First, the trial involved discovery of approximately 300 pages and eventual exhibits numbering less than 20.  All were easily converted to pdf documents during trial preparation using a small, hearty scanner that sits on my office desk next to my 27″ Apple iMac, an amazing robust computer in its own right.  Anyhow, after scanning all the received documents into my client’s folder, that folder also contained all legal research, motions filed, copies of relevant journal entries and court orders and transcripts from at least one pre-trial hearing.  Once on my iMac, those documents were automatically synchronized to the cloud via a $5/month service called Sugar Sync.  This secure service (similar to the more well known DropBox, but in my opinion, much easier to use) allows me to have a backup of all client files in the event of a disaster at the office.  Also, it allows me to sync those files with my iPad.  So, the day before trial, I double checked that sync by opening the SugarSync application on my iPad, free to download by the way, and selected my client’s files to sync.  The sync was done in less than five minutes and I now had every file in my client’s file on my iPad.  How to manage and display them?

I invested about a year ago in a little application called GoodReader.  It’s not lawyer specific, but it may as well be.  The developer makes regular updates and there is not a better application for handling, annotating, managing, viewing and displaying pdfs that I have found for the iPad.  It has functions, actually, that are superior to the functions in Adobe Acrobat itself.  But that is another post.  So, Goodreader also allows synchronizing with a variety of cloud services, including SugarSync.  It has a handy feature that allows you to grab all attachments to emails as well and have them deposited into the app for use.  You can move and rename files as well as create folders to hold files.  Plus, whatever your folder structure is in SugarSync, it is duplicated within Goodreader.  From there, Goodreader quickly opens your files, keeps multiple files open at once, allows highlighting, bookmarking, annotation, emailing of annotated files and displaying of those files on the screen.

Throughout the trial, there were numerous sidebars.  On several of those sidebars, I was able to run through my client’s folder and find documents, an expert report for example, and have it displayed on my iPad, by the time I reached sidebar in what was a medium sized courtroom.  The opposition literally wheeled in two large boxes of paper each day of trial, plus their rather clunky laptop and still, we were sometimes waiting for them to find documents in time to discuss issues, argue points of law or even present to a witness for cross examination purposes.

My closing argument was easily created right on the iPad with the $5.00 Keynote application.  Better than Powerpoint and easier to use with the ability of moving objects on the screen with your finger instead of a mouse.  Intuitive is the word.  The presentation was flawless in its technological execution.  I was able to easily connect the iPad to the electronic courtroom’s setup using a VGA adaptor that Apple sells for $29.00.

Throughout the trial, my iPad was propped up at a great viewing angle using an inexpensive, foldable, portable stand.  My bluetooth keyboard, from Apple for $59.00, worked perfectly.  The AA batteries have been in the keyboard for months, still going strong.  While listening to witnesses testify I could not only adjust cross examination questions, but also open other documents containing my notes for closing or other arguments and insert quotes from those witnesses on the fly and quickly switch back to note taking about their ongoing testimony.  This made it very easy to have all my gathered thoughts at the ready for preparing the closing argument, quoting witnesses or the judge’s coming instructions, etc.

One of the issues in the case was the driving distance between two points at rush hour in the city.  Google Maps, being online in the courtroom through the courthouse’s wireless as we all were, easily calculated the distance and also provided real time traffic for the same time of day.  A quick screen shot of that map and I instantly had a great cross examination exhibit for the witness.

Now, some of you may be saying, “All that stuff can be done with a laptop, bigger screen, heartier operating system, etc.”  Well, some of the above can be done with a regular laptop.  But, one trick of the above cannot be done with a laptop, a battery that you can confidently rely on to last ten hours, even if you have to remain unplugged.

For those of you that travel with laptops, you know what I am talking about, the endless search in airports, courthouses, other places when you are waiting, to find outlets.  With the iPad, that worry and that search is over.  It truly lasts all day, as advertised, which is rare in the boastful battery life back and forth of competing laptop manufacturers.  You can almost guarantee their claims of laptop battery life are overstated in real world use by 25%.  Not the iPad.  It’s the real thing.

The bottom line is, you don’t need any other device than an iPad to conduct a trial.  It has it all and I haven’t even detailed the use of the juror selection application.  More on that later.

At Ohio Law Blogs, the combined analysis from all the appellate districts would be located in that one place, that one site. This provides a valuable service to solo and small practitioners, a first stop legal research tool and it’s free! The bonus for you besides hours of staring at your computer screen wondering when you will need Lasik surgery is having your name associated with top notch lawyers around the state providing legal analysis of cases. No one individual lawyer can keep up on all the case law coming out of the various appellate districts. But, with one lawyer in each, combining forces, we cannot only find the law, we can all know what the law is and how it relates to the law in other districts as well.

Interested? Drop me an email at dean@deanboland.com and let’s get rolling.

Dean Boland.

Creating discrete groups for sharing information, called circles, is dead simple. It’s drag and drop and makes sharing a baby picture with just family, a joke with friends, or an interesting legal article with just lawyers, easy. I didn’t even realize Facebook had this feature, they call it groups, until some articles were comparing these two features.

In any event, I see a great collaboration tool for lawyers. You can create a circle for each client, add co-counsel, experts, etc and insure that everyone on the case has the same pack of information, documents, videos, articles, notes, posts, etc.

The built in video conferencing is also a handy tool for lawyer to lawyer conversations, online meetings for small groups as well. The ability to upload shared documents, videos and images and have a saved, ongoing conversation about those items is invaluable in the long sweep of case preparation. No more wandering through past emails trying to collate all the information you know you have waded through for months of trial prep amongst your other cases. With Google + you can have all that information, the shared insight of every stakeholder in a case, all in the same place. This is an easy to use feature that facebook does not have.

The reality all the robotics companies are running towards is autonomous systems. That is, military robots with night vision, infra red cameras, on board video, acoustic tracking, gps, radar, facial recognition and lethal weapons. Of course, the robotics folks and the military are single tracked for the most part in their focus. Faster, better, more reliable and, well, more lethal. And, while a cozy, air conditioned debate persists regarding autonomous, morality, etc. approximately 43 other countries (Sri Lanka for example) at last count are likewise advancing as fast as their technology and engineers will let them. Unmanned drones are just the first step. And, unlike nuclear or biological weapons which take infrastructure, expertise and particularly hard to get materials (Uranium anyone?) that you cannot just pick up at the Costco, aerial and ground robotic systems are, quite literally, available at Radio Shack.

It is not a matter of if we will have autonomous military robots fighting our wars in the future, it is how soon. And, along with that looming reality is the question, for lawyers, policy makers, international criminal courts and the like of who is liable when something goes wrong? When an autonomous robot makes the wrong decision at the wrong time, where is the blame to be laid? Is the blame for mistakes with the programmer? the operator? the person in the field? the policy wonk that dictated to the programmer what the hierarchy of decisions ought to be for distinguishing friend from foe, combatant from curious kid walking up to the odd looking, apparently friendly robot soldier?

These deaths from errant autonomous robots will not go unassigned by the victims. No afghan farmer is going to curse a programming language as he lays over the body of his dead child. His fist will be shaking at the country or organization responsible for placing the robot where it was. He will want justice and the answer that looks like everyone pointing fingers at everyone else, ain’t gonna work.

Apparently, for no logical reason Google can offer, they equipped cars to map streets to populate data in their mapping program. Well, that makes sense. Here is where the thing runs off the road. They also equipped the cars to grab data from homes and business who used wireless networks and had the lack of foresight to secure them. One has to wonder what Google was doing grabbing such data. And, this is no accident. Someone somewhere, actually several someones at Google, knew this little bit of data grabbing was programmed into what was otherwise supposed to be geo linked photos for mapping purposes. In any event, the Germans didn’t take kindly to this and some Americans thought, “hmm, perhaps they are doing this here.”
To their credit, Google readily admitted their mapping vehicles here were doing the same thing.

Once they did that, some enterprising plaintiffs’ lawyers wondered if that supposed “oops” in the programming violated any laws. Their final resting place for that research? The Wiretap Act. So, you really cannot grab people’s data with packet sniffing programs (which Google was using) without violating that Act. Google argued recently, trying to dismiss the entire case, that the data they grabbed was “readily accessible to the public.” Meaning, the persons’ data they were grabbing had no “expectation of privacy” since they were sending it across an unsecured wireless network. The judge disagreed.

While anyone could have walked up in front of those various locations with unsecured wireless networks and received a free ride on the Internet pipeline, they couldn’t have actually grabbed data flowing back and forth to that person’s router. Google was doing that. Hence, the judge found that using packet sniffing technology is doing something that is not a common piece of software available to the typical computer user. Minds are already turning in the legal community as to what other entities or government agencies are engaged in similar conduct that arguably runs afoul of the Wiretap Act. Tick, Tock.

To look at Facebook now, in a snapshot, it has approaching 1 Billion users and most of them log on at least once a day. That is a fairly impressive list of eyeballs watching ads. That is something that Google cannot touch because, although Google serves up more ad impressions than Facebook, by a mile right now, they are generalized. Someone enters a search term, Google’s algorithm guesses, fairly well, what ads might be relevant to a person entering that term. Facebook has a better idea.

Facebook can drill down their ads to not only what people might have searched for, but what they have said they like, don’t like, videos they have posted, their profile data, what most of their friends like and so on. Ads of this type have a much higher likelihood of success given how finely calibrated their targeting is. But, no one stays on top forever, not even Facebook.

That is not to say anyone, including me, sees Facebook’s demise coming soon. It is to say, however, that companies like Google are not giving up. They are not merely ceding the social networking space to Facebook. And, Google +1 is a good shot at a rival social network.

Google +1 has learned much from Facebook, both its must-have features and its flaws. And, as a result, Google has developed several interesting tools as part of its social networking service, called Google +1, to begin a race with Facebook to improve. In the end, it’s good for consumers to have the competition. Coming next, a full analysis of the +1 tools and services comparing them to Facebook.

Apple is certainly leading by innovation in this category. But, the prospect that every device maker with a touch sensitive screen may now owe Apple a licensing fee for their device, a device designed to compete against Apple, seems rather, well 1984-ish. Apple’s own classic commercial announcing the sale of their new Mac computer from 1984 is now perhaps a parody of Apple itself in 2011.

The iPad dominates the tablet market. Want to know how to prove it? Websites now seamlessly move users toward tablet friendly versions of their sites when a user accesses that site via a tablet device, Android or Mac. Therefore, it is easy to gather statistics on what type of device a user is using to visit a website. More than 90% of all tablets accessing websites in 2010, were iPads. I know there are Android based tablets out there, but they are not statistically significant. Just the facts, ma’am.

So, the consumer’s dilemma is the regulator’s dilemma. We all love the slickly designed, robust and so useful products that Apple makes, but we all learned to dislike monopolies (can anyone say Microsoft in the 1980s and 1990s?). What to do, what to do?