A few weeks ago I ordered the Verizon MiFi—a wireless hotspot that allows 5 users to connect to it—for my iPad and other computers.
I decided to go this route, rather than buying the 3G iPad since I expected that I’d be using my iPad (and my laptop) in 2 situations where I wouldn’t have wifi access: 1) while traveling and at conferences and 2) in parts of my house and other locations where the wireless signal is unavailable.
Now that I’ve had a chance to use an iPad, I’m quite sure that lawyers will find a way to use it in their practice. The iPad won’t replace laptops or desktop computers for businesses. Rather, it will provide lawyers with flexibility and allow them to practice law more efficiently by ultimately saving them time and money.
That being said, in my opinion, the iPad is primarily a media consumption device, rather than a device for content creation. For that reason, I mainly envision lawyers using iPads to keep up on their practice areas by reading blogs and online articles or using it at trial or at a deposition to cross a witness in lieu of flipping through deposition transcripts or stacks of papers.
I am writing a book about cloud computing for lawyers that will be published by the ABA. As I prepared to write the book, I researched different software programs that would make it easier for me to organize my thoughts and keep all of my information readily accessible as I wrote. I ultimately settled on Scrivener (Mac only update: now available for Windows).
My co-author, Carolyn Elefant, and I are in the midst of re-writing the last and final draft of our book about social media for lawyers, which will be published by the American Bar Association in just a few months.
When we began, we required an online platform that would allow us to collaborate and create the first draft. Ideally, we wanted a platform that was easily accessible to both of us and would provide a forum to collect all of our discussions and notes, as well as allow us to upload the most recent versions of our work in progress.
In a recent post, Randall recommended using Google Reader as your RSS feed reader. While Google Reader is a fine choice, I prefer Feedly. Feedly, recently named by ReadWriteWeb as one of the top 10 semantic web products of 2009, is a Firefox add-on that simplifies the process of sorting through and sharing information online.
Twitter can be a very useful useful resource to help you to gain information to support your law practice. One way to accomplish this goal is to use a relatively new Twitter tool—Twitter lists.
There are many law-related Twitter lists that are curated by Twitter users, some of which include lawyers who practice law in your areas of practice. By following these lists, you will be able to track discussions between lawyers about some of the latest decisions and issues that affect a given area of practice.
A blog is a website that contains “regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in reverse-chronological order.” Blawgs are simply a subset of blogs. Webopedia defines blawg rather broadly:
Slang term used to describe an online blog that is written by lawyers, or one that is focused on providing legal-oriented content.
Scott Greenfield, of Simple Justice, seems to suggest that a blawgs consist of posts that are “worth reading” and provide insight, a viewpoint or a clear position:
I predict that within approximately 2-3 years, lawyers in most jurisdictions will communicate and collaborate with their clients using some type of an encrypted network.
This will occur as a result of the enactment of laws to protect consumer data, and because of the inherent flexibility of emerging legal technologies.
A number of states, including Massachusetts and Nevada, have passed laws or regulations which require that certain types of confidential data be sent electronically only via encrypted communications. More laws of this nature will most certainly follow both at the state and federal level.
Online services for lawyers are becoming increasingly common. For many lawyers, they are an attractive alternative to the traditional law practice management software installed and maintained on a local server within a law office.
The one thing these various platforms have in common is that the data created and managed by these services are stored offsite, in the “cloud.” The offsite data storage issue has resulted in much speculation among lawyers regarding issues of data security and attorney-client confidentiality.
In my opinion, the data security and confidentiality concerns regarding cloud computing should not prevent lawyers from using these services.
I’m in the process of reading Chris Anderson’s new book “Free” and am finding it to be a fascinating read. At one point he discusses Microsoft’s response—or lack thereof—to the free, open-source, Linux operating system, comparing the company’s slow and delayed reaction to Kübler-Ross’s 5 stages of grief.
This idea intrigued me, and I wondered if a variation of this analogy might apply to the legal profession’s collective response to internet technologies. I tweaked the concept a bit, and shortly thereafter, “the 5 stages of D” was born.
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