We carry more computing power in our pockets than what was used to get man to the moon. Your phone can be an indispensable part of your practice, as long as you have the right apps to optimize what it can do.
Below is a list of five categories with some app suggestions that you may want to download for your practice in the future:
1. Scanning Apps
If you’ve ever had a moment where you desperately need to send a document but are nowhere near a scanner, don’t just take a picture of the document and hope for the best. There are several scanning apps that turn your smartphone into a pocket scanner, such as iScanner, Scanbot, or Scanner Pro, creating PDFs of documents instantly. Many have free versions, so test out which one you like the best before investing in a Pro version.
2. Reminder Apps
A lawyer can never have enough diarizing. Fantastical is a great calendar app that you can use to create repeating events, set alerts, and has a simple view of your daily schedule. You can also stick with the classic Google Calendar, or for something different, try Any.Do, a digital to-do list app that you can share with others (so your staff or colleagues can add or alter items).
3. Traffic and Parking Apps
No matter what area of law you practice, at some point you will get stuck in traffic. Or you’ll need to park your car and hope that the meter doesn’t run out. Thankfully, there are apps to make daily transportation a little less stressful. If you don’t have it, Waze is a great app with real-time, user-generated, updates about road closures and accidents that automatically finds you the best route to your destination. If you don’t have change for parking, try the Green P app, where you can pay for parking (and extend your time) from the comfort of your smartphone, or use Uber to leave the driving and parking to someone else.
4. Productivity Apps
If you’re tired of carrying around multiple notepads, Notability is a robust note-taking app that can be used to annotate and highlight PDFs, create sketches, and record lectures or presentations. In the alternative, the whole suite of Microsoft Office apps are available with read and edit functionality, to work on documents on the go. Alternatively, if you want to automate routine tasks (for example, getting a notification when an RSS feed you subscribe to contains certain keywords), try IFTTT (If This, Then That).
5. Research Apps
If you often find yourself in locations with limited Wi-Fi, you may want to try Instapaper or Pocket to download articles, commentary, or case law for reading offline. Or you can try the LSUC – Ontario Reports app to get local case law delivered to you weekly.
Hopefully the above list helps you integrate technology into your busy practice, or inspires you to check out what other technology is available (and apps that maybe aren’t as productive!).
About the author
Fraser Turnbull, Legal Counsel SOCAN