent contractors, you still may need to treat them as employees and add them to your payroll. You need to investigate this issue carefully. Don't rely on your intuition or the "obvious" reasonable result. The law in this area is not "reasonable."

As Liz noted in her BigLaw column last year, I have one person who works for me on an hourly basis off-site (actually near Seattle), handling only accounting, payroll, calendar updates, contact maintenance, and version management (saving incoming drafts and preparing redlines). When some New York state agency got wind of her, they investigated but decided she qualified as an independent contractor.

Make the Jump Despite the Hassles

Even with the burdens of overseeing payroll, being my own technical support department, dealing with love letters from state agencies, and running an office — not just practicing law — I still find that having my own small law firm beats my previous life as a large firm partner any day of the week.

Written by Joshua Stein of Joshua Stein PLLC.

How to Receive SmallLaw
Small firm, big dreams. Published first via email newsletter and later here on our blog, SmallLaw provides you with a mix of practical advice that you can use today, and insight about what it will take for small law firms like yours to thrive in the future. The SmallLaw newsletter is free so don't miss the next issue. Please subscribe now.

Originally published on May 17, 2011 in our free SmallLaw newsletter. Instead of reading SmallLaw here after the fact, sign up now to receive future issues in realtime.

The number of Web (aka cloud computing or SaaS) applications for the legal industry is growing — document assembly, document management, practice management, time and billing, you name it. As you may have seen via the May 2nd issue of BlawgWorld, Luigi Benetton writing for Lawyers Weekly recently provided an excellent roundup of the current products.

At the same time, the multi-day outage of Amazon's Web Services (aka Elastic Cloud computing or EC2) server farm in Northern Virginia caused up to 45% of its clients to lose service for up to several days — some of them legal Web applications. According to Amazon's lengthy and very technical explanation, the outage was caused by a routine network update that malfunctioned. Two elements of the explanation are key: (1) Amazon services are clustered (i.e., a given application may not have its "own" server), and (2) Amazon does not always replicate services across different data centers (in some cases this feature is an extra option).

What's the Upshot for Small Law Firms Like Yours?

If you Google "Amazon outage," you will find entries for 2009, 2010 and 2011. However, on average, although there are no hard statistics, Web applications are likely to provide better uptime, better security, and certainly better backup than most small law offices experience using their own servers running traditional software.

So, yes, these Web services will crash, but so do in-house servers. The weakest link of a cloud solution is more likely to be your Internet connection. The United States ranks only 27th in the world in terms of download speeds, after powerhouses such as Lithuania, Latvia, and Romania.

If you opt for a Web application, part of basic due diligence should be to find out whether your data will reside on its own server or is part of a cluster, and whether it will be replicated geographically or only within the same server farm. Obviously a dedicated server is better as is geographic replication.

The Future of the Cloud Is Now for Some Small Law Firms

A recent TechnoFeature article by TechnoLawyer publisher Neil Squillante entitled The Looming Battle Between Traditional Legal Software and Web Applications speculated as to the relative future of traditional PC-based applications versus Web applications.

I see the problem from a slightly different perspective than Neil. He is looking at the "big picture." As a consultant, I get the question "What should I do right now?" This question is coming particularly from law firms that are running old versions of various software and are upgrading to Windows 7 and Word 2010. The older versions of their programs were integrated with older versions of these programs, but when Windows and Word are upgraded, the older integrations may no longer work. So upgrading to Windows 7 (especially 64-bit Windows) is likely to require upgrading many other programs, sometimes at substantial expense.

From this perspective, what the future holds may take second place to other considerations, in particular speed (response time of the application) and feature set (whether it will handle the tasks your current software handles). Firms that migrate from desktop applications to Web applications (particularly at the lower end) are likely to be upset by the slowness of the application. So you may wind up paying to upgrade your Internet connection for more bandwidth.

Also, the Web applications may not have the feature set law firms expect. For firms that have performed minimal or no customization of practice management programs such as Amicus Attorney or Time Matters, the lack of features may not be an issue. But firms that have highly customized desktop applications may find that the Web applications do not meet their needs. However, many of the companies behind these Web applications are adding features rapidly. Make a careful review of exactly what features of your current program you actually use, and then see if they are available from a prospective Web application.

Your Options and the Timing of Your Choice

Your choice at this particular point in time boils down to the following:

1. Should I spend money to upgrade all my hardware and desktop programs, and keep all my data onsite?

2. Or should I switch to a Web application knowing that it is likely to be slower and less feature-rich than what I have know, but that it represents the "wave of the future"?

SaaS vendors like to advertise that their Web applications will save you money. I seriously doubt these claims are true (as Neil noted in his article, no one has published a definitive study of these claims). Using these products is like leasing a car. It is likely to cost you more than just purchasing, but on the other hand you benefit from less investment up front, the security of fixed monthly payments, and fewer surprises down the road.

For a while now, I have recommended to law firms "Keep what you have if you are not unhappy with it, and see what the future brings in 2-3 years." However, not only is this timeframe collapsing, but the split seems to be approaching 50-50 for small firms making the above choice.

Written by John Heckman of Heckman Consulting.

How to Receive SmallLaw
Small firm, big dreams. Published first via email newsletter and later here on our blog, SmallLaw provides you with a mix of practical advice that you can use today, and insight about what it will take for small law firms like yours to thrive in the future. The SmallLaw newsletter is free so don't miss the next issue. Please subscribe now.

Originally published on May 10, 2011 in our free SmallLaw newsletter. Instead of reading SmallLaw here after the fact, sign up now to receive future issues in realtime.

I am, by and large, a technology polygamist. I flit about from gizmo to gadget, hither and yon, going wherever the shiniest toy attracts my attention. I'll spend a few rapturous weeks or months entranced with some new tool, but inevitably the infatuation fades, something new attracts my attention, and I move on leaving a littered trail of discarded logins, bookmarks, and tears. Well, maybe not tears. Once in a blue moon, though, a product comes along that is so good and useful and dependable that I don't leave. Almost accidentally, I find myself in a long-term monogamous relationship. So it is with Gmail.

Gmail and I first met on August 9, 2004. I had to buy my invite on eBay from some guy in Italy like some sort of digital mail-order bride. But the lack of a storybook beginning has hardly lessened our union. It's been a good seven years. Sure, we've had our up- and downtimes, but all in all I can't imagine life without Gmail.

As with any long-term relationship, though, over time things can get … stale. You have to figure out how to spice it up and keep it fresh if you want to go the distance. Otherwise "useful" and "dependable" transmogrify into "boring" and "predictable" — and before you know it your eye begins to wander.

Hey, Thunderbird, you're looking good. Been working out?

To that end, below you'll find my top seven tips for spicing up your Gmail life so you can stay true and beat the seven year itch. All but the final two tips are available via Gmail Labs in Gmail's Settings. These tips apply to Gmail in both its forms — regular Gmail and Gmail in Google Apps using your own domain name.

1. Multiple Inboxes

Multiple inboxes enables you to subdivide your inbox into up to five different segments and define what goes into each segment through labels or filters. If you receive lots of email, this feature can be a real boon. I subdivide mine using labels: "Unprocessed," "Action," and "Waiting For" (I'm a GTD advocate). It's also great for filtering listservers and newsletters without removing them from sight.

2. Send & Archive

Send & Archive is a thoughtful gadget. When you reply to an email in Gmail, it gives you (in addition to the send button) a second button with the option to send and archive the entire conversation in one click. It's a handy little time-saver.

3. Auto Advance

Similar to Send & Archive, when you have a big pile of email in your inbox, Auto Advance moves you directly into the next message once you have disposed of the prior message rather than revert back to inbox view. This utility enables you to process large amounts of email.

4. Undo Send

Undo send puts in a short delay between the time you hit send and when Gmail actually sends the email. It gives you a second chance when you hit send too rashly. If only it worked on my speech, as well…

5. Google Voice Player

Many Gmail loyalists are also fans of Google Voice. With Google Voice's latest integration with Sprint, the number of fans will likely increase. Google Voice Player, unsurprisingly, enables you to play your voicemail within Gmail. If you use Gmail as your productivity nerve center, it's nice to be able to do as much as possible without leaving the application.

6. Address Alias

Gmail allows you to create unlimited personal email addresses by adding "+whatever" to the end of your username. It helps to effectively filter messages (as with multiple inboxes above), but even more useful is its ability to tell you who is selling your email address to spammers. If you create a unique email address for each Web site you use (e.g., username+eharmony@gmail.com), you will know who sells you out and to whom.

7. Two-Step Verification

Finally, if you love your Gmail account, you'll want to protect it and keep it safe. Google has recently upped the ante on security by offering two-step verification (or "two factor authentication" as it is more generically known). Two-step verification is an additional layer of security that requires you to enter a code in addition to your password when you login. It is an opt-in service that takes a few minutes to set up.

Conclusion

When you meet that special technology, you never want to let it go. If Gmail is that technology for you, keep your relationship fresh by experimenting and trying some new stuff. You might be surprised by what Gmail is willing to do for you. Better yet, if you mess up you won't need to send Gmail flowers or sleep on the sofa.

Written by Erik Mazzone of Law Practice Matters.

How to Receive SmallLaw
Small firm, big dreams. Published first via email newsletter and later here on our blog, SmallLaw provides you with a mix of practical advice that you can use today, and insight about what it will take for small law firms like yours to thrive in the future. The SmallLaw newsletter is free so don't miss the next issue. Please subscribe now.

Originally published on April 26, 2011 in our free SmallLaw newsletter. Instead of reading SmallLaw here after the fact, sign up now to receive future issues in realtime.

I am an unabashed Apple fanboy. They say the first step to recovery is admitting the problem. I was in line at Wal-Mart the day of the iPad 2's release. While I've used the iPad extensively in my solo practice since purchasing Steve Jobs' magical device, I was finally able to put it through the paces a couple weeks ago in the field here in Gadsen, Alabama.

I recently filed a wrongful death case against several municipalities in Alabama on behalf of a client who lost his only son during a high-speed chase gone wrong.

My Investigation at the Scene of the Accident

I conducted my own preliminary investigation using my 16 GB WiFi iPad 2 and a number of supporting apps and gadgets, including a Verizon MiFi for an Internet connection.

Once on the scene of the accident I accessed my DropBox iPad app to pull up my client's file and compared the photos in there with the scene in front of me. The iPad shined in this endeavor as the two years that had passed from the accident to the lawsuit had not been kind to the accident site. The paint used to mark points of impact and the location of the body had nearly faded to oblivion, so my "fresh" iPad photos became my landmarks.

I used Voice Recorder HD with DropBox support to record a brief statement from my witness while simultaneously taking notes in Penultimate using a Kensington Virtuoso stylus rather than my pudgy fingers.

I used my Canon EOS Rebel T1i EF-S DSLR to take multiple photos of the scene. Then, using the EyeFi wireless memory card I loaded these files into my iPad for later review.

In conjunction with the MiFi, I was able to search the Alabama court system's database to see what kind of criminal record my witness sported in case I needed to perform damage control in the future.

Using Google Maps and an officer's statement of the chase, I retraced the route through the county while the iPad sat shotgun (I was able to watch the dash-cam video of the chase before heading out to "relive" the chase).

While following the chase path I received a call from my client stating that an interview I gave a local station was playing on the radio. Once at his office I used the iCab Mobile Web browser to locate the audio clip on the station's Web site and saved it to my DropBox account. This browser lets me do things previously only available on jailbroken iOS devices. I also used iCab Mobile to look up some slang that an officer buddy gave me regarding his opinion of the subject cop in my lawsuit. Even I didn't know what "high-speed, low drag" meant!

After my investigation I used the 30 minute drive back to my office to catch up on email and Facebook via the VoiceBrief app that speaks aloud your email and other information.

An Almost Perfect Sidekick: 90% Bill Gannon, 10% Barney Fife

To be fair, using the iPad was not without its cons. The major issue I encountered was the GPS support. As noted above, I have the 16 GB WiFi model. As I understand mobile GPS technology, Apple products rely on both the internal GPS radio as well as cell tower triangulation to provide the most accurate location fix for the user. Since my iPad has no cellular radio I was limited to the internal GPS to get me from A to B, which proved problematic.

Although it could easily find the address of a witness I needed to speak with, it struggled to find my current location to calculate a route. It insisted on using my last known address as the point of origin when in fact that was 30 miles away! Perhaps I found a bug that Apple will address in the future, but in the end I had to use my iPhone to get to my starting point. Once I set a land-speed record to cross the rural county to make my appointment with my witness, the iPad performed beautifully.

Another complaint is the amount of glare on the iPad's screen. I was outside on a sunny day and had a really hard time seeing the documents and photos on the iPad. I can live with this issue as sunglasses and anti-glare screen protectors can help.

In hindsight I could have used the iPad 2's built-in cameras to take video and photos of the scene. While the HD video ability is useful I'm not impressed with the still camera results. After a photo is blown up to fit the display it loses a lot of image quality. Knowing my photos may well become exhibits I opted to bring the big gun — my Canon Rebel. I could have watched the dash-cam video via DropBox, but streaming it would have taken forever. We've all wiped the blood from our ears after watching a YouTube video over a 3G connection! I recommend using the iPad's native iPod app synced from iTunes to load any videos you need.

Conclusion

I was pleased with the performance of my iPad for legitimate legal investigatory work. As an added bonus, after its debut in the field, the iPad 2 is now a bona-fide tax write-off.

Written by Gadsden, Alabama lawyer Clark Stewart.

Publisher's Note: The WiFi iPad lacks assisted GPS. If you need GPS functionality, buy the AT&T or Verizon WiFi + 3G model. — Neil J. Squillante

How to Receive SmallLaw
Small firm, big dreams. Published first via email newsletter and later here on our blog, SmallLaw provides you with a mix of practical advice that you can use today, and insight about what it will take for small law firms like yours to thrive in the future. The SmallLaw newsletter is free so don't miss the next issue. Please subscribe now.