An IPad In Court is a Gifted Legal Assistant

I've been in federal court in Mississippi for the last few days and turned to my iPad as a substitute for the paper legal pads that have been my faithful courtroom companions for nearly thirty years. I was pleasantly surprised by how well it worked, even discovering ways that the iPad was far superior to my dear old friend, the yellow legal pad.

To start, the iPad Notes application (a standard iPad feature) allowed me to jot down notes almost as easily and quickly as pen and paper--and I'm just a hunt-and-peck, two-finger typist. But, unlike paper notes, the iPad made it simple to reorder my notes to ensure a better flow of examination. When you're cross-examining a witness, you do not want to be frantically poring over pages to be sure you've covered everything.

Next, the gestural interface made moving through notes swift and subtle--just a gentle flick of my finger--, without the distracting page flipping of a legal pad. A page of notes can be as long as you like, eliminating the physical barrier of 11 or 14 inches per page.  Add to this, the one-tap ease of movement across different notes pages and questions for different witnesses, and the virtual legal pad beats out its paper counterpart. It was great for this slow typist to be able to copy and paste from documents and testimony.

I also liked the iPad's ability to display evidence for projection via the Court's document projector (a/k/a Elmo). I didn't use this capability during the proceedings, but I tested it briefly to satisfy myself that it would work well. 

But nothing's perfect, and one downside was the inability to change the font size in the Notes application to obviate the need to don my reading glasses at the podium.  (Getting old sucks...but it beats the alternative).  Using another application would have solved this, but I liked the simplicity of the Notes app and that the screen looks just like a legal pad was reassuring.  Apple needs to add font size and color features to Notes--and highlighting capabilities would be nice--but, as is true of so many iPad apps, Notes feels like a first effort that will surely evolve, hopefully staying simple but gaining a few key features it sorely lacks.

Finally, the paramount value of the iPad in court is its versatility.  It does nearly everything a laptop can do, so keeping up with e-mail, checking your calendar, pulling up a document, photo or map on-the-fly, drawing a diagram and making calculations are all two quiet taps away.  Even pulling up video or sound bites to impeach is easy with a little forethought.

I'm hooked, and you will be, too.  The iPad is the lawyer's greatest courtroom tool since..., well, since the legal pad!

P.S.  I did this post using the iPad.

Comments

[Fat Daddy, Esq]

I too am enjoying my iPad but I have not been able to type as fast as you where I feel like I could keep up with taking notes as quickly as hand writing them. I am looking for an app, as are many others I have learned through research, that allows hand written note taking with a stylus.

I agree with the ease of viewing documents without being distracting. I was recently at a hearing and was able to pull up some PDF scans of pleadings and hand them to co-counsel for review while the hearing was proceeding without having to pass a laptop back and forth.