The quarterly publication of the International Legal Technology Association
Issue link: http://read.uberflip.com/i/4983
www.iltanet.org 34 Peer to Peer There's an App for That: bringing the iPhone into the Legal Environment by Christopher Lewis A fter i show a colleague the iPhone that's provided by my firm, the most common statement i hear is, "your firm does that?" While the iPhone is just plain cool, allowing you to mix your personal computing world (e.g., iTunes music) with your business computing world, the bottom line differentiator between the iPhone and other mobile devices is that it enhances the productivity of our attorneys when they are mobile. In our firm's deployment of the iPhone, we've learned a lot of lessons, as well as the benefits of the iPhone in general and how to integrate with existing systems. Our deployment started with the release of the 3.0 device, which is the first mobile device that addresses the majority of our business needs from a single mobile platform. Though the deployment of the iPhone at Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal LLP started out of pure client demand for the device, during our initial testing we quickly realized how valuable it would be for both our attorneys and our IS administrative staff. The user Experience I polled a number of users who had switched to the iPhone, and their most consistent comment related to the enhanced user experience. A number of people said it was "like having a small computer. I don't even travel with my laptop anymore." From our firm's perspective, perhaps the most important function of the iPhone is how it easily retrieves and correctly displays corporate e-mail messages and attachments. The iPhone delivers the best e-mail experience of any mobile device used at Sonnenschein. An attorney can see the formatting, including emphasis, as the client intended them to see it directly on the device — not just a plain text translation. Full fidelity is maintained with e-mail messages, Word documents, PowerPoint presentations, Excel spreadsheets and PDFs. All are viewable, readable and formatted correctly. As one attorney in my feedback poll put it, "More and more clients are inserting redlined changes, photos and other objects into e-mail messages that cannot be viewed with any other e-mail device. Being able to see all of this emphasis and embedded objects without pulling out my laptop is great, and allows me to be much more responsive." Web browsing and Portal With the iPhone's Safari browser, you see the Web as it was meant to be seen: just like it is on a computer and not a stripped-down mobile version. Apple did a phenomenal job with user interaction through finger flicks, pinching and the ability to toggle between landscape and portrait mode to quickly navigate a webpage. Prior to the iPhone, I would not spend much mobile time on the Web, saying to myself, "It's not worth the aggravation, I'll just wait until I get to a computer." Now I do routine tasks like check my junk mail in Postini, update my presence status on our portal or even buy groceries on Peapod while sitting on the train. More importantly, with respect to client service, one of our attorneys had this to say, "The ability to click on a link forwarded by a client while I'm on the road and to see the entire webpage