While Rob imports a presentation he created on his PC in PowerPoint, you could create the whole thing entirely on the iPad with Keynote. Note that you will need images of your exhibits rather than PDF files to use them in slides. To “convert” a PDF into an image on your iPad, simply open the PDF file on the iPad in your PDF viewer of choice (I recommend ReaddleDocs (iTunes link)), position the page you want to use as an exhibit and then press the iPad Home and Power buttons at the same time to take a screenshot. The screenshot will be added to your Photo library as a jpg. Those screenshots can then be easily added to your Keynote slides.

I also like this approach as you can highlight, circle or otherwise annotate the portion of interest in ReaddleDocs so they are highlighted in your exhibit. If you have lots of text on a page, consider taking one image without the text highlighted and a separate image with the text highlighted. Add them both to your Keynote deck as separate slides (the highlighted version as the second slide). A subtle dissolve between the slides can help focus attention on the portion of interest.

One other tip. If your courthouse has HD TVs or if you can bring along your own HDMI projector (instead of VGA), consider picking up a $99 Apple TV instead of using a Digital AV Adapter and cables. The Apple TV will allow you to project your presentation to the TV wirelessly. This may give you a bit more freedom of movement around the courtroom.

Let us know your experience using Keynote or other apps for exhibit presentation in the comments.

The OCR function I want is the ability to process an existing PDF image file into a PDF with embedded text and the original document image in the same file. This is what you get when you OCR a file using a desktop app like Adobe Professional or PDFPen. I think this is what most lawyers want when they think of OCR. This functionality is not built into any of the major PDF annotation app’s like PDF Expert or GoodReader.

The only app I am (now) aware of that does this is DocScanner. Whiled there are other apps that will extract text into a file separate from the PDF, I don’t think this is what lawyers are looking for. DocScanner will OCR a document image and output a PDF file with embedded text. DocScanner can not process an existing PDF file. Great when you want to OCR a hard copy but not so helpful if all you have is an existing PDF on your iPad. Hopefully they will add the ability to process PDF files in an update. I’d really like to see one of the major PDF annotation apps include this functionality.

Thanks to Finis for the tip!

I love your blog. Thank you for writing this blog.

I know you can help me with this problem.

I wanted to use iCloud instead of Dropbox for as my Cloud server, but I can’t figure out how to use it. iCloud does not show up as an place to save my work like Dropbox in any of my programs on my iPad.

I also don’t understand this email thing where you set up an email account @me.com. Can that replace my hotmail account or is it just a forwarding service?

Is there a cheat sheet for iCloud that I can find?

Thank you for all of your help.

Hey Kathryn. Thanks for the compliments.

There is a lot going on with iCloud and it would take a treatise to explain it all. But I think we can answer your questions.

First, iCloud isn’t ready to be a Dropbox replacement. I recommend that you keep using Dropbox (or other cloud service) like you always have. Many developers haven’t embraced it yet for file management. And even for those that have, like Apple for its iWork apps, there isn’t a good desktop sync interface. At this point, iCloud really just keeps documents on your iOS devices in sync. This has been helpful for me to make sure a Keynote presentation is on both my iPad and my iPhone. But for any other type of file transfer, I use other methods.

So what this .me account business? Well, iCloud’s primary function (at least for me) is more of a syncing service. I use it to keep all my calendars, contacts, reminders and the like in sync. Your Apple ID (the account you connect to the App Store with) will work as your iCloud account. so you don’t need to get another .me account. That said, that there may be situations where you want an additional iCloud (.me) account. For example, while my wife and I both use the same Apple ID to connect to the App Store, we each have separate iCloud accounts (new .me addresses) for syncing everything else. This keeps our calendars, contacts and the like separate. It also allows us to iMessage between each other.

I think the articles over at MacWorld.com are a great resource for general and specific questions about iCloud. Start with this overview and look at the other linked articles for additional support on a particular topic.

Good luck!

Good day.

I use Goodreader to highlight documents and briefs. Sometimes, I receive a PDF that is not in OCR format. Is there an app that will convert PDF into the OCR searchable format on my I Pad 2?

Sorry, Bill. To my knowledge you are out of luck. None of the PDF viewing or annotation apps I’m familiar with will OCR a PDF on the iPad. You’ll need to round-trip your doc back to the desktop, OCR in a program like Acrobat Professional, and then re-load the OCRed document back on your iPad. If any readers know of an app that handles the OCR, I’d love to hear about it.

• Expansion only seems to work when the snippet is only thing dictated. In other words, expansion doesn’t seem to work when a snippet is included in the context of a longer bit of dictation.
• Triggers seem to work best with normal, full words, preferably those without homophones or subtle plurals. My initial tests attempts tried Merlin’s “Q” trick, but I couldn’t get it to work consistently.
• Many apps automatically capitalize at the beginning of a new line or after a period. Because expansions are caps sensitive, you may need capitalized and noncapitalized snippets for the same expansion.

The fact that you have to start and stop dictation before and after a snippet makes it mostly unusable for doing most expansions since you could type the trigger faster than coaxing Siri to understand your trigger syntax.

That said, I’m looking at the list of apps on the Smile website that support TextExpander differently now. Perhaps someone with greater nerd credentials than I can cook up some useful or fun Siri activated snippets. Anyone else been playing around with this?

One of the things I enjoy about writing TabletLegal is the reader interaction. I get all sorts of questions. Some of them very basic. Others quite complex. At the risk of becoming an iPad help desk, I try and answer all of them. Its fun and more often than not, I learn something new in helping out readers.

The questions are also an excellent reminder that my workflow and use case is just that – mine. Everyone uses technology differently. Everyone has different skill sets. While I try to cover a range of subjects, both advanced and basic, I’m still just blogging about my experiences and what is right in front of my nose that day or that week. The medium and my writing desires aren’t amenable to a comprehensive examination of iPad apps and techniques.

For that, someone would want a book…

And David Sparks’ iPad at Work is the book they would want.

David has significant credentials in tech nerddom (and I know he takes that as a compliment). David is the author of the excellent Mac/iOS blog, MacSparky, last year’s Mac at Work and co-host of the 5 by 5 podcast, MacPowerUsers.

David is also a practicing attorney. So while iPad at Work is not specific to the legal profession, nearly all of his 110,000 words would be helpful to most any iPad using lawyer. More than a roundup of apps, iPad at Work talks about how to use those apps to get things done. I actually think lawyers reading iPad at Work may get more out of it than the average reader as we can put ourselves in David’s shoes as he explains his workflows. David’s techniques become that much more relateable, understandable and easy to try.

While David was kind enough to send me a review copy of his book, I had previously purchased and read it on my Kindle. If you have room for a dead tree in your briefcase, I highly recommend the print version. The Kindle version simply doesn’t do the full color layout justice.

Congrats to David on his excellent work. iPad at Work is recommended reading.

While iOS 5 on the iPad contains the Reminders app, you are unable to create, edit or even see the location related data attached to such reminders. You can only see these options on the iPhone 4 and the iPhone 4S. The reminder itself is still visible, but the location based options are not (and will not trigger based on the iPad’s location).

As Apple describes it, Photo Stream makes sure that all your most recent photos are available on all your devices without syncing, sending or downloading. While a nice concept for a family vacation, it may not be appropriate if you use your iPhone or iPad camera in your law practice. Because there isn’t currently a way to select which photos are sent into the Photo Stream, every device on the same Apple ID with Photo Stream activated all get the last 1,000 photos.

Consider a couple scenarios. A colleague of mine who is a PI attorney routinely takes photos of accident scenes, plaintiff injuries, damaged property and the like. I use the camera in my own practice as a scanner, snapping pictures of documents to create PDF files with an app like JotNot. At a minimum, this could add a lot of cruft and clutter to your family photo album. More seriously, this could push copies of confidential client information to a spouse’s device, to a personal computer or even a kid’s iPod Touch. Even putting aside confidentiality obligations, it would be difficult to explain to a client.

There is a solution, but it is troublesome enough that it likely will lead most folks to just leave Photo Stream turned off. To prevent photos from pushing into Photo Stream, simply tap Settings -> iCloud -> Photo Stream -> and push the slider to the off position. Another solution would be to have a separate Apple ID for your work devices, but this would make other features of iCloud unavailable between work and home – losing calendar synchronization between my home Mac, my work Mac and my iDevices is simply not an option.

So for now, Photo Stream stays off on my iPhone and iPad. I suspect an iOS update may come along giving users the option of whether photos are automatically added to Photo Stream (as is done on the Mac side).

The video below demonstrates the security hole.

Until Apple releases a fix, you can fix this bug by disabling Smart Cover unlocking in Settings.

• this idea works in GoodReader, ReaddleDocs, AirSharing or many of the other file management apps available. Use the one that works well for your workflow and that you can navigate quickly and easily.

• I like to designate my master law library folder as a folder that is synchronized with Dropbox. The procedure on how to do this varies by app so check the support materials that your app came with. Dean has a post on how to do this with GoodReader in the context of managing open cases. Having these materials in your Dropbox ensures that they are always on all your computers, on all your mobile devices and backed up constantly. This also allows you to add things to your library from other devices/computers.

• become familiar with how to convert a web page to a PDF. Many statute and reg compilations are on the web and converting them to PDF for your library gives you annotating choices (highlights, bookmarks) and access when wifi is not available. ReaddleDocs has this feature built in (I did a post about it back in April). If you have PDF Converter installed, you can easily convert any webpage to PDF by inserting the letters “pdf” in front of the address in mobile Safari(so it looks like this pdfhttp://macsparky.com) and tapping Go .

Share your tips about managing a law library on your iPad in the comments?