The Unofficial Apple Weblog writes today about a Forrester report (subscription required) authored by Ted Schadler about the impact of the iPad in the enterprise market. While not discussing lawyers or law firms specifically, I considered how Schadler’s findings might apply to law firms.
- iPads Are Replacing Laptops. This is fairly unsurprising. Most computer users have a limited list of computing needs, many of which are handled more than adequately by the iPad. When coupled with the added benefits of the iPad (instant on, light weight, long battery, lower cost compared to many laptops, etc.), the replacement phenomenon isn’t surprising. I haven’t seen more than anecdotal evidence of laptop replacement among the lawyer set which is surprising considering the typical short list of lawyer computing needs: reading, writing, email, calendar, contacts, internet. All of these are handled well by the iPad. However, lawyers often deal with lots of files. File management on the iPad is much different than on a PC and does require some extra effort.
- iPads Are Replacing Paper. Again, no real surprise here. The iPad is great way to replace all kinds of materials that would otherwise be printed. In the legal field, I don’t see this attitude among lawyers in large numbers. I know many of my colleagues feel they can only edit or review a document in its printed form. Also, my quick survey reveals few legal treatises available in eReader editions (though ample law school and bar exam study materials are available for the iPad). Perhaps the willingness to abandon paper is an attitude that will grow with the next generation of legal professionals (assuming they can get law jobs).
- iPads Are Creating New Efficiencies. The example in the Forrester report is of the ability of sales personnel to use the device to customize a customer’s order on the showroom floor. There are certainly some legal specific apps and some apps published by law firms, though I don’t see these as yielding huge efficiencies for lawyers (though nice tools, to be sure). Two areas where I do think the iPad offers lawyers huge opportunities for efficiencies is in document review/annotation, particularly of PDF files, and access to legal information (cases, statutes, treatises). As to PDF document review, Both GoodReader (iTunes link) and iAnnotate (iTunes link) offer very good PDF review and annotation tools though they aren’t specifically designed for high volume document review. The iPad offers a way for lawyers to easily bring what otherwise would fill boxes of documents and review those easily. Similarly, with an iPad a lawyer can have volumes worth of books easily accessible at the touch of a button – whether stored locally (though as noted above, this hasn’t appeared yet) or accessible via the Internet. I haven’t yet seen the first story of extensive and comprehensive document review being conducted on iPads, though I am sure the time is coming.
Schadler notes that the absence of a native Microsoft Office suite of apps may slow adoption in enterprise. As applied to lawyers, I think this is unquestionably the case. I know that the posts on this blog about Microsoft Word compatibility issues get far and away the most hits, comments and emails.
Word compatibility was a top question I received in a recent presentation to a group of lawyers and CPAs. This surprised me at least as to this particular group of lawyers as I know that all of them use their assistants to finalize and format everything in Word. In actuality, all they really need is a way to get text down on paper (screen) and their assistants handle the rest. Even with this reality, a native Word app is seen as a must by these users (I realize that lawyers that practice without assistants may not be similarly situated).
Any barriers that you see to further penetration of the iPad in the legal market? What type of app or resource could make the iPad as ubiquitous as the yellow pad?
Interesting information, but I have to make a general comment. I am concerned that there hasn’t been much discussion about the handling of files to and from the iPad (or any smartphone) in the legal context. In order to take a file out of the law firm environment, most of us would be breaking a Firm policy which immediately puts the confidentiality / priveledge between attorney and client at risk – whether it it sending a file to ourselves to our personal email accounts, or using tools/cloud services like Dropbox or DocsToGo.
General Counsel would advise not to do this at all as once the files are no longer are in the controlled law firm enviroment priveledge is not preserved and there is a ‘copy’ out there in the wild. I’m curious if there is discussion around this topic and what the varing points fo view might be.
Hm, I’m certainly no expert on the intersection of some of today’s technology and attorney-client privilege. As a gut reaction, I don’t share your concern over the use of services like Dropbox. But if there are cases where this type of challenge has been upheld (short of an actual security breach), that would be a fascinating challenge for a modern lawyer. Seems like more of a conceptual risk to me than a real one.
A copy in one’s dropbox account is not for that reason in the “wild.” Moreover, dropbox is as “controlled,” if not more so, than the so-called “law firm environment.”
Lacking for me is MSWord and easy access to files or USB port to get them from. Dropbox doesn’t sync locally to iPad and iPhone unless you mark as favorite. So without an Internet access you could have problems. And large PDFs don’t work for me with dropbox. I.e. 100mb wouldn’t sync.
The new MBA may be more practical. Bit the iPad is growing on me.
What functions in MSWord do you need as part of your mobile workflow? As you may have gathered from my post, Word compatibility is not a required part of my mobile workflow. I’ve actually felt more productive without Word features. I am certainly prone to start fiddling with formatting when I should otherwise be drafting…
Give GoodReader (iTunes link) a try for your PDFs. Files loaded into GoodReader are all stored locally. GoodReader can suck files in from your Dropbox account while you are on the go or you can synchronize over USB when at your desk. The GoodReader pdf viewer is specifically designed to handle very large pdf files. By contrast, the pdf viewer in Dropbox uses the Apple provided system file viewer which has tighter limitations. GoodReader also has pdf annotation tools which are helpful.
As former in-house counsel, I clashed with our office policy regarding the “security” concerns of transferring files via technology. In one case, our GC refused to authorize a perfectly legitimate transfer service that would permit us to easily send large documents to outside counsel because some servers used by the transferring company were located outside the United States, which would apparently open up jurisdiction over our documents to the countries in which those obscure servers were located even though we do no business at all in them. HUH? This is an impractical and irrational way of analyzing risks. The risk of security breaches exists in every facet of life. A mailman carrying your letter could conceivably be kidnapped by Taliban militants hiding out in Bethesda, Maryland and taken to Kabul for ransom. That doesn’t mean you ban the use of the post office, or buy kidnap insurance for your letter.