My upcoming Louisiana CLE seminars (Baton Rouge & New Orleans)

I'll be doing three live, all-day CLE programs in late December: one in Baton Rouge and two in New Orleans. Each program is 6 hours of CLE credit, with 1 hour of Ethics and 1 hour of Professionalism. If you want to sign up use the promo code ERNIEATTORNEY to save 10% off the price of the program.

Here's a brief summary of the programs.

Digital Lawyering & Tech Tips (Baton Rouge) - Click to Sign-Up

When: Friday (Dec 21st) - 6 hours total CLE (1 hr Ethics; 1 hr Professionalism; 4 hrs LPM)

Executive summary: All lawyers will learn how to use technology to work more productively while out of the office, and to more efficiently handle email in and out of the office. Litigators will learn how to gather information (including social media information), and to better organize that information. All lawyers will learn to avoid ethical problems and how to present a more professional online appearance to potential clients and others. We'll also cover the latest law-related tech tools, and tell you which ones are truly useful and reliable, and easiest to use.

Digital Lawyering & Tech Tips (New Orleans) - Click to Sign-Up

When: Thus (Dec 27st) - 6 hours total CLE (1 hr Ethics; 1 hr Professionalism; 4 hrs LPM)

Executive summary: All lawyers will learn how to use technology to work more productively while out of the office, and how to more efficiently handle email in and out of the office. Litigators will learn how to gather information (including social media information), and to better organize that information. All lawyers will learn to avoid ethical problems and how to present a more professional online appearance to potential clients and others. We'll also cover the latest law-related tech tools, and tell you which ones are truly useful and reliable, and easiest to use.

Paperless Lawyering & Tech Tips (New Orleans) - Click to Sign-Up

When Friday (Dec 28st) - 6 hours total CLE (1 hr Ethics; 1 hr Professionalism; 4 hrs LPM)

Executive summary: All lawyers will learn how to lessen the reliance on paper, and to set up systems that allow them to work with documents more efficiently while out of the office. We'll explain how to create complex documents more easily, ways that allow those documents to be reused later as forms. Litigators will learn to be more effective in advocacy by using tools that help them create compelling visual presentations. We'll finish with a rapid-review of interesting tech tools, focusing on the ones that actually help you get more done in less time, with less stress. 

Upcoming iPad for Lawyers seminar in Baton Rouge, Louisiana

Lawyers in Baton Rouge who want to learn more about Mobile Lawyering with iPads should sign up for our Nov. 30th seminar. It’s at the Crown Plaza hotel on Friday afternoon, from 1 to 5 pm. Here are some things Dane Ciolino and I will cover:

• Security issues, and how to avoid them when using an iPad or mobile device
• Creating documents, editing and sharing
• Digital signatures and how to sign documents on an iPad
• Deposition tools, and strategies
• Note-taking software and tips for using effectively
• Display of trial exhibits using and iPad (including wireless presentation)

The seminar is limited to 35 people and will fill up fast. We have early bird pricing in effect until November 14th. Here are some more things to know about our seminar:

• 3 hours of CLE credit, including 1 hour of Ethics credit
• Free Wi-Fi available in the seminar room
• No questions asked refunds up until the day of the seminar
• We have free giveaways relevant to our talks (e.g. books on iPads for Lawyers)
• We offer free online videos at our website (you only pay if you want CLE credit)

For more information, and to reserve your spot with a credit card click here.

Siri rocks!

I’ve been testing Apple’s new service called Siri, which is only available on the new iPhone, for the past week. To sum up my overall review in one word: Wow!

In fact, I’m dictating this entire review using the Siri application on my iPhone. Although I have tested Dragon Dictation’s voice recognition software for the Mac for several years, I find that this Siri service is actually easier to use on my iPhone than the Dragon Dictation software was to use on a computer.

Yes, you read that right, I prefer dictating using my dinky little iPhone than using my more powerful computer. As I dictate this review right now, I’m holding the iPhone in my hand and dictating using the Apple your phones so that I can speak into the headset in the ear headphones while I watch as Siri dictates what I say.

Siri is not perfect. Periodically, I have to stop to make minor adjustments when it misses a word or mis-capitalizes something. Still, it’s far easier to do this on my iPhone tend to use Dragon Dictation on the computer.

You can use Siri to dictate into the iPhone anywhere you would otherwise use a keyboard. So, for example, you can dictate emails very rapidly and easily by using the Siri dictation app instead of pecking out things awkwardly on the tiny virtual keyboard. If Siri mis-transcribes a word you can often select an alternative by tapping on the word, at which point the iPhone will suggest other words that might be appropriate.

Although the pure dictation mode is useful, we are Siri really shines is in serving as a virtual assistant.

For example, if I wonder what time it is in London I can say “what time is it in London?” And Siri will return an answer immediately. I can also ask Siri to suggest nearby restaurants simply by saying “are there any restaurants nearby?”

Gee, I wonder what the weather what will be like for the next few days? All I have to do is hold down the button until Siri prompts me with a cute little ping, and then say “what’s the weather going to be like for the next few days?”

If I don’t want to have to navigate to my email program and then fire it up just to send someone an email I don’t have to. I can say “Siri email Dane Ciolino.” Siri will then prompt me and say “okay, what do you want to say to Dane Ciolino?” (By the way, as I dictated that name, Siri had no problem spelling it correctly because Dane’s name is in my address book). After I tell Siri what I want to say to Dane it will ask me if I want to send the email, and, if I confirm, the email will be sent without me ever having touched the keyboard.

This is purely magical.

I have tested Siri and a number of situations. For example, you would expect it to only work effectively while using Wi-Fi. However, it seems to work very well in 3G environments as well. I was in a crowded restaurant the other day and the question came up about how many engineering graduates Stanford put out each year. I queried Siri, not expecting it to understand what I said, but it transcribed my question perfectly. (It wasn’t able to answer the question, but it did offer to perform a web search which returned some promising results on Google, but I wasn’t able to quickly get the answer I wanted).

My conclusion, after having used Siri for about a week, is that Apple is expecting this to be a major feature in all mobile devices going forward. Granted, it’s not necessarily going to become a major feature in the next iteration, or even in the next two years. Getting people acclimated to using voice recognition is a tricky process. But, Apple’s implementation of this feature on a small mobile device, is truly amazing.

I presume that many people will dismiss Siri has a novelty, and some people who find it interesting will get bored with it after awhile. But for those who see the true power of it, and who are willing to learn how to tap into it, Siri will be a major shift in how they interact with their iPhone.

My iPhone/Google Voice experiment

I've had an iPhone with AT&T since it first came out, and I've had nothing but good things to say about my AT&T experience. Last year, though, I moved to a new house, which unfortunately has poor AT&T coverage. Obviously AT&T can't have perfect coverage everywhere. No carrier can.

But, it's been so unreliable that I knew that I'd switch to Verizon when the new iPhones were released. Today, I got a new iPhone on the Verizon network. I'm paying a small penalty to drop AT&T but it's worth it to get the optimal phone service in my house (I don't have a landline).

However, I didn't port my old cellphone number over to Verizon. I'm getting a new number, which is something I'm looking forward to since my old number was starting to attract a lot of robocalls from salesbots, and some weird text messages.

But I'm not discarding my old number entirely. I decided to port that one to Google Voice (which I've had for a long time as well, but never made much use of). It cost me $20 to port the number, and the switch over takes 24 hours. Supposedly the text messages take up to 3 business days to switch over. We'll see how all that goes.

Hopefully, what I'll end up with is this: I have one number that I can use to simultaneously ring my cellphone and my business phone, and the voicemail messages get transcribed and emailed to me. I can selectively filter calls based on which group the person calling is in. I'm not sure how it will all turn out, but I like the idea of separating my phone number from my carrier. I like the way Google deals with spam in my email, and I expect them to do a good job with my voice spam too.

If any of you out there have done this, I'd love to hear about your experiences in the comments.

Update: The port over took exactly 24 hours. My old phone on AT&T was disabled automatically (which is what I expected and wanted). The text messages are still not coming over to my new phone, but that was supposed to take up to 3 biz days, so we'll see. My voicemail messages are now being transcribed for free by Google, so I can let go of my Phonetag service ($10/month). The only thing that is not optimal is the length of time that it takes Google Voice to pick up voicemail (25 seconds). This time is not adjustable, and many people seem not to like this. In my case, I have a great service (Ruby Receptionist - callruby.com) for my business lines. I don't mind that my cellphone line takes a little longer to answer, although it would be nice if Google would allow this to be adjusted.

Update #2: I found out that if I receive a call on my iPhone and click the top button (the iPhone default for "send to voicemail immediately") it goes right to Google Voice and the voicemail is transcribed and immediately sent to me as a text message. Much faster than PhoneTag, so I'll be saving $10 per month when I get rid of PhoneTag (next week).