Call me! Martin Cooper, chairman and CEO of ArrayComm, holds a Motorola DynaTAC, a 1973 prototype of the first handheld cellular telephone, on April 2, 2003, in San Francisco. The device is 10 inches long and weighs 2.5 pounds.
Did you sense it? Lawyers, could you feel the significance of this week in history?
If not, it may because you were busy using your Smartphone and so completely missed a remarkable anniversary: Mobile phones have been around for 40 years.
Granted, the devices you may have hefted four decades ago may not bear any resemblance to the iPhone you pocket today, but the birthday is still real.
Here is how newspapers described the anniversary: “This week in 1973, using a prototype Motorola DynaTac, inventor Martin Cooper made the first call on a mobile phone. Forty years later, it’s considered a brick compared with the diminutive devices we carry around.”
My plan for today was to describe a fascinating movie that will be screened tomorrow night (Thursday). But then I stayed up far too late watching every possible election return (“Don’t turn it off! The Snohomish County School Board votes are being tallied!”). Democracy can be exhausting. And so, instead, the film update will come tomorrow. Today, I offer you some news from right here in the State Bar news world.
Here are two developments that could help improve your access to legal information.
Did you know:
The Arizona Attorney Magazine Blog Network now has an RSS feed? It’s true. Thanks to the insight of a viewer (who said, essentially, How could you not have an RSS feed?), you now don’t have to guess when we add new content. Instead, if you sign up for the feed, you will know every time I add a new legal blogger, and when our featured “lead bloggers” alternate. Don’t forget to sign up and/or bookmark the Blog Network, and contact me at arizona.attorneyt@azbar.org if you want your blog listed.
Today, more of a question than a talky talky post: Do any of you use an iPad for work?
I ask for a few reasons.
First of all, we are working on the October issue of Arizona Attorney, in which we’ll have some IT for lawyers content. And unlike last year, when we had an iPad story, we don’t have one this year. A reason for that was that no one ever said to me, “Right on, finally some content for the iPad lawyer!”
I would have been happy even without the “Right on.” But it was pretty quiet out there.
As we look toward 2013 and beyond, technology is certain to remain one of the biggest challenges faced by law firms. But it will also be one of the greatest levelers, allowing small firms and solos to take on matters historically the purview of the biggest law offices.
In this blog, I’ve asked before about the firsthand experiences of Arizona lawyers, and today I’m pleased to post the insights of one such attorney. Here are the impressions of David Michael Cantor in regard to tools that increase his office’s productivity.
Increasing Technology Options for a Connected Law Firm
With the recent technology advancements in the last couple of years, law firms have the opportunity to ride the wave or eventually sink to the bottom. The overall business landscape has changed, and the companies who can adapt and become more ‘mobile’ stand a better chance of success. Law in the State of Arizona has become increasingly more competitive from a criminal and family law perspective, so you need your practice to be as efficient as possible. At The Cantor Law Group, we recognize the need to be on the forefront of technology in the transition to a digitally based law practice.
In the quest to have access to everything at any time we’ve added a few tools to our toolbox, here are a couple of them:
Secure Remote Access – An issue we encountered right away is the need for secure access to files accessed outside of our internal network. Lawyers need access to files when they are in court or on the road so we needed to find a way to maintain the security of those files. Our IT consultant recommended Copiun TrustedShare, remote file access software. This software lies on our network and our employees can access, sync and share documents instantly and securely from mobile devices, including tablets, smartphones, and laptops. And any sharing of documents is private and secure.
iPads – The goal all along was to give each lawyer their own iPad. First we had to upgrade our remote access software to allow for secure sharing across all platforms. The iPad is a wonderful tool for lawyers (and most everyone!). In most cases it has eliminated the need for a laptop. There are also a wide variety of applications that can be downloaded to increase productivity including Evernote, Dragon Dictation, Trial Pad, and Quick Office Connect (allows for editing of Microsoft files). If you’re using Quick Office Connect or another Microsoft document editing app, make sure your IT staff or contractor has checked your Microsoft Word files or templates to see if your chosen iPad app maintains the formatting and markup of the document; otherwise, you’ll spend a lot of time re-creating that formatting (more on iPads and word-processing can be found here). One more piece of advice: Spend the extra money and get the 4G- or 3G-enabled iPads. Using Wi-Fi can be unreliable and often times very unsecure.
Full WestLaw Account– Our firm uses WestLaw for our research and having the iPad App, allows our lawyers to have access to new case law or research while they are sitting in court. Again, it’s highly recommended to spend the extra money to upgrade accounts so you have instant access to this type of information.
David Michael Cantor
The real revolutionary tool in this list is the iPad. You have the ability to be mobile, receive new case law, get emails, have a face to face conversation, be able to dictate, all on the fly. These technology advancements will allow your firm to be more efficient, and be more effective in satisfying the needs of your clients which is the ultimate goal.
State Bar Convention Celebrates 100 Years of Service by Arizona Attorneys
Event will provide forum for attorneys to reflect on advancements, discuss current issues, and plan for the future.
PHOENIX – June 19, 2012 – The State Bar of Arizona will host the 2012 Annual Convention at the Arizona Biltmore Resort & Spa in Phoenix, June 20-22. More than 1,600 attorneys from across the state will convene and participate in the 79th annual convention.
This year, the convention will offer more than 40 seminars, nationally recognized speakers, unique social and networking opportunities, along with a silent auction benefiting Defenders of Children. Many seminar chairs have incorporated this year’s theme of “Celebrating 100 Years of Lawyer Serving Arizona” into their programs that will better educate and enhance the legal profession.
Incorporating State Bar President Joe Kanefield’s commitment to technology, several cutting edge advances will be used to present this year’s convention, including a mobile app, and downloadable materials. All while maintaining the Bar’s commitment to “going green.”
Other convention highlights:
Alison Levine, the first American to complete a 600-mile journey from west Antarctica to the South Pole and who was featured in the PBS documentary Living Courageously, will deliver an inspiring keynote address at the State Bar Luncheon on Friday, June 22.
Honorable Medhat al-Mahmoud, the Chief Justice of Iraq and President of the Iraqi Higher Judicial Council will speak about the state of the country’s judiciary nearly a decade after the U.S. led invasion brought about regime change at a FREE CLE seminar on Friday, June 22.
The Bar will launch its first-ever convention mobile app that provides convenient and time-saving information including registration information, seminar schedules and presenters, sponsor and exhibitor listings, a sitemap to help guide registrants and direct access to news and social media.
Amelia Craig Cramer of Tucson will be introduced as incoming president of the State Bar of Arizona.
Show of hands. How many people are tired of PowerPoint?
I know, it’s not fair to blame the technology for the content. Or, in this case, the medium for the message.
But there is something about PowerPoint that invites abuse. Law firms are pretty bad offenders when it comes to this. They share volumes of detailed information via a channel that is most adept at sharing visual information. A generation of lawyers have been trained to perform the PowerPoint move: Read the long paragraph to which they are subjected as quickly as possible, marvel at the fact that the presenter is reading the entire slide aloud, and dream of life outside the conference room.
I would recommend a new functionality, one that can sense when a user has inserted, say, 200 words onto a single slide. At the point, a dialog box would pop up, reach out, and bludgeon the user senseless.
You’re right, you’re right: Violence is never the answer.
But until people learn to wield PowerPoint more effectively, the answer may be … Prezi.
Have you Prezi’d? I did, twice now, and I’m still grinning.
Prezi is just another apparatus that allows you to convey presentation information. It too utilizes a slide-based format. But because it zigs and zags while PowerPoint shuffles, Prezi encourages the user to get jiggy with it.
Here is a video about it:
The slides themselves may turn and wheel in and out of view, at the presenter’s discretion. That allows you to insert the element of surprise into what used to be an uneventful slog. Prezi even allows you to let attendees finally see the “big picture” you’ve created. For example, in a Prezi I did for law school students, I literally punctuated my discussion of the state of the legal economy with a question mark—comprised of all the slides together.
Want to see a Prezi I built? Go here. To advance, just click the arrow in the center beneath the window.
Because Prezi is a sketch and not a novel, though, you may not understand the “show” without me, the presenter. But that’s how it’s supposed to be. Attendees at a gathering should watch the speaker develop his points, rather than race him to the end of a text-laden slide.
