Tag Archives | Writing

More About CloudOn for Lawyers

By on February 12, 2012 in Apps, Cloud, Opinion

I recently wrote a couple posts about CloudOn, a new app that brings full Microsoft office applications to the iPad via a virtual workspace. Since that time, a similar app, OnLive, launched (to less than stellar reviews and comments) bringing a full Windows 7 virtual workspace (including Office applications) to the iPad. While I find these apps technologically interesting and of importance to our profession, I think they are far from the best of tablet computing.

Rather than capitalizing on the strengths of the iPad, these services bring the worst bits of desktop applications to our tablets: overpowered software, cluttered, unintuitive interfaces and uninspired design. I’ve always believed that the best apps are the ones that make deliberate choices about what features to include (and exclude) and how best make those features available to the user. These virtualization apps have done the user no such favor. The result are tools ill suited for the device and a chore to use. These apps require that the user bend to work as demanded by the tool rather than the other way around.

Even with those criticisms, I think these are important tools, especially for lawyers so I’ll continue to cover them (at least CloudOn) at TabletLegal. Without a doubt, when you need to regenerate table of contents, create tracked changes in a document or properly format a brief for filing, there is no tool other than a full version of Microsoft Word that will help you do that. Also, from writing this blog I know that many attorneys are reluctant to try non-Word based workflows. For these people, these apps provide a familiar writing environment and require little change in one’s workflow in order to use.

So what do you think? Are apps like these a step back for iPad users? Would all that venture capital money been better spent on developing a native touch-based Word clone?

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iPad 2 as Productivity Tool for Lawyers

By on May 10, 2011 in Lawyers Using iPad

Julio Ojeda-Zapata is a professional journalist and writer. He recently wrote the second installment of anongoing case study about using the iPad as a primary productivity tool while traveling. While Julio is not a lawyer, he discusses issues similar to what a mobile lawyer would face and concludes that the value of the iPad as a mobile productivity tool

has increased with the arrival of the iPad 2, which brings more power under the hood along with new capabilities that are relevant to those wanting to get real work done.

Julio doesn’t address Microsoft Word related issues in the depth most lawyers are probably interested in, but he does talk about how he tackles writing on the iPad.

(Via Minimal Mac)

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ABA Techshow: 60 Apps in 60 Minutes

By on April 18, 2011 in Apps

Last week I presented the very popular 60 Apps in 60 Minutes section of the ABA Techshow with Jeff Richardson of iPhone J.D. and Reid Trautz of Reid My Blog! The presentation was very popular – standing room only. Listed below are the apps from that presentation along with links to the App Store. Lots of great apps in there and many of them are free. I’ve generally linked to the iPad version of these apps, but many are universal or have an iPhone app as well.

Productivity

  • Calvetica (iTunes link). Fast alternative calendar app for iPhone.
  • Keynote (iTunes link). Presentation design and delivery app.
  • Penultimate (iTunes link). Handwritten notes in notebooks.
  • iThoughts HD (iTunes link). Mindmapping with great export options.
  • PDF Expert (iTunes link). PDF annotation.
  • Documents to Go Premium (iTunes link). Microsoft Word and Excel compatible file editor.
  • Dragon Dictation (iTunes link). Dictation.
  • Satchel (iTunes link). Tool for using Backpack from 37Signals.
  • Plaintext (iTunes link). Text editor that syncs with Dropbox.
  • TextExpander Touch (iTunes link). Utility that expands text snippets into full words, sentences or more!
  • CarbonFin Outliner (iTunes link). Hierarchical outliner.
  • Minimal Folio (iTunes link). Presentation delivery alternative for images and PDF.
  • Mind Meister (iTunes link). Mindmapping.
  • GoodReader (iTunes link). File manager and PDF annotation.
  • Note Taker HD (iTunes link). Handwritten note taking, PDF annotation.

Utility

Camera and Camera Utilities

  • ProHDR (iTunes link). Better than built in HDR in iPhone 4.
  • Prizmo (iTunes link). Scan and OCR text.
  • Price Check (iTunes link). Scan a bar code in a store to check if you are getting the best deal.
  • Photosync (iTunes link). Easily move photos between iOS devices, dropbox, your computer.
  • Eyeglasses (iTunes link). Read the small print.
  • Skype (iTunes link). Voice and video chat.
  • Photogene (iTunes link). Photo editor.
  • JotNot (iTunes link). Document scanner and optimizer.

Remote Access

Law

  • Black’s Law Dictionary (iTunes link). Dictionary.
  • Book of Jargon (iTunes link). Financial terms glossary.
  • TrialPad (iTunes link). Exhibit presentation and annotation app.
  • FastCase (iTunes link). Legal research.
  • Court Days Pro (iTunes link). Calculate days between dates, can customize with rules.
  • WordPerfect Viewer (iTunes link). View WordPerfect files.

News and Social

  • Appolicious (iTunes link). Keep abreast of new apps.
  • Flipboard (iTunes link). Presents your social feeds in glossy magazine style.
  • Zite (iTunes link). Pandora for news.
  • Reeder (iTunes link). RSS feed reader, syncs with Google Reader.
  • Instapaper (iTunes link). Store web articles for reading later.
  • Trickle (iTunes link). Passive twitter consumption tool.
  • Groupon (iTunes link). Coupon app.
  • Hootsuite (iTunes link). Social media management and aggregation.

Entertainment

  • Infinity Blade (iTunes link). Dungeon crawl game with amazing graphics.
  • Garage Band (iTunes link). Make music.
  • TuneIn Radio (iTunes link). Find, organize, listen and record your favorite radio stations.
  • iType2Go (iTunes link). See where you are going while texting.
  • iMovie (iTunes link). Make movies on your iPhone or iPad.
  • Atari’s Greatest Hits (iTunes link). Games from your youth.
  • Food Truck Fiesta (iTunes link). Find lunch fast.

Translation

  • Google Translate (iTunes link). Translation app works over the internet.
  • Jibbigo (iTunes link). Translation app with dictionaries installed on phone.
  • Word Lens (iTunes link). Translation with augmented reality.

This was my first Techshow and it was a lot of fun to meet the folks I share the blogosphere with. Thanks to Jeff and Reid for helping make a great presentation!

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Track Changes on the iPad – An Update

By on March 1, 2011 in Apps, Tips

A short followup to my post yesterday about recommended Word compatible word processing apps for the iPad. A commenter on that post quickly pointed out that I didn’t talk about the ability to create and manage tracked changes. Quite correct, and I should have. I’ve more or less written off tracked changes support given previous coverage of the subject so didn’t think to mention it. But I’m glad the commenter did, as I can provide an update.

What hasn’t changed is that none of the Word compatible apps can create or manage (i.e., accept or reject) tracked changes and comments. What has changed is that I’ve been able to confirm that Documents to Go Premium (iTunes Link) can display tracked changes and comments. I mistakenly told the commenter on Monday’s post that this functionality only worked with .docx files but in doing some additional tests today, I was able to display tracked changes and comments made in .doc files as well. The screen shot below shows how tracked changes and comments appear.

Viewing Word tracked changes in Documents to Go

The ability to display but not create or manage tracked changes and comments is a nice feature but as the commenter mentioned yesterday, isn’t really a solution. Because the tracked changes can’t be accepted/rejected, this feature doesn’t change my overall preference for QuickOffice Connect Mobile Suite (iTunes link). Just like for footnote compatibility, I’ll keep Documents to Go around, but will continue to use QuickOffice as my default app for Word compatible writing and editing (when I’m not using text).

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Hey Lawyer! New iPad? Get These Apps First (Word and Excel Compatibility – Part 6)

By on February 28, 2011 in Apps

This is part 6 of my 8 part series about starter apps for a lawyer to build a basic work machine. I’m not digging into a lot of custom apps here – just the meat and potatoes of the workflow for many lawyers. Last time I talked about presentation apps. Today I’ll talk about a subject that is probably of top concern to many lawyers – Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel compatibility.

Even if you do most of your drafting in raw text (which I recommend), you will inevitably need to view and edit a .doc or .xls file. For those times, my preferred app right now is QuickOffice Connect Mobile Suite (iTunes link). For a mobile Microsoft Office compatibility suite, this app offers everything you would expect. While you won’t be generating cross referenced tables of contents and custom styles in QuickOffice (or any of the competitors), all the basic formatting tools a lawyer uses are there. The reason this app is at the top of my list compared to the other capable apps in this area is in how it manages files. QuickOffice uses an intuitive drag, drop and tap interface that resembles how one might work on a desktop computer. Given that file management and version control is so important for lawyers, this feature pushes QuickOffice ahead of the competition in my eyes. QuickOffice Connect Mobile Suite is also just $14.99 at this writing (usually $24.99) (iTunes link).

That said, Dataviz’s Documents to Go Premium (iTunes Link) is still on my iPad and gets used from time to time. The main positive distinguishing feature between QuickOffice and Documents to Go is that DTG supports footnoting and QuickOffice does not. If documents with footnotes are part of your workflow, then you are going to want DTG. I draft contracts and correspondence rather than briefs and memoranda so footnotes are rare in my legal writing workflow. On the flip side, I find DTG’s file management scheme simply Byzantine at times with unintuitive panels of file management options that don’t seem linked together in any intuitive way. I’d love to see this aspect of the app get a refresh.

One thing to remember with both of these apps is that they aren’t WYSIWYG like your desktop version of Office. This is unfortunate as WYSIWYG seems like it is certainly possible on the iPad. Indeed, Apple’s Pages for iPad is much closer to a WYSIWYG experience. I think the reason QuickOffice and DTG don’t offer WYSIWYG views is because they are ports from older mobile devices and mobile operating systems (I think Palm may have been the original platform) where WYSIWYG was not an option.

Both apps have a standard version. Documents to Go’s (iTunes link) basic version is $9.99, but it lacks PowerPoint editing and cloud storage access. The basic version of QO is QuickOffice Mobile Suite (iTunes link) $4.99 but also lacks cloud storage integration and is only an iPhone app. Because cloud file storage is so critical for effective workflow on the iPad, I only recommend the premium versions of these two apps. There are other “Office” suite apps out there including Office2 HD (iTunes link) and the Pages (iTunes Link) / Numbers (iTunes link) combination, but these apps did not fare as well as DTG and QO in handling the quirky formatting of typical law firm documents (see my posts about pleading formatting and business agreement formatting on the iPad).

Stuck with a WordPerfect file? Well, you can’t edit it, but you can view it with WPD Viewer (iTunes link).

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Roundup of iOS Text Editing Apps

By on February 21, 2011 in Apps

Great round up of text based note taking apps by Dr. Drang comparing Simperium’s Simplenote (iTunes link) , Hog Bay Software’s Plaintext (iTunes link) , Second Gear Software’s Elements (iTunes link) and Nuclear Element’s Nebulous Notes (iTunes link). His comparison looks at cost, sync, support for Smile Software’s TextExpander Touch (iTunes link), fonts, searching, sorting, full screen mode, word count and misc. features. While he is evaluating these apps on the iPhone, his comments are generally applicable to the iPad versions of these apps as well.

I use a combination of these apps. I use PlainText for most of my legal writing and note taking on the iPad. When I’m writing for this blog, I use Elements because it previews HTML and Markdown. Simplenote is on my iPad, but I don’t write with it much. I’ve found the sync dodgy from time to time but I can’t isolate why – may be all in my head. I will copy and paste text into Simplenote on my desktop browser as a way to quickly sync that text to my iPad.

(via Daring Fireball)

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Legal Agreement Drafting on the iPad

By on February 13, 2011 in Tips

I’ve been experimenting with paragraph numbering (outline and legal numbering) in the Word compatible iPad word processors. This is of particular interest to me because drafting business agreements is part of my daily routine. While I plan to do a comprehensive test at some point similar to what I did for pleadings and basic formatting, I wanted to post up some interim results and related thoughts.

Today I opened up a blank page in Documents to Go Premium (iTunes Link) and typed up simple document in “business agreement” style using the legal numbering style built into that app (1, 1.1, 1.1.1, etc.). I used lorum ipsum for the text, but generally tried to format it similarly to how I would format a normal business agreement. Once complete, I opened it up in a desktop version of Microsoft Word to see how it looked. Click on the thumbnail for a full size PDF of the agreement as it looked on my desktop machine.

A few thoughts:

  • As a general matter, this would work if it needed to. The agreement is readable, the numbering provides the organizational structure I intended and it opened in a desktop version of Word without trouble. While the formatting is not the same as I would create with a desktop version of Word, it is certainly serviceable.

  • The paragraph indentation options in the app quite flexible. I think I could have made adjustments so the output more closely resembled my firm’s preferred style. But, there is no way to save these custom setups as “styles” in the app. So, to create a document with precise formatting would take a lot of work each time.

  • To “finalize” this with formatting style consistent with that used by my firm would require slight tweaks to just about everything. I’m fortunate to have an assistant that helps me with this type of task, but as any person experienced in word processing knows, it is often preferable to apply formatting “fresh” rather than reformatting a document with formatting already in it. My assistant confirmed this observation as to this test document.

  • There is no easy way to “tab” on the iPad keyboard. So in a number of places, I had to space over to create the look I wanted. Again, functional but not ideal.

  • Using lorum ipsum for text let me focus on the effort required to apply formatting in one of these apps on the iPad. It is OK, but not great. It was certainly more time consuming than applying formatting on a desktop machine (mostly because keyboard shortcuts are not available for many tasks on the iPad).

  • While I did this test in Documents to Go Premium (iTunes Link), I think I would have come to a similar result in QuickOffice Connect Mobile Suite (iTunes link) but Pages (iTunes Link) and Office2 HD (iTunes link) performed less admirably than the first two apps I mentioned in other tests.

I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the output the app created. For me, however, this test just reinforced my preferred workflow of drafting in plain text rather than in a Word compatible app. Even though serviceable, I do not need to create a final version of the document on the iPad – it will go through some process before going out the door. My assistant says she can more efficiently apply desired styles to plain text than “fixing” formatting generated by the app. Of course, efforts at formatting take me away from the writing process. When I have 20 minutes to bang out some work for a client, I need to be creating product; not formatting it.

That said, if you don’t have an assistant to assist with formatting or if you choose not to worry about precise formatting, then these apps may be workable alternatives for creating near final versions of business agreements on the iPad.

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iPad, Lawyers and Text

By on February 11, 2011 in Tips

Probably the #1 question I get from lawyers asking about the iPad is “Does it work with Microsoft Word?” The reason for this isn’t surprising given the ubiquity of Word in law firms and client environments. But more and more, I’ve felt like these folks are asking the wrong question. The better question, in my mind, is “What is the best way to write while mobile?” As I’ve said before, Word is a formatting application, not a writing application. If you want to write, there are far better tools for the job, most of which rely on plain text.

I’ve been wrestling with how to effectively make the case that mobile lawyers should consider text editors in their writing workflow. Fortunately, David Sparks makes the case beautifully in his post yesterday The Joy of Text over at MacSparky:

The watershed event, however, was the iPad. Very quickly after using the iPad, I realized I didn’t need a full blown word processor on my iPad as much as I needed a way to enter, edit, and manipulate text. It had to be seamless and fast. iPad developers largely delivered and the Dropbox API provides the glue to hold it all together. Now we can write 1,000 words on our Macs, add 500 more on our PCs, rewrite the introduction on our iPads from a park bench and do the final proofread over a Taco on our phones, all using text.

Sure, there are many times as a lawyer where you need to edit a Word file and there are plenty of great tools on the iPad for doing just that. But for the draft brief, the file memo, the first cut at a chunk of correspondence, the insert to the contract and all the other things that lawyers write, using plain text as the basis of your writing workflow will enhance your productivity and mobility. For example, this post started its life as a one line entry of text on my iPhone made on the web synced text editor, Simplenote (iTunes link). I expanded it into a rough draft of a post on my PC, again on Simplenote in my browser. I finalized it, still in text, on my iPad over lunch. A quick copy and paste into into WordPress and I’m done. If this was a letter to a client or an insert to a contract, it could just as easily been pasted into Word for final formatting. I could not have done the writing nearly as easily using Word files and I would have been distracted all along the way to make formatting revisions when I just needed to be writing.

Want to give text a try? Start small. Grab the Hogs Bay Software app Plaintext from the App Store (iTunes link) and get it synced up with a Dropbox account. Both are free, easy and a great start on a path to better text.

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