Yes, Virginia, You Can Use a Mac in Your Practice
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` 2015 WSSFC Technology Track – Session 5 Yes, Virginia, You Can Use a Mac in Your Practice Pyria Barnes, Atty Barnes LLC, Pewaukee James E. Lowe, Jr., Law Office of James Lowe, New Berlin Tison H. Rhine, State Bar of Wisconsin, Madison About the Presenters... Priya Barnes is a solo practitioner who runs her entire practice on a Mac system. With offices located in Pewaukee, Wisconsin, her law practice encompasses family and juvenile law, bankruptcy, estate planning and small business law in the greater Milwaukee area. Prior to hanging out her shingle, she founded and managed an advertising agency called Creatonomy in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Culturally, the agency was less Mad Men and more Mac Cool. Priya was also adjunct professor at Marquette University’s Diederich College of Communication for over ten years. She has spoken frequently on marketing and technology topics at local and national conferences. James Earl Lowe, Jr. is a Patent & Trademark Attorney, focused on providing personal service and lower cost intellectual property services to small business product manufacturers in Wisconsin. Jim previously served as Chief Patent Counsel at Joy Global (P&H Mining) and A. O. Smith Corporation, and as a patent attorney with Michael, Best & Friedrich and Godfrey & Kahn. Jim has a B.S.in Nuclear Engineering and a M.S. in Industrial Administration from Purdue University, and a J.D. from the Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law. Jim recently published an article at BizTimes.com entitled “Are Your Patents at Risk?” Tison H. Rhine is the State Bar of Wisconsin’s Practice411™ Law Office Management Assistance Program Manager and Practice Management Advisor. He received his B.S. in Economics and Engineering Science from Vanderbilt University and his J.D. from the University of Minnesota. Previously General Counsel for an Indiana based energy company, Mr. Rhine also has experience practicing in small firm and clinical settings. He now uses his diverse legal and technical background to help Wisconsin attorneys run their practices more effectively and efficiently. Yes, Virginia, You Can Use a Mac In Your Practice . WSSFC 2015 Materials Priya Barnes James Lowe Tison Rhine Background: According to the 2015 Legal Tech Survey, conducted by the ABA’s Legal Technology Resource Center, 8.1% of respondents reported using a Mac in their practice, up from just 5.8% in 2014. The biggest users: solo practitioners and small firms. Despite the trend, Windows-running PCs still dominate the legal landscape. Attorneys who decide not to go with Macs typically have the following concerns and questions: 1. There appears to be a relative lack of legal-specific software native to Macs. 2. Don’t Macs tend to cost more Windows-based PCs? 3. My existing IT department (or my third party IT service provider) is unwilling to support Macs. I’ve been using them for years. 4. My firm won’t let me. How can I convince them? These concerns may have been legitimate in the past, but in 2015: 1. The software that lawyers use most (such as Microsoft Outlook, Word, and Excel, Adobe Acrobat, Google Drive, and Dropbox) all work on both PC and Mac. There are also better practice management options than in the past, some native to Mac, but many of them compatible with both Mac and PC. 2. The price gap between Macs and PCs is largely just in our heads, likely due to the wide availability of budget PCs. Sure, it is possible to get a budget PC for much less than a well-equipped Mac, but how long will it last? Apples-to-apples (no pun intended) hardware comparisons reveal that similarly equipped Macs and PCs also share similar prices. 3. When it comes to IT support, the emergence of cloud-based services has increasingly allowed attorneys (especially solo and small firm practitioners) to reduce their reliance on IT specialists by eliminating on-site Windows-based servers, as well as the setup and routine maintenance required to support them. This may be bad news for your IT service provider (of course they want you to continue to use PCs - that’s what they have been 1 – Barnes, Lowe, Rhine trained on, and those are the products that they sell!), but for attorneys, cloud-based options not only provide flexibility in choosing hardware and operating systems, but can also add flexibility and scalability to your overhead budget. 4. Finally, attorneys can be slow to change, especially when it comes to technology, but they also respond well to relatable examples. So, while you (or your firm) may currently be on the fence about whether it is possible (or better yet, advisable) to use a Mac in your practice, we hope that, after being exposed in this seminar to what practicing with a Mac really looks like, you will have gained confidence that yes, you can use a Mac in your practice . Genesis of a Mac Lawyer: Why are some lawyers drawn to Mac computers, and what does a Mac user’s computer background look like? Case 1: Priya Barnes I started using a Mac when they first came to Marquette’s College of Communication’s desktop computing lab back in the late 80s. And have been hooked since. Before I became a lawyer, I worked in advertising, which has always been a Mac-dominated field. It was one of the first fields to also be revolutionized with the advent of personal computing. So being using a Mac, deploying it to whatever I needed came naturally. Using a PC did not come naturally at all! Although I did use PCs for 10 years or so when I worked in the corporate sector. When I started my law practice in 2011, there was no question in my mind about using a Mac vs. PC. For me, the question became what kind of Mac setup I should have to be the most efficient lawyer I can be. Case 2: James Lowe Hi. My name is James Lowe, and I have been using a Mac in my law practice since the original Mac conception. I was originally drawn to using Mac because of the ease of use of the computer. And I still think this is its most compelling feature. No matter what problem might come up, I can usually find a solution quickly. This reduces my need for IT support. I also liked how Apple included a software product one could use to manage information. I am a patent lawyer, so I need to manage my active patent and trademark files. Apple had a product called HyperCard, and I used it to manage this data. HyperCard is now gone, but it has been replaced by a product called FileMaker. 2 – Barnes, Lowe, Rhine Case 3: Tison Rhine I grew up on a Commodore 64 and an IBM PS/1, but did use some of the Apple II series in school in the early 90s (mostly typing and Oregon Trail). Other than that, my computer time was mostly spent with Compaq’s and Packard Bell’s until late ’98, when the Apple G3 was going strong and the first iMac was released. I enjoyed the user experience, so in college, following a year of mandatory Dell laptop use for my engineering program, I broke down and bought a beautiful, aluminum G5 tower and a 23” Apple Cinema Display HD – a decision I admit was largely due to the fact that it looked awesome, but also because of the simplicity of OSX and the existence of easy-to-use creative software. I was then forced to buy another mandatory Dell, this time for law school, but continued to use my G5 (which lasted years), as well as an iBook I bought in 2005, at home. I actually liked this Dell, and during those days, my firm and clinic experience was also on PC, but when I became in-house counsel, and was given a choice, I chose to use my own money to supplement (okay, triple) my computer budget so that I could buy a Macbook Pro and a 27” Apple Cinema Display (a great display which made contract drafting in particular, so much easier). I managed to integrate into the formerly all-PC office just fine (only rarely needing to use virtual Windows machines on my Mac), but when I moved to the State Bar (which supports windows only), I started using PCs again professionally (I had kept up with Windows in the meantime for gaming). Long story short, I now use both Macs and PCs, almost interchangeably, and actually like them both. Hopefully, I can provide a balanced view. What types of equipment do Mac lawyers use? Case 1: Priya Barnes Hardware: Mac Pro Quad Core running OS X Yosemite and OS X Server, Apple Cinema Display, Fujitsu ScanSnap S300M, Xerox Phaser 7760GX, Brother HL5250DN, iPad 2, iPhone 5S. Case 2: James Lowe In my home, which is also my office, I have two iMacs, a Mac laptop, a Mac mini, an iPad and an iPhone. I use the Mac Mini as a server, and depending on where I'm working, I use either the iMac or my laptop. I also have an iPhone. I also have a land line, but I forward it to my cell phone. One of the Mac only features I really like is how I can lay my iPhone down, but if the call comes in, I can pick up that call from either my iMac or my laptop or my iPad, depending on what I am using. It's a very handy feature, allowing me not to have to carry my cell phone around everywhere.