One of the shortcomings of the iphone 4 was it's inability to sync Outlook Tasks. Now the problem is solved. The software on the iphone 4 has been updated to OS5 and now syncs with Outlook tasks. You can download the new software via itunes.
Check this out for a list of apps useful for lawyers.
I recently switched from my Blackberry to the iphone 4 and given the recent Blackberry blackout it was a good move. The iphone 4 is fantastic. The only drawback is that it will not sync with Outlook tasks. There is a work around for that but it is beyond my limited tech abilities. Once you switch to the iphone 4 you will never go back.
If you want to learn about Adobe Acrobat and how lawyers put it to use go to Ernie Svenson's blog: "PDF for Lawyers - Smart tips for busy lawyers and legal professionals". This is one blog where I find myself going through not only the recent posts but also the archived posts. There is plenty to learn from this blog.
One of my hobbies is photography. A common subject in books and magazines on photography is what gear and work flow does the author of the book or some well known photographer use. This kind of information often is a great guide in sorting out what equipment you should or shouldn't have. If you learn that Joe the Famous Photographer uses the cheapo wide angle lens instead of the $2,000 version you can scratch that more expensive lens off of your wish list.
Gear and work flow have now hit the attorney world. There is a very interesting post here at Ernie the Attorney on those subjects. Included in the post is a link to a pdf document that lists and explains his work flow and the equipment he uses. If you ever wonder why in the world you would want to use a certain type of gizmo, you might find out in a post like that. I hope there will be more from other blogging attorneys in the future.
As you can see from the date of my last post I have been on another planet for awhile. More on that in a future post. Having returned to earth I have discovered this thing called Twitter where you can create a text message of no more than 140 characters and then send it out to a few or a million recipients. Today I read a post at Deliberations (the post was old - I have a lot of catching up to do) that reporters are sending "tweets" from the court room giving blow by blow reportage on jury trials. Even the Spokesman Review in Spokane is into the act. For those who like to watch jury trials this will be like listening to a baseball game on the radio - well almost.
Metadata? What’s that? I am surprised at how many times those questions are asked when I mention metadata. At a recent talk before the Yakima County Bar Association there was not a person in the audience that knew about metadata. Everyone had better start learning.
Metadata is data about data. Whenever you create a Word or Wordperfect document the program retains such information about the document as who originally created it, how many times and when it was revised, how much time was spent revising it and who revised it. It could be very embarrassing for a tech savvy client to find out that the letter you sent them was really a revision of another letter that you copied from another client’s file. Or, it would be useful for the opposing counsel to know that your terse letter setting forth your bottom line had been revised a half dozen times. Worse yet, attorneys that don’t know how to turn off their “track changes” or how to get rid of the information created by “track changes” risk having opposing counsel be able to see all of your changes to the document.
Is it unethical for opposing counsel to look at or look for this metadata? No, it isn’t according to a recent ethics opinion by the ABA. So …. all the more reason to learn about metadata. For a good source on this subjectgo to this post at Evan Schaefer’s Legal Underground for information and additional links to even more information.
Over the past few years I have become quite fond of the CaseSoft product CaseMap which is now up to version 6. It is a software program which allows you to manage an individual case in a way that will put all the information in the file at your fingertips so that it can be retrieved and organized with ease.
If you are like me, your individual case files take on a life of their own and grow exponentially. Many hours are often wasted hunting for that one document, that one phrase in a document, that excerpt from a deposition and so on. How many of you have picked up a copy of a deposition bristling with post it notes and were not sure what the post it notes were marking in the first place.
CaseMap 6 takes care of these problems. The software is essentially a series of spreadsheets that can be manipulated. There is a spreadsheet to keep track of the facts in the case, one to keep track of the characters in the case be they individuals or organizations, one to keep track of documents in the case, one to keep track of issues in the case, one to keep track of questions as they pop up and one to keep track of research. The fact spreadsheet allows you to keep track of the source of the fact, be it from a witness or a document. You can link to the exact deposition testimony that supports the fact with the addition of TextMap 2, also a product of CaseSoft. CaseMap 6 also links with Acrobat PDFs so that you can link directly to a certain document or page in a document. The spreadsheet of documents allows you to link directly to the documents both in PDF and your word processor documents. Both the fact and document spreadsheets link to the issue spreadsheet so that you can see which fact or document supports which issue. All of the spreadsheets allow you to add many other categories and customize your own categories.
The software can also sort and filter the information and print reports. You can sort out all of the facts attributable to one person or sort out the disputed and undisputed facts. CaseMap 6 also features a summary judgment function which sorts out the undisputed facts and ties them in to the various issues in the case. You can sort out the facts that are the most favorable to your case and those that are most favorable to the other side.
CaseMap 6 also has an Adobe plug in which allows you to bate stamp all of your PDF documents. Your staff will appreciate this to no end. Before, when you were done bate stamping and discovered that you didn't include a document which should go somewhere in the middle of the stack, you probably did something like stamp the document 100299 and then wrote in an "A" at the end of the number. With CaseMap you can simply renumber the whole stack in seconds.
I am only touching the surface of the product in this post as to comment on all of the features would take up entirely too much space on a blog. A couple of examples of the efficiencies this program provides may give you a good idea of what it can do. Imagine you are getting ready for trial and you want to gather all of your sources for your cross examination. CaseMap allows you to print them all out grouped for each individual witness. Compare that to making copies of deposition pages and documents that have been dug out of the file. Imagine a question arises as to whether or not certain evidence is admissible. The question can be assigned, for instance, to an associate who then does the research and enters it into CaseMap. Later you can come back and link between that certain piece of evidence and the research that allows its' admissibility.
I realize that this may be old news to many out there in the blawgosphere, but to any who have not checked it out it is certainly worth a look see. I also understand that CaseSoft was recently purchased by Lexis.
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