Litigators, Small Law Firms, Solo Practitioners, Technology

Today's Tech: An Appellate Attorney And His Sony Tablet

What are the advantages for lawyers of the Sony tablet over the iPad?

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In past columns I wrote about how a lawyer and a judge use iPads as part of their daily routine. And there’s a good reason that iPads were the first tablets discussed; it’s because the vast majority of lawyers who use tablets in their practices choose the iPad. In fact, according to the 2014 ABA Legal Technology Survey, 84% of lawyers surveyed who used tablets preferred the iPad and only 10% used Android devices, with the remaining 6% using other types of tablets.

The lawyer I’ll be featuring today, Scott Bassett, is one of the 6%. Scott is a solo practitioner who lives in Florida with a practice focused on Michigan appellate work, and his tablet of choice is the Sony Digital Paper model #DPT-S1. Even though his Sony tablet costs more, he prefers it over the iPad because it’s versatile and substantially lighter: “My tablet is so thin and light you barely know you’re carrying it. At $1,100 it costs nearly twice as much as the iPad, but weighs half as much as the iPad Air. Not only is it lighter, it has a full-size, 13.5-inch screen, so documents appear on my screen full size. It’s a better screen than the iPad Kindle app because of the backlit LCD screen. It’s much easier to read and offers better reading comfort when you’ve got hundreds of pages of trial transcripts to read through. And, the batteries last nearly an entire month.”

What are some of its other advantages?

According to Scott, his Sony tablet provides him with the flexibility to take his practice with him and work from any location, day or night, by using FileCloud from Worldox to store and access his documents across devices.

“I drag and drop PDF documents into my FileCloud folder on my computer and then download the document to my Sony device. Then I read and annotate the documents — many of which are transcripts — and then sync them back to my computer,” he explains. “Then I write briefs on either my computer, a Chromebook, or my Microsoft Surface Pro. Once I have them on the computer, I open the annotated transcripts in Acrobat in one screen and my brief in the other.”

Because of the nature of his practice, the ability to take his practice with him is key, and cloud computing makes it possible.

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“I travel a lot, flying from Florida to Michigan usually twice a month to handle my appellate arguments. Between my tablet and cloud computing, my practice is entirely paperless. When I travel I usually don’t have any paper with me. I used to have to haul transcripts, exhibits, and briefs across the country. It was a nightmare!” he exclaims. “Now I scan everything using my Scan Snap scanner and store everything in the cloud using Microsoft’s OneDrive, which offers a full terabyte of storage for free if you have an Office 365 subscription.”

Scott assures me that his use of technology has been well-received by his colleagues and the judges before whom he appears. But then again, it sounds as if the judges in Michigan are a forward-thinking bunch. “Every judge on the Michigan Court of Appeals, our immediate appellate court, has a court-issued iPad, and most of them use their iPads to prepare for court and while on the bench. So walking into their court with technology hasn’t been a problem, but they do ask you to turn off the cellular signal of you phones to have it avoid interfering with their recording equipment,” he notes. “The Michigan Supreme Court judges are also using iPads both on the bench and to review the record prior to oral arguments. And, no one on the bench has ever had any issues with my use of technology in their courtrooms.”

For lawyers seeking to incorporate new technologies into their practices, Scott recommends patience and keeping your eye on the big picture: “Don’t be short-sighted and don’t get discouraged. Sometimes you’ll buy technology that doesn’t go anywhere. We all make mistakes but it’s still worth it. And, try not to be put off by the upfront cost of technology. It will pay off after just a few months by generating increased efficiency. In the end, it literally pays for itself.”

So that’s how an appellate attorney uses his Sony tablet to provide 21st-century legal services to his clients. As always, if you or an attorney you know is using technology in a creative or unusual way in your law firm, drop me an email at niki.black@mycase.com. I’m always looking for new attorneys to feature in this column.

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Nicole Black is a Rochester, New York attorney and Director of Business and Community Relations at MyCase, web-based law practice management software. She’s been blogging since 2005, has written a weekly column for the Daily Record since 2007, is the author of Cloud Computing for Lawyers, co-authors Social Media for Lawyers: the Next Frontier, and co-authors Criminal Law in New York. She’s easily distracted by the potential of bright and shiny tech gadgets, along with good food and wine. You can follow her on Twitter at @nikiblack and she can be reached at niki.black@mycase.com.

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