The Mac Lawyer

Google Makes Voice and Video Chats Available to Everyone in Gmail

As mentioned today over at my South Carolina Family Law Blog, Google has just added video and voice chat capability to Gmail, making a great product that much better.  Now, anyone with a Gmail account can chat with virtually anyone else -- for free.  Of course, Mac users have had the benefit of iChat for quite some time, but Google has really opened the floodgates with this technology to bring it to the masses.

This technology can make it easier for more attorneys to communicate with each other and also for tech-savvy clients can also utilize this technology to have face-to-face meetings with their attorneys from their homes or offices.  The process is literally as simple as setting up a (free) Gmail account, clicking on the Chat drop-down list, and then selecting who you want to talk to.

If you want to learn more about Google's video and voice chats, you can read more in the following articles:

• "Say Hello to Gmail Voice and Video Chat" published at The Official Gmail Blog
• "Google Adds Voice and Video Chat to Gmail" published at TechCrunch
• "Gmail Launching Voice and Video Chat!" published at ZDNet

Guest Post :: Should You Employ Technology at Trial?

I am pleased to present the following Guest Post from Blake Boyd, who is one of the premier Trial Technologists and Legal Presentation Specialists in America:

Since the advent and rise in popularity of the internet, the general public has changed the way we all gather our news, research and general information.  This electronic age has trickled it's way into the courtroom.  Many major cities in the United States are adding courtroom A/V expenses into their budgets.  Newly constructed courthouses are almost guaranteed to at least include a projector, screen, and sometimes individual monitors for the Judge and Jury to view.  Have you found yourself wondering how you can take advantage of these visual tools?

As the technology has become more popular so has the usage of Trial Technologists.  When I started helping present evidence in trial 8 years ago, the major fear of most attorneys was they would look "too flashy".  Other attorneys in the courtroom would joke saying, "Are you going to show us movies?  Do we get to watch you play games?  What is all of this for?"  I would sit back and smile as they didn't understand how powerful it is to explain the issues of a case visually to the Jury.  Now those same attorneys are trying their hardest to incorporate audio visual presentations into their case.  

I talk to many attorneys that are having trouble justifying the added expense of hiring a Trial Technologist, and while I'm an strong advocate of the usage of technology in the courtroom, some cases do, and some don't, justify that expense.  When trying to help them answer this question I tell them to think about these different options, each has their pro's and con's:

Obama :: The First Mac President?

Back in February, I wrote an article explaining how the Obama family were Mac-users. TUAW reported last Friday that on election night, the winning ticket was seen using Apple products. Specifically, Vice President-Elect Joe Biden was pictured looking at information on a MacBook Air while holding a 3G iPhone, while President-Elect looked on.

TUAW's article "Obama Team Chose Apple on Election Night" predicts that "the Obama administration could become the most technologically-savvy presidency so far."  I believe that goes without saying, as evidenced by his groundbreaking, innovative use of technology during his campaign. It is encouraging to hear that President-Elect Obama plans to have a Chief Technology Officer, another first.  (And yes, I would gladly serve if asked.)

Since other world leaders, including Russian President Dimitry Medvedev and Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt, use Macs, I am glad that soon-to-be President Obama will be using one too.  I would hate for the fate of the free world to be dependent upon a Windows machine.  I mean, a world war breaking out because our leader had to deal with a "blue screen of death" would be tough to swallow, wouldn't it?

 

Report Indicates iPhone Tethering Coming Soon

The President / CEO of AT&T Mobility said yesterday that his company has been working with Apple to enable "tethering" on the iPhone.  This process would allow the iPhone to be used as a wireless modem for laptop and/or desktop computers. The best news is that he said that this option will be available "soon."  This would be quite a change, because there is no authorized method for tethering an iPhone at this time.

Source:  "AT&T: Tethering Coming to the iPhone Soon" by Harry McCracken, published at Technologizer.

Follow The Mac Lawyer on Twitter

After listening to many people, including my friends and tech gurus Kevin O'Keefe and Grant Griffith, preach the virtues of Twitter for a long, long time, I finally decided to open an account for myself to see what the buzz is all about.  My username is @TheMacLawyer (fittingly enough), and you can follow me at twitter.com/themaclawyer.

Twitter is one of those things that is a little hard to describe to others.  The short definition is that it is a micro-blogging service, but that doesn't tell you much.  Twitter describes itself as "a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?"

To this point, I am still experimenting with how to best utilize Twitter, and the jury is still out.  I have posted some personal views/opinions there, and I will post some blog/tech related items in the future.  If any of my readers are on Twitter, please let me know and we can "follow" each other (in Twiiter-speak).  I'll try to post here from time to time to let you know what I think about Twitter going forward.

Update 11-9-08:  In the three or so days that I've been on Twitter, I've managed to pick up almost a hundred followers.  So far, I think Twitter is pretty cool, and I'm enjoying the connections and interactions that I am having with everyone there.  If you haven't done so, check me out HERE.

Guest Post :: How to Create Pleading Templates in Apple's Pages

One question that I get fairly often is how to create a pleading template in Pages.  One of my readers, Thomas K. Brown, emailed me a few months ago and shared his template with me.  I asked Tom to write this Guest Post to explain the steps he used to create this template, which he was kind enough to do.

Tom explained that even though he was a novice Pages user, he was able to create this template in just 30 minutes. He found Pages' design to be intuitive and not overburdened with features 99% of users don't need -- an assessment with which I heartily agree.  Without further adieu, I am pleased to share Tom's Guest Post with you:

Like many jurisdictions, my state has specific rules covering the form of pleadings and other documents filed with the courts.  Nothing too onerous (margins, font size, contents of captions, etc.), but I thought having a generic pleading template standing by would keep me from reinventing the wheel every time I needed to file something.

I've done most of my work in MS Office 2004 – I never did the 2008 upgrade despite the sluggish performance of the old PowerPC code running on my Intel-based MacBook (which has grown decidedly less sexy after the recent "Spotlight on Notebooks" event).  One must give props to Apple for pulling something like Rosetta off in the first place.  When the pokiness of the old Office really started getting to me not long ago, I thought I'd give iWork a shot.  After all, at $79 it's not like a huge risk to take if things didn't work out.  Fortunately, they worked out rather well.

My first task was to do the pleading template.  I could have loaded other documents that I had done previously in Word and work from there.  Pages does a pretty good job with conversions and warns you if it's unsure of anything.  To test how intuitive the application was, though, I thought I'd start from scratch and see how long it took to get the basic document together.  It took about 30 minutes.  Here's what I did, step by step.  For the Pages pros out there I'm sure there are more sophisticated techniques, but for a novice like me this worked, and worked quickly.

1. Margins.  My jurisdiction requires left and top margins of 1.5", which is easy enough. Open the Inspector (the i button in the tool bar, or View -> Show Inspector), and in the Document Inspector (the icon that looks like a blank page at the left), choose the Document tab.  Adjust the margins accordingly.  It's helpful to keep the Inspector open.
2. Heading.  The court must be identified in the heading of any pleading.  I like to define styles to make formatting easier to edit and apply down the road.  Open the Styles Drawer (View -> Show Styles Drawer) and you'll notice there's already a Heading style defined (though likely not formatted as you want).  Type in the court's name and manually format it to your specifications.  In my case, I bold and center the text and switch the font to Times New Roman.  With your cursor still in the line you just typed, hold your mouse over the Heading style in the Styles Drawer.  A little down arrow will appear immediately to the right.  Click it and choose Redefine Style from Selection.  This will allow you to apply an identical style in other areas of the document if needed, and if you ever need to change its format, you need only do it in one place and the updated style will automatically apply to every occurrence.
3. Caption.  Captions in my jurisdiction are the typical two column format with the parties listed on the left and the case number on the right.  I've seen pleadings divided with a single column of colons or right parentheses.  Sometimes I've seen attempts at lines drawn out of pipes (|) and equals (=) making a curious form of ASCII art.  When I see two columns I naturally think of a table. 
   Click Table in the tool bar.  If you've left the Inspector open, it will automatically switch to the table formatting tab.  Uncheck the Header Row box and reduce the number of rows to one and the columns to two.  Next, grab the handle in the middle of the right column and drag it all the way to the right side of the page.  You may have to first click outside of the table and the somewhere inside of the table to get this to appear.  The columns should remain equal widths.
   To make the inverted T style of caption, turn off the borders on the top and left of the left column and the top and right of the right column.  Do this by double clicking inside of the cell, then select the appropriate border in the Cell Borders section in the Inspector and set the style to None.  Do this for each of the four sides you want to remove.  When you're done, it will look like the familiar upside-down T. 
   Inside of each cell you can format the text to suit your needs.  I like to left justify the party names, right justify their posture in the case, and center the "vs.".  I also like to both horizontally and vertically center the case number in the right column.  You'll notice that when you click in a table the formatting options in the tool bar changes.  To vertically center something, use the button with the two arrows pointing from above and below a line.
4. Body.  My pleadings generally have some introductory text and then a list of numbered paragraphs.  Type some text and make it look as you'd like your body text to look, then redefine the Body style as shown above.  For the numbered paragraphs, simply click the list button in the tool bar.  I chose the legal style of course.
5. Signature Block.  Some filings require multiple signatures, such as a Consent Order or Joint Motion for Something-or-other.  Similar to the caption above, I use a table with two columns and two rows but again with the Header Row unchecked.  I format each cell accordingly, and simply use the underline character to draw out a signature line.  I'm sure there's a niftier way of doing this but remember -- this exercise took like 30 minutes for a total Pages newbie.

And that's it.  With no prior experience in Pages I was able to do up a pleading without breaking a sweat.  Like most Apple products, Pages is intuitive and powerful enough for my needs.  And at $79 it's a great deal.  You can download a copy of my sample template by clicking HERE.

Thomas K. Brown is an immigration and family law attorney who practices in Rockville, Maryland.