According to www.trialpad.com:

"TrialPad for iPad is an easy-to-use app for preparing and presenting compelling presentations for trial. It literally puts your next presentation into your own hands, at a fraction of the cost of traditional courtroom presentations.

• Organize documents quickly and easily
• Present compelling evidence to judge or jury
• Annotate and display documents to increase their impact."

The App opens up with a welcome case folder, I liked the large folder icons.  With a tap the large folder icon disappears to reveal an attractive interface loaded with a quick start PDF. 

The quick start PDF includes instructions for:

• Creating a New Case - Just touch the add icon in the cases screen; it's like adding a Doc in Pages.
• Adding Documents to a Case - The easiest way is to email a PDF to yourself and open it in TrialPad from the iPad mail client. You can also import Docs through iTunes.
• Annotating Documents- TrialPad includes a highlighter, pen, and redaction tool.  You can also pinch to zoom and undo annotations.
• Hot Docs - Allows users to save an annotated copy of a doc in the Hot Docs list while leaving the original without annotations.
• Organizing Documents - TrialPad duplicates, renames, and moves files.  Touch "Edit",  select target files, and then select the desired action. 
• Displaying Documents -  Just move the "Output" slider from "Off" to "On". Playback is controlled with play, pause, and stop buttons. 

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John Cleaves, supervisor of practice support for Latham & Watckins in LA, has recently released and an iPad App that can be used to:

• Identify key jurors
• Simplify jury observation,
• Standardize notes on juror responses,
• Track time spent by each party, and
• Share reports with your trial team.  www.jurytracker.com.

After using the App for a little while it seems that the App can certainly do all of those things.  Like most iPad Apps, figuring out how to use JuryTracker is not too difficult as a good portion of the interface is graphical.  

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Just after I declared full-text online the pinnacle of legal materials, iPad and GoodReader have breathed new life into the PDF. Of course, full-text online legal reference materials remains the best way I can think of to share and collaborate on a large amounts of materials with multiple users.

However, the iPad and GoodReader make a PDF library an outstanding option for a single person or for a particular purpose; a trial or deposition come to immediately to mind.

For me, the animating force is the prospect of having thousands of cases, statutes, and reference materials with me and ready to go- it was the "ready to go" part that concerned me.

Acrobat has a range of features to help organize and deal with long documents, including bookmarks, full search, portfolios, and the constellation of commenting tools that each create the functional equivalent of a bookmark in dizzying variety.

Initially, I thought by viewing PDF on the iPad, I would be giving up most if not all of the Acrobat features. And I was right, but not so much so that it really matters in the scheme of things.

Here is a how I use bookmarks, rapidly applied in Acrobat, to create an document outline in iPad's GoodReader. Like most things great things, this is simple.

First. Apply the bookmarks to your PDF in Acrobat and nest them as you desire. See short demo video on bookmarking in Acrobat.

Second. Save your PDF in a convenient place to access it with iPad's GoodReader. I use Dropbox and MobileMe for this. Review of Using Dropbox and GoodReader.

Third, Open your PDF in GoodReader and touch the bookmark button and see the bookmarks saved as an outline. I applaud GoodReader's programmers for doing it this way because it leaves the bookmarks section for case-by-case application.

Now you have an outlined PDF ready for repeated use.

As to the loss of commenting and annotation, iPad has an App for that. It's called iAnnotate PDF- but that's a separate review.

Check out the iPad Screen Shots
 

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I am a collector of legal materials and love to have things close at hand. With the iPad, we can now have thousands of pages, not only close at hand, but actually in one hand. 

There are certainly a number of ways to get this done, here is one way I have tried and found it easy and convenient enough to share with you.

This plan involves two apps:

1. GoodReader

This app is a place to store and read files of all types, I use it for PDF, but it will take MS Office files, video and even audio.  You can transfer files to GoodReader using Wi-Fi, download them from the Internet, from email attachments or connect to a popular server. 

I chose the last option and used Dropbox to load up the iPad with cases and statutes.  As you can see from the screen shots, GoodReader also connects to Mobile Me and Google Docs.

2. Dropbox

After reading a post by Ben Stevens at the Mac Lawyer on Dropbox I wanted to check it out.  Dropbox is a way of sharing files across computers and devices and also makes them available online.  It's just like Mobile Me's iDisk but I think the sync is better...

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I have always had trouble dictating memos and letters. For me, the act of typing is a part of the writing experience and thinking process.

But I might try to change that because you can dictate directly to the iPad and that is how I wrote the first draft of this post.

The iPad App is called Dragon and the system is based on their Dragon Naturally Speaking; software I know has been around for some time.

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Many people love the ritual of the paper, the look the feel, and the practice of holding out the news as a curtain blocking out the world. And I can respect that.  Comfort like that can be tough to give up. 

However, after taking a look at the the new AP Mobile App for iPad, the answer is - Yes, paper news is dead to me. The presentation of digital news has taken a quantum leap.

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Apple has reworked their iWork suite of productivity programs for the iPad. Let's see what Pages for iPad can do.

I'm sitting in court waiting to be called and I'm writing this blog post with the iPad on my lap. There is no doubt that the keyboard will take some getting used to but it is nearly full size and I am starting to get the hang of it. And there is also no question. that getting the iPad out to get a few words down is much easier than pulling out a laptop; something I would never actually do in court.

Right away, the iPad pickups up convenience points.

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