Canadian Lawyer InHouse

'' Law Department Management We still have hard copies, but it's allowed us to customize preferences to our directors. I think without exception they love it. Apps for the in-house crowd There may not be a lot of developers creating apps tailor-made for corporate counsel, but there are a few mainstream productivity tools that may be more applicable than others. You'll hear a lot about apps like Evernote and Dragon Dictation, but here are some alternative ideas to get you started: Quip: This word processing application is designed both for tablets like the iPad and for collaboration. A track changesstyle feature called "Diffs" makes it easy to spot revisions and to deliver notes and messages within a document.  SwiftKey: No one wants to do extensive thumb-typing, especially busy lawyers. This app seems to get better and better at predicting words as sentences are written, and can be a way to dash off quick memos without having to use your regular laptop.  Pocket: iPads are fantastic tools for surfing web sites, but managing bookmarks in browsers can be a pain. Pocket, which is also known as ReadItLater, saves articles on blogs and web sites into an easy-tomanage folder where it strips away ads and other clutter for a more pleasant reading experience.  ToDoist: A big part of using an iPad will likely involve in-house lawyers organizing themselves for when they get back to their desk. ToDoist is a standby for those kinds of checklists, and for larger companies there's an enterprise version that could help with orchestrating teams of people.  Dictamus: It may cost $17, but unlike similar apps this was designed with professional users in mind. It skips pauses, allows users to re-record in specific spots and shares files with cloud-based services like DropBox.  — Shane Schick 40 February 2014 INHOUSE and searching for tips online, he has since conducted workshops for his colleagues on ways they can better integrate iPads into their daily practice.  "One of the big uses is document organization," he says, including not only creating documents but also sharing and annotating them. "For large tax cases, I can take every document related to a case and turn it into a searchable PDF and then store it on my iPad instead of bringing home two huge briefcases." iPads and other tablets are especially useful in managing research and scheduling on the go, Salvatore says. Even though Apple's "there's an app for that" tagline has entered the public consciousness, it may be a bit less true for lawyers, in-house or otherwise.  "For the most part, I don't use a lot of legal-specific apps," Mirandola says. "A lot of them are quite expensive, and there are alternatives which are at least as good." There is an app that lets users annotate discovery transcripts, for example, but mainstream business editing apps could probably handle the job, he says.  Mighell, who has also written a book called iPad Apps in One Hour for Lawyers, said the unique business environments of individual corporate counsel may make it difficult for developers to target them as a niche market.  "It's a little bit different when you're in an outside law firm. Developers making legal apps are focusing on outside lawyers, not on the general counsel," he says, such as the jury-selection apps for litigators. "When I think about an in-house lawyer or the corporate legal department, what are they doing in their daily work? It's about research, corresponding with outside counsel. They're looking at other issues within the company." Dean Readman, director of legal services and corporate secretary at Port Metro in Vancouver, says he loves his iPad, but his '' Todd Croll, Global Container Terminals go-to apps are more likely messaging tools, his calendar, and an internally developed app that allows him to connect to files on his desktop. "Most of the technology our company uses still runs on Windows," he points out.  Like Readman, Croll says he is aware of the many Windows-based tablets on the market but hasn't spent much time with them. This opens up an interesting issue for businesses, because some software won't work properly across iOS, the Apple operating system, and Microsoft Windows.  "I will say that we've become quite fond of the iPad because we adopted it early in the days of tablet computing," says Croll. "Familiarity is going to account for a lot in the years to come. On the smartphone side, we're thinking about making a switch from BlackBerry to the iPhone. We're accidentally becoming more of an Apple environment." As much as in-house lawyers and other executives may welcome the ability to have more choice about the technology tools they use, the so-called bring-your-owndevice movement has also raised a lot of security concerns in many companies.  "It becomes more complicated in how (companies) want to secure the information that's on there," says Mighell. "They may develop a policy that says you get to keep your own iPad but we as a company have some measure of control over it, like the ability to wipe it if it gets lost. You also need to take your own measures to protect your own stuff."  Mirandola agrees, adding IT security policies regarding tablets can largely be based on common sense, like using password protection on the iPad and choosing apps that require some kind of second-level authentication.  "A lot of the same issues would arise with a laptop. You have to be smart in using them," he says. "I would not use Dropbox in order to store privileged materials. I'll

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