One Lawyer's Experience with the iPad

On a recent trip to a seminar in Chicago, after having lugged my laptop around for a couple of days at a conference, I made an impulse buy at the Apple Store on Michigan Avenue and acquired an iPad.  I wanted to see if I could take notes from presentations on the iPad with a stylus.  The program materials were available on a jump drive, so it was no problem to upload those to my PC, then upload them to my cloud drive at moblie.me.  Once there, I was able to crank up my iPad and pull the PDF's down from mobile.me, to then follow along to take notes.  No native application for note taking comes on the iPad, so I searched the app store while in the similar and found iAnnotate PDF.  While I was able to write some notes and highlight through various presentations, sadly the stylus was too cumbersome to be very effective for anything other than the occasional underline, circle, or couple of word phrases.  In order to work on the iPad, the stylus has to have this sponge-like wide squishy tip, which is very difficult to write with.  On top of that, if you rest the edge of your hand on the iPad to write, the iPad will not register the pen, making note taking not very effective at all, especially compared to my tablet PC.  While these limitations are ok for note taking and annotations during a conference, they would not be acceptable for taking notes during a client meeting, which was the primary use I hoped to get out of the iPad. On the positive side, the iPad is lighter, has a much longer battery power, and instantly turns on, as compared to the clunkyness of the tablet PC that must boot up.  My hope for the iPad was to be able to take notes during client meetings and to do estate plan drawings on it for my clients.  Sadly, the above limitations do not make the iPad a good tool for this purpose.  But, its weight and size make it a perfect travel, and indeed, carry everywhere, companion.  The other great use I get from my iPad is my ability to carry it into courthouses.  We have several judges in Mississippi that have barred phones from the courthouse.   Since my synchronized calendar resides on my iPhone, this makes scheduling hearings with the court administrator difficult.  Because the iPad does not have a camera, I can carry it into the courthouse, which enables me to check my calendar and view my emails while waiting on my turn before the judge.   

Comments

[red bottoms]

I "like" you on Facebook. Would love these for my oldest boy!