This week, Sam talks with Kristin LaMont, lawyer and adjunct professor, about how to maintain your work-life balance when your firm goes mobile.

The Benefits of Silence

Sam wanted to talk about how beneficial it is to take time out of your day and make sure nothing is calling for your attention. Scientists researching the effects of noise pollution in mice used silence on the control group. They found that interesting things were happening in the control subjects. When things were silent, the brain kicked into high gear to fill that silence and built new cells in the memory centers.

Aaron wondered about whether that meant that people should have more silence and less interruption during their work day—perhaps by avoiding things like open office plans or turning off notifications. Sam said he wasn’t sure that was the focus of the post he’d read, but that for him, external stimulus makes it hard to get things done. Setting aside quiet time to focus is important. Equally important is setting aside time when you are specifically available to be interrupted.

Going Mobile without Losing Balance, with Kristin LaMont

Kristin LaMont is an attorney in Salem, Oregon, who has practiced family law for the past 23 years. She has a passion for supporting work/life balance for herself and members of her firm by offering flexible work options for attorneys and staff through the use of technology and actively incorporating mindfulness practices into the culture of her firm.

Kristin is active in the American Bar Association Law Practice Management Division. She is a frequent speaker on technology and practice management topics, and she teaches Law Practice Management as an Adjunct Professor at Willamette University College of Law.

Thanks to Ruby Receptionists and Xero for sponsoring this episode!

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Podcast #86: Going Mobile without Losing Balance, with Kristin LaMont was originally published on Lawyerist.com.

In this episode, Curo Legal founder Chad Burton explains how (and why) he ditched his computer for an iPad Pro, and then ditched his iPad Pro for his iPhone. And the thing is, you might be able to do it, too.

Chad Burton

Chad Burton is a former litigator who developed one of the nation’s first “new model” law firms, leveraging cloud-based technology and modern business practices to develop a lean virtual law firm. He also has an unhealthy obsession with experimenting with the latest legal and productivity technologies. If there’s a possibility it can be leveraged to better practice and serve clients, chances are he’s tested it out and annoyed the rest of the team about it.

You can follow Chad on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Thanks to Ruby Receptionists, Spotlight Branding, and FreshBooks for sponsoring this episode!

Listen and Subscribe

To listen to the podcast, just scroll up and hit the play button (or click the link to this post if you are reading this by email).

To make sure you don’t miss an episode of the Lawyerist Podcast, subscribe now in iTunes, Stitcher, or any other podcast player. Or find out about new episodes by subscribing to the Lawyerist Insider, our email newsletter. We will announce new episodes in the Insider, and you can listen to them right here on Lawyerist.

Transcript

Voiceover: Welcome to The Lawyerist Podcast with Sam Glover and Aaron Street. Each week, Lawyerist brings you advice and interviews to help you build a more successful law practice in today’s challenging and constantly changing legal market. And now, here are Sam and Aaron.

Sam Glover: Hi, I’m Sam Glover.

Aaron Street: And I’m Aaron Street and this is episode 112 of The Lawyerist Podcast, part of the Legal Talk Network. Today we are talking with Chad Burton about how to ditch your computer and do everything from your smartphone.

Sam Glover: Today’s podcast is sponsored by FreshBooks which is ridiculously easy to use and packed with powerful features. Try it now at freshbooks.com/lawyerist and enter Lawyerist in the how did you hear about us section.

Aaron Street: Today’s podcast is sponsored by Ruby Receptionists and its smart, charming receptionists who are perfect for small firms. Visit callruby.com/lawyerist to get a risk free trial with Ruby.

Sam Glover: And today’s podcast is sponsored by Spotlight Branding, which wants you to know that having a new website designed for your law firm doesn’t have to suck. Spotlight Branding prides itself on great communication, meeting deadlines, and getting results. Text the word website to 66866 in order to receive a free website appraisal worksheet.

So today’s podcast is about going without a computer and doing everything from your smartphone and Aaron, you and I have been experimenting with similar things but not quite so extreme as Chad and we’ve done it for some time. Now, I should say at the outside, both of us actually still use computers like as far as I can tell, Chad’s workspace at home is literally setting his iPhone on his standing desk or something.

Aaron Street: Yeah, although I did just take a picture of you two days ago, with a keyboard and an iPad as though that were your office set up.

Sam Glover: Yep.

Aaron Street: So maybe Chad has inspired you.

Sam Glover: Well, when I’m traveling.

Aaron Street: And I have to say that, saying that Chad Burton inspires us is going to make his ego actually explode.

Sam Glover: That’s all right I love Chad, I’m happy to pat his ego a little bit. I mean, when I’m traveling I find that I really just don’t want to carry stuff and even my MacBook Pro, it’s a 13 inch, I think it weighs like three pounds, but it’s a lot of weight to add to my backpack or my shoulder bag and I just don’t want it. So I’ve been trying to reduce and so what I did, we just got back from TECHSHOW, which was a lot of fun and crazy and all I brought was my iPhone and my iPad mini and I brought my Apple Magic Keyboard to type on with it and I didn’t do a ton of typing but when I did it worked great.

Aaron Street: Yeah and so I think there’s certainly a distinction between, kind of minimizing your tech set up when your traveling and at TECHSHOW I mostly just used my phone and paper. But Chad right now is only using a smartphone, ever. And I think, as we’ll get into, in the interview with him, I think the distinction between what he’s doing and what I would be able to do is that Chad was brought up kind of at the tail end of the dictation era and so he’s used to writing with his voice, which is how he uses his smartphone often to compose things so he’ll use Siri and voice dictation to write things and I’ve never been a voice dictation person.

Sam Glover: No.

Aaron Street: So I can’t get my head around that, so I type with my thumbs. And therefore, I can do a ton of shit with my iPhone but I’m not gonna write things with it at this point.

Sam Glover: Although I did plug my Apple Magic Keyboard in, not plug, I hooked it up to my iPhone via Bluetooth and although it’s a little bit weird to be typing with a full sized keyboard on an iPhone, that keyboard is so light and thin that it works, if I need it to.

Aaron Street: I think you should be one of those people who gets one of those like rubbery roll up keyboards and you could just stuff that in your pocket and you could be iPhone only too and just squint at the screen.

Sam Glover: I mean, I don’t want to use a keyboard just to use a keyboard if it sucks, those look like they probably suck to type on. I don’t know I’m into that.

Aaron Street: All right.

Sam Glover: I’m more likely to get like a big, two-inch thick mechanical keyboard that has Bluetooth and haul that around in my bag.

Aaron Street: Just have it on your lap on the bus?

Sam Glover: Yeah, clacking away.

Aaron Street: Once I get some Apple AirPod ear buds I’ll—

Sam Glover: There you go.

Aaron Street: I’ll see if I can write through my ear holes.

Sam Glover: No you’re right, Chad is a dictator. Potentially that is his staff are gonna recognize that too, but I meant with his phone and yet that does make a huge difference. It also means he walks around like a crazy person all the time talking out loud to people and to his phone and to Siri and so I guess if that’s your thing.

Aaron Street: So I’m gonna be really curious to see how many people listen to this episode, hearing Chad’s cutting edge techniques for productivity and try to adopt an iPhone-only tech package.

Sam Glover: Heres what I’ll ask, like some of you who are hearing this and going God wouldn’t it be great if I could get by with my iPhone, like do it for three days. Force yourself to use only your iPhone for three days then report back. Send us an email at email@lawyerist.com and tell us how it went. Pick days when you’re not gonna be in trouble if it doesn’t work I guess. But, try it for three days and see if you can do it and let us know how it goes. So with that in mind, I can’t wait to hear and we’ll talk about them on a future episode if we get any feedback but now that we’ve said all that let’s hear from Chad and hear how he does it.

Chad Burton: Hi, Chad Burton. I am the CEO of CuroLegal. We primarily develop software for the label industry, mostly bar associations, law firms, and legal aid organizations and along with that, but a part of our business is doing tech consulting for law firms.

Sam Glover: Okay so that’s interesting, so you and I have talked about—

Chad Burton: I knew this was coming, I knew it.

Sam Glover: No, cause we’ve talked about what does CuroLegal actually do,

Chad Burton: Yep.

Sam Glover: And initially I was critical of you for not explaining it well and then you came up with a really good explanation the last time we had you on the podcast and I totally get it, but now your business model is changing so now your customer base is more sort of the legal industry organizations like bar associations instead of individual lawyers.

Chad Burton: That’s true, yeah I looked, actually before this I couldn’t remember how long ago it was, it was last March, so it’s almost been a year and yes, so we’ve seen a lot of evolutions since then and yeah we’re really trying to tackle issues that are broader for the profession and while there’s obviously important and individual law firms or organizations but we’re really trying to go at bigger picture issues. So that’s where the tech development, especially with the bar association has come in.

Sam Glover: And I guess the most highest profile, the most high profile one recently, is ABA Blueprint which is sort of a, well you explain it. Tell me what it is.

Chad Burton: Sure. So ABA Blueprint has rolled out a few months ago and it’s a standalone application that we developed for the ABA to help solo and small firm lawyers find tools to run their practice in a quick and efficient manner. So that’s been out for a few months and been off and running and going well, the other higher profile that’s out already, application we developed first and I think we talked about it on the last podcast was called LawHUB for the—

Sam Glover: Right

Chad Burton: —New York State Bar. If Blueprint is and they’re complimentary tools in the sense that ABA Blueprint is about helping lawyers that don’t have the tools to run their practice. LawHUB is really a dashboard that does three things. One is curating bar contents, so if you’re a member of The New York State Bar, the website itself kind of barfs out everything, whether it’s relevant for you or not, LawHUB, which is true, just like that’s how almost all bar associations

Sam Glover: That’s how the internet works

Chad Burton: Websites work.

Sam Glover: That’s how the front page—

Chad Burton: Yeah, exactly.

Sam Glover: Website works.

Chad Burton: Right, so we’re ruining the internet. Right, exactly. So it’s curating, so when you sign up for LawHUB, which is free for members, it asks you about your practice areas and your type of firm you work in so then the information from the bar is then curated based on that. So you only see CLE that’s relevant for you and you can go back and change that, so if you want to expand your practice and get into other areas you can go back and change it but that’s one area. It’s also integrating third party technology like CLEO, LawPay, Google Calendar, 365 Calendar, Fastcase, so you can accomplish basic

Sam Glover: Productivity dashboard.

Chad Burton: Exactly. And so you can see your payments coming in through LawPay you can enter time and for Clio, you can do fast searches for Fastcase, quick searches for it. And then the third area that is gonna be rolled out here soon is for, lack of a better label, a practice management center that has a bunch of original practice management content, and actually your aware of this cause we—

Sam Glover: Yeah.

Chad Burton: Because we have a bunch of Lawyerist links in there, so you were kind enough to help us put some content together there so it’s a, for those day-to-day quick questions that members have, they can go and check it out. We’ve got some podcasts from legal type networks that are relevant in the practice management front for solo and small firms so that’s a day to day tool that we developed for New York and actually a couple weeks ago we acquired the rights for the LawHUB from New York, we Curo, and so we are going to continue developing—

Sam Glover: So that’s what I was wondering, so is the idea that these are white label software that you can sell to other bar associations, or offer them as partnerships and stuff like that?

Chad Burton: Yeah, absolutely and so that’s what we’re looking at, with other bars and organizations to get it in their hands.

Sam Glover: Well and I have to say, for anyone who’s listening whether your from bar association or anybody else that might be interested. You guys build beautiful software, these web apps are—

Chad Burton: Thank you.

Sam Glover: They’re very attractive, they’re very modern. They move well, they’re fast. You guys are good at this and I’m curious, where is the work being done, where are you getting this development done?

Chad Burton: We have our own desk team, it’s not me that’s for sure. Based on the topic of the podcast—

Sam Glover: What we’re going to talk about is, how you lack the tools—

Chad Burton: That’s right, I personally am incapable of doing it. Yeah, we have, actually our development team is in Portland, Maine so—

Sam Glover: Gotcha.

Chad Burton: Yeah so we have a full team there.

Sam Glover: And then, who is responsible for managing those development projects because whoever it is is pretty good at what they do form what I can tell from the outside.

Chad Burton: Right. Well it depends on which part of it, it’s a higher level, that’s me and then the, and if she was on the air with us and if it was, it was actually about executing, getting things done, that would be Nicole.

Sam Glover: Gotcha. Nicole Bradick who’s also been on our podcast.

Chad Burton: Yes.

Sam Glover: Cool.

Chad Burton: Yes, exactly. She would take credit for being responsible for actual execution. Which is true.

Sam Glover: And so now I’m gonna change gears and announce that this is our very first podcast recorded with somebody who is using the new Apple AirPods, which you’ve been talking into this whole time, so how do you like them? This is our first chance to do a review of AirPods.

Chad Burton: Awesome, and hopefully they keep working because that’d be tragic if they didn’t. Right in the middle.

Sam Glover: But people want to know, are they any good? Do you love them? Are you ever going back?

Chad Burton: I love them and I won’t go back. I’ve traveled a couple times with them and I’ll bring my old ones just in case something happens but or the regular cord, earpods or whatever they’re called. But yeah, I’ve had them since the first shipment came out and yeah they’re great, they work well. The battery charges quickly. Probably the thing I like about them most is how I would have this, just as we were talking about today with my primary device being, my phone. I have these in all the time and with the earpods, the old ones, probably about five times a day I would catch the cord on something and rip them out of my ears or the phone out of my hands and I pace around when I talk on the phone and think about things so they’ve been good. I haven’t really had any problems with them. There was a little software bug in the first ones that they would cut out briefly but they seem to have fixed that recently with an update.

Sam Glover: So I’m giving your recommendation a lot of weight because what we are gonna to talk about today is that currently you basically get by with a notepad and an iPhone. But before we start going into detail on that, let me just back up and tell the listeners, so ever since I’ve known you, and I think we finally met at the very first Clio Cloud Conference at that cool jazz hotel that they did the first one at, right?

Chad Burton: Oh that’s right, yep. I forgot about that.

Sam Glover: And I think at the time, you had ditched your computer for the most part for an iPad mini I think. So ever since I’ve known you, you’ve been trying to use as little technology as possible and automate as much as possible. So, I’m inferring that you’re really motivated to ditch your computer. Why do you hate computers so much?

Chad Burton: It’s not that I hate them, I like Macs quite a bit. But I like the minimal nature of not having a lot things in general but also when I was practicing law and that carried over into our business motto with Curo, it’s a very mobile practice. I worked on the go, wanted to make sure that I could do the same work if I’m traveling somewhere that I could in an office. So I wanted to be able to flip and walk out the door and not have to worry about trying to replicate work or not have access to things. And so I used to be all Mac and then the iPad came out and got the first version of that and it wasn’t there yet, naturally from the standpoint of being able to work a lot on it. But as the iPad just evolved and especially the iPad Pro that came out, I think a year and a half ago or so. The larger one.

Sam Glover: That was basically when you ditched your laptop entirely, right?

Chad Burton: Yeah, just entirely. Because at the same time, I think it was iOS 9 that would allow you to upload documents to a regular website that you couldn’t do on previous versions.

Sam Glover: Right

Chad Burton: So that was a big part of the—

Sam Glover: That was the big turning point for me too.

Chad Burton: Yeah.

Sam Glover: Because then I could actually like draft blog posts.

Chad Burton: Right, exactly you’re just gonna—

Sam Glover: Included an image—

Chad Burton: Get that content, right exactly you could drag content and apps were developing quick enough that they were either better because some of the features were preferred for me than the quote unquote regular web based ones or on a computer, and iOS fits my work style and how my brain works better than Mac OS does. And that’s what really started moving it and with the iPad Pro, you effectively, with the larger one where you could do split screen, you could have two apps next to each other, you could have your phone so you really had three screens in a way no matter where you were and so—

Sam Glover: Yeah.

Chad Burton: Really got into that and ditched the computer.

Sam Glover: So maybe this is a good point to kind of back up and talk about what kind of work you actually do. You’re not a practicing lawyer, I don’t think right now, are you?

Chad Burton: Correct. I do not.

Sam Glover: So what kind of work are you doing and which pieces of it might be analogous to what a lawyer is doing day to day?

Chad Burton: I do draft quite a bit of content, whether it’s articles, blog posts, and then not like you, but I still draft articles and things.

Sam Glover: Yeah.

Chad Burton: I handle contracts of all the deals we’ve closed and contracts involved with different deals, I handled those.

Sam Glover: Do you print much stuff?

Chad Burton: No, not unless I absolutely have to.

Sam Glover: Yep, but I mean you obviously can print things and sign them and scan them and using a phone or an iPad.

Chad Burton: Oh yeah, absolutely. If I have to print something, it’s only because it has to be printed, otherwise it stays digital.

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Sam Glover: This podcast is supported by Ruby Receptionists. As a matter of fact, Ruby answers our phones at Lawyerist and my firm was a paying Ruby customer before that. Here’s what I love about Ruby. When I’m in the middle of something, I hate to be interrupted, so when the phone rings it annoys me and that often carries over into the conversation I have after I pick up the phone, which is why I’m better off not answering my own phone, instead Ruby answers the phone and if the person on the other end asks for me, a friendly, cheerful receptionist from Ruby calls me and asks if I want them to put the call through. It’s a buffer that gives me a minute to let go of my annoyance and be a better human being during the call.

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Sam Glover: I know a lawyer who has a very traditional litigation practice who almost never sits down at a computer anymore, because the Microsoft Word app is awesome.

Chad Burton: Oh yeah.

Sam Glover: And you can’t really do sophisticated styles on it which drives me crazy, but you can get around it and it works and he has a Bluetooth keyboard and he just takes his iPad around and that’s how he drafts appellate briefs and—

Chad Burton: Right.

Sam Glover: Summary judgment memorandum so it’s obviously possible to just go laptop-less or computer-less and use an iPad. What motivated you to drop the iPad and just go to a phone and how do you get all that work done on just a phone?

Chad Burton: I wish it was, well nothing is normal. So I was in Chicago for an ABA, for law practice division we had some reception and this was in September of 2016 and I, like an idiot, left my man purse with my iPad in it at the bar where we had this reception and just walked out without it. And so realized it later that night after got back and couldn’t get a hold of anyone and so for about 24 hours until the bar opened up the next day, it was gone and I assumed that somebody picked it up, even though it was kind of off in the corner, which is why I forgot it, I assumed it was gone.

So at this meeting all day, sitting there, still paying attention in case people are listening to this but also simultaneously, thinking like oh crap what am I going to do now, do I go buy another iPad, is this a chance to go buy the MacBook, which I really like, the newest, little thin one. Which is about the size of the larger iPad Pro. Do I go that route? Then I thought what if I just use my phone, I wonder how long I could get by with that. And so, that there that day, four o’clock comes around, we’re done with this meeting, I go over to the bar, of course they had my iPad in my bag, weirdly enough, the meatheads and other people that were at this bar otherwise didn’t want a man purse, I don’t understand why so apparently it was not their thing.

And so I got all of it back and it was fine, even the Pencil was in there, the Apple Pencil, all of it was in there. But then I was like well, okay fine. And then traveling home the next couple days I thought would just go a couple of days and just do my little experiment with my phone because when you think about the work you do and this, I didn’t mention this earlier, but think about 90% of my day is communicating and—

Sam Glover: Yep.

Chad Burton: Whether it’s using email/Hangouts, Facetime, on the phone like this, that’s most of what we do, which is also analogous to being a lawyer on the communication front and—

Sam Glover:  But on that, typing my fingers are how I do most of that communication. Do you dictate just a lot or do you only do short communications or how do you communicate?

Chad Burton: I’d say all of the above. I like voice to text and so I will use the iPhone built in voice to text for quicker communications, if it makes sense. I’m still not comfortable with this whole talking to yourself in public thing, I’m just not there yet. I try to every so often if I’m in the airport but I’m like all right, fine I’m talking to Siri here even though there’s other humans around and airport connectivity is so awful that it ends up getting, “I’m sorry I’m not available” like come on I was just trying

Sam Glover: Yeah I get that too.

Chad Burton: To talk to myself, right. I was trying to go outside my comfort zone and you ruined it Siri. Go into your short messages comment, it helps if your typing it out manually, which I’m quick at on the phone, it helps condense your messages.

And then for longer form articles, I just did this with a blog post this morning, I’ll use Dragon anywhere. Which is the iOS version of Nuance’s Dragon software and that’s quite good and if you use iOS voice to text, it will cut you off after a period of time, I don’t know how it decides when to cut you off. But with Dragon, you can talk for 15 or 20 minutes and just keep going. So that’s useful. And I was doing that even when I was using an iPad and a computer because that’s how I write. So it kind of goes back to your style. Even when I was practicing law, I was better off getting out a spoken version with dictation first on a brief or whatever I was writing because I could get the thoughts out of my head as opposed to sitting there starring at the screen saying all right what’s my first sentence. I would just get it out and then I could edit it and I just kept that going over the years.

Sam Glover: Well it’s interesting, I don’t mind speech recognition works fine for me, I’ve never been much of an actual dictator, dictator but I type so fast and I like typing and I have a hard time getting my head around, thinking through what I’m writing without a keyboard. Like I can imagine if I were trying to live through an iPhone, I would probably carry around a Bluetooth keyboard and use it with my iPhone I guess.

Chad Burton: That’s funny, about a couple weeks ago I pulled out, I’ve got a couple Bluetooth keyboards that I got out for that purpose and then I just didn’t need them, I wasn’t using them. And I was just as efficient and that actually caused me to get out my iPad and okay am I screwing up efficiency time here. And really spending a little bit of time doing different tasks and I’m just as fast with my phone as I am with a keyboard and an iPad. Going to one of your comments about the organization and if you’re just using your phone that’s where I do carry around a notebook that where I’ll throw down an outline if it’s something longer, take notes on that has kind of become my second screen in a way so, that if I am drafting a longer blog post or something I’ll outline it first that way and that way I can look at that while I’m doing voice to text.

Sam Glover: Sometimes I’ll actually write the whole thing out long hand and then you reading it in voice to text is a piece of cake.

Chad Burton: Right, exactly.

Sam Glover: So, okay so everybody here does something, well anybody who owns technology has a few gripes. So, list your gripes for me. What doesn’t work about living with just an iPhone?

Chad Burton: What doesn’t—

Sam Glover: Or what do you just desperately wish Apple would change about the iPhone so that you could work more efficiently with it?

Chad Burton: I am looking forward to a kind of more robust Siri option. I’ve tested out all those, whether it’s the Google’s version, Cortana Microsoft, there’s that one Hound, I don’t know if it’s even still around it’s like a third-party Siri. I’ve tried all those, but I have an Amazon Echo thing on my desk here and I was gonna call it Alexis and then I realized it would turn it on. Even with that I’m not, again it’s like oh that’ll be a nice supplement to my phone, there’s gotta be something else and I don’t use it because the phone is doing what I need. So if we could kind of step up the, I’m looking forward to when Siri is also more proactive. Even though it already is now, in a lot of ways that maybe people don’t realize that while it doesn’t have the official Siri label on it, there’s a lot that the phone does that is where it’s learning for examples so I’ve got the feature turned on so that if I do have my AirPods in it will announce to me whose calling.

Sam Glover: Gotcha.

Chad Burton: And it will do that, even if I don’t have the contact in, it’s going in and looking at my email and saying well this is probably who it is and so there’s that, a lot of that is already happening by using the device and its learning behavior so I’m looking forward to that kind of stepping up its game even more so.

Sam Glover: Very cool. So what other things are essential to making this work for you? I mean I know you were big on Fancy Hands before which is kind of a one at a time, outsourcing service that will, you can ask the Fancy Hands to go buy flowers for your wife or book a hotel for you or all kinds of other things. What other services or apps are essential for you to function with just your iPhone?

Chad Burton: So I have many issues but one of them is that I kind of bounce between apps trying to find that best solution that’s out there and I’m one of those people that will leave six or seven email apps in a folder on the second or third screen on the phone and wait for that update to come through. And like, oh finally now I’m gonna use this again and actually this past weekend, I found the ultimate nerd thing but I decided to wipe my phone clean and start over because I felt like it was—

Sam Glover: I do that sometimes too.

Chad Burton: Do you? Okay so I’m not the only one, okay good.

Sam Glover: No I totally do that.

Chad Burton: Because the native Apple apps are really good, they actually do what I need and I just get sucked into these other third party types of apps and so I decided this weekend I was like screw it I’m just gonna delete everything off the phone and I went through the list of previously downloaded apps and was really critical of do I really need this one and down to things like do I need the extra weather apps or is what’s on the phone good enough and it is so I’m gonna use that. And so I really tend to minimize that and so I’m looking at my phone home screen right now and it has the default calendar, mail, notes, I’m trying to not be as gross so I’m using the Lose It app so that’s sitting there. Some social media apps, but I guess the one thing if you’re going device only you still have to handle the paper side of things.

Sam Glover: Yep.

Chad Burton: And so with my notebook, if I want to digitize some of those notes, I’m using Evernote for awhile and they rolled out the new, redesigned iOS version and it was still really slow for me and so I got rid of that.

Sam Glover: It’s like, it’s gotten worse somehow.

Chad Burton: It has.

Sam Glover: I’m so devoted to Evernote but the new redesign crashes all the time, it’s slow. So what are you using instead?

Chad Burton: I’m just using regular notes, I’m using Scanner Pro.

Sam Glover: Yep.

Chad Burton: And so I use that and then I have a couple little, I don’t know whatever they label ways to automate so if its receipts, I’ve got certain automations for that and different things to upload to Google Drive, which is what we use at Curo and I’ve got my Scans app still so if it’s something larger I can just scan directly onto the phone but other than that, I’m just using the dictation app, the Dragon Anywhere that’s really got me covered at this point.

Sam Glover: Wow, so you’re both minimal in the sense of not using a computer or iPad and minimal in the sense of what you actually put on your phone. So, be honest, when’s the last time you used a computer?

Chad Burton: I used a computer, down in Miami for ABA Midyear. I had to use a computer, what was that for? Oh for a presentation. It was for a presentation, I was—

Sam Glover: Oh to actually give your presentation.

Chad Burton: It was part of the presentation was showing Blueprint and LawHUB which are both web based applications and showing those live as part of a center for innovation presentation and I would normally just plug my phone in and then I can use my watch to control the slide deck, if I’m gonna do it. It’s great, I know. But there’s another layer of problems there. But because I was effectively downloading those, or actually showing them live, I needed to use a computer so not only was it not a Mac, it was a PC so I felt like I was trying to learn a foreign language again, it was like trying to learn Spanish from back in undergrad and trying to figure out like how do I even log in.

Sam Glover: I feel like I’m gonna give you a pass on this one because you weren’t actually using it to do anything yourself and you were just, yeah. So I think I’m gonna give you a pass on that. When’s the last time you used an iPad?

Chad Burton: Besides the screwing around with it a couple weeks ago, it was probably a month and a half ago and you may give me a pass on this one too because I was doing a webinar, which ABA has BeaconLive in their slide tool and I had to call in with my phone and so I was debating whether to just use my phone to adjust the slides, I tried it and I could do it but I decided I would be a real jerk if all of a sudden my phone crashed and I was disconnected both on the slides and my phone just for trying to do the experiment.

Sam Glover: Yeah.

Chad Burton: So I got out my iPad, I was like yeah that would be kind of jerky, like why’d you disappear during it? Oh I was just using my phone and that’s why it happened. Sorry.

Sam Glover: Okay so you are legitimately living the computer-less life.

Chad Burton: So September when I ditched it, I even tried, gosh when was it, it was probably back in, it was right after I tried this and started doing this in early October I needed a deal with a large spreadsheet and I had had Fancy Hands convert some PDFs into spreadsheets and I needed that deal with those but I was experimenting between the iPad and my iPhone and it wasn’t overly complicated so I just ended up doing it on my phone, or I tried but I didn’t need to.

Sam Glover: Well, Chad Burton, thank you for visiting us from the future.

Chad Burton: That’s right, I’ll have to get back in my DeLorean.

Sam Glover: How to live the life without computers.

Chad Burton: That’s right.

Sam Glover:  Climb back into your time machine and I hope to talk to you at some point in the future

Chad Burton: Sounds good, thanks Sam.

Aaron Street: Make sure to catch next weeks episode of The Lawyerist Podcast. If you’d like more information about today’s show please visit lawyerist.com/podcast or legaltalknetwork.com. You can subscribe via iTunes or anywhere podcasts are found. Both Lawyerist and the Legal Talk Network can be found on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn and you can download the free app from Legal Talk Network in Google Play or iTunes.

Sam Glover: The views expressed by the participants of this program are their own and do not represent the views of, nor are they endorsed by Legal Talk Network. Nothing said during this podcast is legal advice.

The post Podcast #112: How to Ditch Your Computer and Work from Your Phone, with Chad Burton appeared first on Lawyerist.com.

Why “Top 5 iOs Apps I Can’t Live Without” and not “Top 10 iOS Apps I Can’t Live Without”? 5 reasons.

1. 10 is too many. You can always come up with 6 or 7, but more than that and you are padding.
2. 5 forces you to think about it and actually leave one or two you really like off the list.
3. Duh! All the lists in High Fidelity were Top 5.
4. Actually, I can only think of 3 reasons.

So here are the five iOS apps that I use day in, day out, multiple times a day. 

Zite

Zite is an iOS news reader that is described as an “intelligent magazine” and that is an apt description. When you first launch Zite it has you enter your interests. Then it presents you with a “magazine” of articles from the web that are representative of those interests. The app notes when you launch an article and read it. You can also indicate whether you like or dislike a particular article, author or topic. The result, within a short period of time of using it regularly, is a “magazine” containing dozens and dozens of articles in multiple topics that you are likely to enjoy. The more you use it and the more you utilize the like/dislike feature, the better the “magazine” becomes for you.  It comes with multiple pre-defined categories like Business, Movies, Apple News, Gadgets, Technology, Politics and many others. You can also add custom categories. Zite is absolutely an iOS app I use almost every day.

Dropbox

The bottom line is I couldn’t run my practice without Dropbox.  At least I don’t want to try. Dropbox allows me to sync my client and other files across multiple devices: my Macbook Pro, my iPad and my iPhone and my family iMac. Like my Mac, Dropbox just works. And for me that is high praise.

Fantastical

Fantastical is a recent addition.  A few months ago this certainly would not have been on my list. Before I tried Fantastical, I didn’t realize how irritating Apple’s Calendar could be.

Fantastical is a simple calendar iOS application that syncs with and usurps Calendar. It is available for both your Mac and your iPhone. It allows “natural language” entry of calendar items. For example, it understand that if I enter “Lunch next Tuesday with Sam” to set up an appointment on the appropriate date and time.  I can preset multiple default reminders. (When Apple introduced Mountain Lion it totally castrated the “snooze” feature on Calendar’s alerts to a single 15 minute snooze. Which does you no good if you want a reminder of something 10 days before an event so that you can start prepping for it. Apple screwed that one up and at least with Fantastical I can set multiple default alerts that can make for a work-around for the snooze feature.)

My only complaint about Fantastical is that it really doesn’t have an iPad app.  Oh sure, you can install it on the iPad, but what you get is a tiny iPhone sized application. Not what you really want on your iPad. But I use both the iPhone and Mac versions all day, every day.

Kindle

A few years ago when I started on my paperless path, I realized that I needed to adopt paperless practices in my personal as well as professional life. One thing I realized I needed to do was find an alternative to traditional books. Books were taking over my house. I’m an avid reader. I am always reading something. The Kindle and iBook apps let me buy e-book versions of most new books. In fact, some books are now only available as e-books. These apps certainly help in lugging around whatever I’m reading. In the past I’d bring 2 or 3 books on a vacation. Lugging multiple books was always a pain.  With e-books, I can literally carry dozens of books with me. And my house no longer looks like a literary version of Hoarders.

Now why Kindle rather than iBook? A couple of reasons. One: Price. Kindle books are almost always less expensive than iBook versions. Two: Selection.  The selection on Amazon.com in Kindle books seems much more extensive than the iBook store. Three: Sharing. Amazon makes it possible for you to loan your Kindle e-books for short periods of time. It is also possible to simply download the e-book to multiple kindle devices or iPad Kindle apps using the same Amazon account. The logical use for this is sharing the books among family members. The sharing thing is something that Apple doesn’t do at all. At least I’ve never come across that option. For that reason, I find myself using Kindle more often than iBook.

Human Anatomy Atlas

I am a trial lawyer and I primarily represent plaintiffs in medical malpractice and medical product liability cases. Thus, I am always on the lookout for anything that will enhance my ability to educate myself and others with regard to anatomy issues. And the Human Anatomy Atlas, from Visible Body, is a great iOS app for this. It allows you to view all aspects of human anatomy, broken down by systems, such as digestive, circulatory, nervous, skeletal, muscular and others. And you can view the systems in conjunction with each other. It allows you to zoom and rotate, viewing the organ or structure from any angle. It also allows you to fade out other systems and highlight structures. It is a great tool.

I own several other anatomy apps and most limit themselves to a particular system. There are a couple that do a stellar job in displaying the skeletal system, something I find particularly useful in orthopedic malpractice cases. However, Human Anatomy Atlas brings them all together. It allows you to project to a a monitor or projector and you can e-mail yourself .pdfs to use as paper exhibits. This one app can easily replace hundreds of dollars worth of anatomy illustrations for a single trial. In the context of several trials, you’ll save thousands of dollars. One of the best apps for a frugal lawyer.

Instapaper

I find the Instapaper service and its accompanying iPad and iPhone iOS apps to be invaluable in a paperless practice. Rather than printing off web pages and articles to read later, I simply utilize the Instapaper app.  A button or tab is added to your browser and if you click on it while in a web page that article or page is then saved to Instapaper for later viewing on your iPad. If you are like me you find multiple articles every day that you want or need to review. Rather than going down the rabbit hole that can end up with you having wasted several productive hours of your day surfing the internet, click on the article and review it later. Really valuable time saving application.

That’s my top five

Wait a minute, that was six! Did you ever notice in High Fidelity that the top five lists rarely actually contained five items? While staring at the camera reciting whatever important, angst-ridden list that was called for at that point in the script, Rob Gordon would be interrupted and the list would only contain 3 or 4 items. Other times he would go on and on, apparently unable to count to five. So my Top 5 list actually contains six. I could have edited out Dropbox because it is so ubiquitous, but it is ubiquitous for a reason.  Kind of like the Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald in a list of Top Five Songs about Death. Just can’t leave it out.

(image: http://mixtressrae.blogspot.com/2012/12/high-fidelity-2000.html)

The post Top 5 iOS Apps I Can’t Live Without appeared first on Lawyerist.com.

I really like writing in plaintext. Whenever I write in Word, I am always stopping to fix formatting problems or tweak the styles. With plaintext, there are no styles or formatting. It helps me to stay focused.

All I need is a little Markdown (or HTML) to designate emphasis, headings, lists, and blockquotes, and I can plow through blog posts and memorandum drafts.

Text files are also my favorite answer to the problem of compatibility. If you have ever tried to create or edit a Word document on an iPad, you have probably experienced small formatting problems. Since plaintext files don’t have formatting, this is not a problem.

For these and other reasons, plaintext has been growing in popularity with non-programmers in recent years. This seems to be especially true among Apple users, for some reason. The App Store is overflowing with text editors, while last time I checked, there were virtually none in the Google Play Store, and only a few options for Windows users.

I have tried a lot of text editors, and I like a lot of them, but Byword, Nebulous Notes, and Drafts have consistently been my favorites. Here is why.

Byword

Byword is the text editor I use for writing, and therefore the text editor I use most. I have it set up to connect to the Writing folder in my Dropbox account, where I keep all the blog posts, books, and other things I am working on.

What I like best about Byword is its the way it dims Markdown elements to make it easier to focus on the text, not the markup. Headings show up as bolded, blockquotes show up as indented, and italicized words show up in italics. (This is purely visual; nothing is changed in the contents of the text file.)

You can sync files to Byword via iCloud or a Dropbox subfolder. The upside to this is that Byword is very efficient at keeping your files in sync, and you don’t have to spend time managing files (looking for them, sorting them, moving them).

The downside to this is that you have to keep all the files you want to edit in Byword in the same folder. (You could probably sync up your entire Dropbox, but you might run out of space on your iPhone or iPad.) So unless you want to keep all your text files in the same folder, you will need something besides Byword. If you want to be able to edit text files all over your Dropbox, get Nebulous Notes.

Nebulous Notes

While Byword only syncs up one folder, Nebulous Notes can open any text file in your Dropbox. You will spend more time managing files, but you can also get to all of them. Instead of syncing the contents of an entire folder, like Byword, Nebulous Notes only syncs the files you work on in the app. That means you can have text files from all over your Dropbox synced up to your phone.

Nebulous Notes is a really good text editor, too, with a good variety of fonts, colors, and a few themes you can modify. If you want a pink background and yellow text set in Marker Felt, you can have it. As well as many combinations that are easier on the eyes.

It is a great text editor that I use for working on things like taking notes or drafting briefs. Still, there is one other text editor that has some pretty compelling features.

Drafts

Unlike Byword and Nebulous notes, Drafts is a one-way app that lets you send your drafts to nearly everything else. You can draft your tweets or Facebook updates, but you can do so much more. In fact, there is a pretty huge action directory full of useful shortcuts.

For example, I like to make a note whenever I weigh myself. With Drafts, I just type my weight and any notes/excuses I want to add (“Wearing steel-toed boots.”), and select “Prepend to weight.txt,” an action I set up that adds a timestamp and and my weight to the beginning of a text file, weight.txt, in Dropbox. I also have actions set up for my workout and blood pressure logs. Another action creates a new text file in the Notes folder in my Dropbox, naming it with a timestamp and the first line of the draft.

Of course, if I want to edit any of those files, I use Nebulous Notes, because Drafts does not have a way to import files from Dropbox. It’s just for pushing your drafts out to other apps, services, etc.

Just One, or All Three?

If you only want to have one text editor on your iPhone or iPad, get Nebulous Notes. It is definitely the most-versatile text editor.
But if you are a writer, Byword is an excellent text editor to use with your writing folder. And Drafts is great at capturing ideas, quick rough drafts, and online comments, and pushing them out to all the apps and services you already use. All three text editors have their strengths, and you might want to have all of them on your iDevice.

Featured image: “Vintage typewriter isolated” from Shutterstock.

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We talk a lot about how encrypting your files is ethically and professionally critical, but the truth is that sometimes it is much easier to trade convenience for safety. Often, it is so much easier to bring your iPad to a meeting or a coffee shop rather than lugging around a laptop.

Insight Notes aims to make using your iPad a bit more secure by locally encrypting your notes and allowing (if you want to pay the extra $14.99 for cloud storage) you to back them up to a secure, encrypted server. It was designed for healthcare professionals to take notes in the field, but could work for attorneys as well.

Besides being encrypted, Insight Notes looks fancy. You can type, draw, or scan notes on the iPad and it will organize the records by date and client. It bulk exports notes (and keeps them encrypted while it does) and will put your note on letterhead with signature and contact info if you like.

Insight Notes is $9.99 in the App store. (Sorry, no Android version.)

The post Insight Notes Brings Encrypted Notetaking To Your iPad appeared first on Lawyerist.com.

iOS apps for lawyers abound, whether for case management, billing, or trial preparation. This page has every legal app for iOS that we could find in the App Store.

There are just a few exceptions. This does not include apps that have not been updated since 2011 and have few or no reviews in the App Store. Apps that are simply mobile versions of a legal publication aren’t here, either, since the app doesn’t do anything over and above the website. Finally, the App Store is full of applications that simply repackage freely available content, such as the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. Unless an app added some significant extras (such as the ability to annotate or cross reference) to that type of content, it’s not here.

The table below is searchable, and you can sort by each column. Use the comments to let us know if we missed an app.

Originally published 2014-06-16. Last updated 2015-07-20.

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There are plenty of Android apps for lawyers including apps for case management, billing, trial preparation, and legal research. This list includes every legal app for Android that we could find in the Google Play store.

There are just a few exceptions. This does not include apps that are dead links in the Google Play store. Apps that are mobile versions of legal publications aren’t here either unless they aggregate content in an unusually useful way. Additionally, the Google Play store has a large number of applications that just repackage freely available content such as codes and statutes. Those are not here unless they provide some sort of added value like the ability to annotate.

The table below is searchable, and you can sort by each column. Use the comments to let us know if we missed an app.

Originally published 2014-06-24. Last updated 2015-08-06.

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Jodi Ettenberg left for a vacation, and never came back. On today’s podcast, she talks about how to do the same (even if you’ve got a shorter timeline). But first, did Ohio just issue the dumbest ethics opinion ever?

Ohio, Seminars, and Solitication

[A]ttorneys giving seminars to the public cannot engage in dialogue with people who come up to them after the seminar asking legal questions. These poor muted devils are limited to “advis[ing] that person to contact the office to make an appointment or to seek legal counsel of his or her choice.”

That is, to put it charitably, absolutely bonkers.

That’s from Avvo general counsel, Josh King, who writes the Socially Awkward Law blog. It’s the latest in a weird collection of ethics opinions trying to figure out what is direct solicitation and what isn’t. Like this one from Florida, where text messages are considered direct solicitation.

Jodi Ettenberg’s Never-Ending Vacation from Law Practice

After practicing law for a while, Jodi Ettenberg left to pursue her dream of traveling around the world for a year … and she never came back. Today she talks about how that happened, what work looks like when you’re far from home, and how she manages her finances. She also talks about how to finally run off and have your own adventure — even if you don’t intend to be gone for years.

Thanks to Ruby Receptionists for sponsoring this episode!

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The post Podcast #35: Jodi Ettenberg’s Never-Ending Vacation from Law Practice appeared first on Lawyerist.com.

Sam and Jared Correia discuss the impact of smartphones on our daily lives and why it may be best for you to give it up in favor of being in the moment. (And don’t worry, you can give up your smartphone without being considered a luddite.)

Lawyerist Announces Its First Ever Event: TBD Law

In exciting Lawyerist news, Sam and Aaron talk about TBD Law, an event for solo and small firm lawyers. Lawyerist has teamed up with with Matt Homann and Filament to create a two-day program to begin determining the future of solo and small-firm law practice—both for those present and for the profession at large.

How and Why You Need to Ditch Your Smartphone, with Jared Correia

Before joining LOMAP, Jared managed CLE publications and the Casemaker research engine for the Massachusetts Bar Association. He has also been a practicing lawyer, in small firms, where he mostly focused on personal injury, real estate and disability law.  Jared is a frequent speaker for local, regional and national lawyers’ groups. Follow him on Twitter and Linkedin.

Thanks to Xero and Smokeball for sponsoring this episode!

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The post Podcast #67: How and Why You Need to Ditch Your Smartphone, with Jared Correia appeared first on Lawyerist.com.

I’ve been an iPhone user since the first iPhone came out and for the most part, I’ve  been pretty happy with my experience. But there’s always room for improvement and I recently discovered 2 apps, the YouMail app for your voicemail and the TouchBase app for your calendar, that do just that and greatly enhance the iPhone’s native voicemail system and calendaring system. If you’re a busy iPhone-toting lawyer, then you’ll appreciate these apps since they make it all the more easy to organize and stay on top of your voice messages and hectic schedule.

YouMail

First, there’s the free YouMail app, which I first learned about courtesy of Ross Kodner, legal technology consultant extraordinaire, at his blog Ross Ipsa Loquitur. I’d been searching for an app to supplement the iPhone’s native voicemail app for sometime, ever since the unfortunate demise last October of the Yap voicemail app, which I’d loved.

The YouMail app supplements the native voicemail in a number of useful ways. First, YouMail provides visual caller ID, so you’re able to see the name and location of the person calling you.

Another nice feature is that you can create and assign different greetings to different contacts, so if you’re a lawyer and have a client who calls you repeatedly if you don’t reply right away, you could create a greeting just for that client that sets limits in the message as to how quickly you’ll be able to reply.

For those annoying salespeople who just won’t leave you alone and are always trying to sell you new legal products, there’s the “ditch” function. You mark their number as ditched and then can assign a specific prerecorded greeting to all ditched numbers, such as an “out of service” greeting. You can also prevent ditched numbers from leaving voicemails.

YouMail also makes it easy to organize your voicemails. You can create sub-folders (ie. “follow up,” “clients,” “law firm,” “personal,” or “family”) and then file voicemails into specific folders after you’ve listened to them.

You can also forward voicemails to your phone, a feature that I find to be extremely useful, since my email tends to operate as my “to-do” list and voicemails which sit on my phone sometimes tend to fall by the wayside. But if I email them to my main email account, then it serves as a reminder that I need to follow up on the message.  You can always email a voicemail to someone else as well, if need be.

Additionally, if you upgrade to one of the YouMail Pro editions, you can receive transcriptions of your voicemail messages. The Pro plans start at $4.99 per month for the first 20 seconds of thee first 20 messages received.

Finally, if you’re an Android user, you’re in luck. YouMail is also available for Android devices.

TouchBase

Another app that I recently discovered that has greatly improved my workflow is the TouchBase Calendar app, which costs $2.99. This is a great app that interfaces seamlessly with the native iPhone calendaring app. It also has built-in synching that works with Google Calendar, Exchange, or any other calendar that works with the iPhone.

You can schedule an appointment through either the TouchBase interface or the iPhone’s calendar. The when you open up the specific appointment in TouchBase, the app automatically detects and links to relevant people listed in your iPhone’s “contacts.” It also detects the location of the meeting, if you provided that information when you entered the appointment.

This means that assuming the app has detected the correct location, you can simply map out the location with a touch of a button, from right within the app.

You can also send, directly from the app, pre-written texts or emails to meeting attendees advising them that you’re running late, etc. And, you can revise the default message templates to include different pre-written messages.

Finally, you can initiate a phone call to attendees from within the app as well.

And, good news for you Android loving lawyers, an Android app is being developed as we speak!

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