Legal Tech Black Friday Edition

Legal technology columnist Jeff Bennion reports on some of the cooler gadgets that have come out lately.

In a few days it will be Black Friday, and in a few more days after that, it will be Cyber Monday. It’s time for you to start thinking about what gifts to get for the lawyers in your life.

If nothing in Above the Law’s latest lawyer holiday gift guide caught your eye, here are additional ideas — some of the cooler legal technology gadgets that have come out lately.

Bluetooth Muscle-Sensing PowerPoint Gesture Control Clicker

The Myo armband (affiliate link) stretches to fit over your forearm and wirelessly transmits readings from your muscle twitches to your computer to control PowerPoint. In other words, it lets you control PowerPoint with hand gestures. I got one a few months ago and it works all right. It’s obviously first-generation technology, but works surprisingly well.

You sync it with your computer with a provided USB Bluetooth dongle, calibrate it one time, then go into PowerPoint and do your thing. If you’re worried about advancing slides accidentally while talking with hands, it doesn’t do that. You have to activate it first before it records a movement by pressing your thumb and middle finger together twice. That will advance a slide. To go back, swipe your hand out and swipe to right and hold your wrist bent for a second or two. To get a laser pointer, just point at the screen and then point to whatever you want. It tracks your hand movement. You can zoom by making a fist and turning your hand. There’s a calibration tool to practice.

The biggest drawback for me is that it gives you vibrating feedback on your gestures, so if you are in a small conference room, it will sound like someone’s phone is vibrating loudly every time you do something. It also works about 90% of the time. So, I’ll get to my 10th slide and it doesn’t advance when I double click with my thumb and middle finger, so I have to double click again for it to work. It is kind of obtrusive, but if you wear it under a suit coat, it’s not noticeable. Since I don’t do a lot of presentations in t-shirts, it’s not an issue.

Sponsored

You can also use it to play Counterstrike.

I’d give it a 10/10 for coolness, but dock a few points for bugginess.

Palm-sized Wireless Touchscreen Projector

The Pond TouchJet turns any flat surface into a touchscreen. Have a white wall? Point your projector at it and turn it into a touchscreen. I don’t have this model, but I have used a pocket-sized wireless projector for mediations and settlement conferences in judges’ chambers.

Sponsored

A few years ago, I was in a settlement conference, and I had mentioned in my brief that I would bring some videos that were crucial to my case to the conference. I walked into the judge’s chambers and she asked to see the videos. I pulled a palm-sized projector out of my suit coat pocket and showed a 60” image on her wall under her diplomas and played the videos with audio through the built-in speaker. Then I turned it off and put it back into my pocket. The judge said, “That was the coolest thing I’ve ever seen.” I use my projector at mediations all the time too. If I have an accident reconstruction video or a surveillance video, I can play it, pause it, and point to the things I want and even zoom in on them if I want. You can’t do that by passing around an iPad and having everyone in the room huddle over someone’s shoulder.

The Pond has onboard storage, so you can download your PowerPoint presentation, or your exhibits, or your videos directly onto the device, and download PowerPoint and do your thing. You can also walk up to the wall and grab your stylus and zoom in on a piece of evidence and circle it with a red pen, or highlight a key piece of text in a contract. It has a battery, so you don’t need to fumble with any cords. You can even hook it up directly to your phone via Bluetooth and cast your phone’s screen.

Surface Book/Surface Pro 4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Gh4o9IqeEU

I truly think that the Surface Pro 4 is the greatest computer for lawyers ever made, and if I could recommend one piece of technology for lawyers, it would be the Surface Pro 4. It’s the size of an 8.5×11 piece of paper, comes with a stylus for taking notes, has all of the power and function of a desktop computer, but fits in your hand and has an all-day battery life. Currently, it is my main work computer. I have it hooked up to two other monitors and a full-sized keyboard and mouse. When I need to go into the conference room, I just disconnect it from the dock and grab my stylus and go.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MrnSnX9bJU

It runs the full version of Office 365 and the latest version of Adobe Acrobat Professional. Unlike the iPad Pro, which just got the ability to use two apps at the same time, but just not two of the same app at the same time, the surface Pro 4 is not limited in the number of apps it can have open at once. I typically have Outlook 2016 running on the device screen, on one of my 20” monitors, I might have Firefox open, a couple of PDFs or images, and then have Word 2016 open on my other 20” monitor. It’s also a great device to take on a train ride or on a flight.

It can truly replace all of your computers and tablets. It is a desktop computer, a laptop, and a tablet (and a legal pad if you want to get technical), and it does a terrific job at replacing each, except because the detachable keyboard is so light, it doesn’t really work well as a laptop on your lap. But since I don’t do a lot of typing on buses, I typically have a table somewhere around if I need to do a lot of typing with the Surface keyboard.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVfOe5mFbAE

The Surface Book is the laptop version of the Surface Pro 4. The Surface Book has a standard laptop keyboard, and the screen detaches and you can take just the screen with you and use it as a tablet with the included stylus. You can also switch the screen around and fold it back over the keys with the screen facing up to use it like a clipboard, but it’s pretty heavy in that mode. It has longer battery life and more powerful computing power when it is connected to the base keyboard, so the Surface Book is a better laptop than the Surface Pro 4, a worse tablet, but an overall more powerful computer.

How Do You Use Technology?

If you are a litigator or a transactional attorney, if you do immigration or med mal, the way you use technology in your office will obviously differ. Let me know what challenges you face, or whether you challenge is that you just don’t know how technology can be used in your office, and I’ll try to point you in the right direction.

Earlier: The Lawyer Holiday Gift Guide: The Best Gifts For The Attorney In Your Life


Jeff Bennion is Of Counsel at Estey & Bomberger LLP, a plaintiffs’ law firm specializing in mass torts and catastrophic injuries. Although he serves on the Executive Committee for the State Bar of California’s Law Practice Management and Technology section, the thoughts and opinions in this column are his own and are not made on behalf of the State Bar of California. Follow him on Twitter here or on Facebook here, or contact him by email at jeff@trial.technology.

CRM Banner