Law Practice Management Tips & Tricks

• Publication year: 2011
• Pages: 22
• Citation: Vol. 80 No. 4 Pg. 22

Law Practice Management Tips & Tricks No. 80 J. Kan. Bar Assn 4, 22 (2011) Kansas Bar Journal April, 2011

Law Practice Management Tips & Tricks

The Lion Roars this Summer

By Larry N. Zimmerman, Valentine, Zimmerman & Zimmerman P.A., Topeka, kslpm@larryzimmerman.com

Online case management provider, Clio, released results of a survey of more than 800 lawyers late last year that revealed an interesting trend ? upwards of 55 percent of lawyers are Apple Mac users. While I suspect that survey is based on a biased sample of Clio users, anecdotal observations at the law schools, colleagues' offices, and continuing legal education seminars does hint at a growing fan base for Macs among lawyers. For those who have made the switch, the latest version of the Mac OS X, dubbed Lion, promises some interesting new features lawyers ought to appreciate.

App Focus

Sales of the iPhone and iPad seem less driven by the hardware and are focused instead on the nigh-infinite customization possible via access to more than 400,000 apps available through Apple's App Store. The average user has about a hundred of them on their iPhone/iPad, helping explain why projections are anticipating App Store revenues to hit $15 billion in 2011. By way of context, the iPhone/iPad hardware accounted for $15 billion or 56 percent of Apple revenues in its first fiscal quarter ending on December 25, 2010. As Google's Android Market and Blackberry's App World hope to erode those revenue numbers, Apple is looking to expand the App Store distribution to its desktop and laptop offerings.

The Mac App Store offers more than 1,000 Apps, including workout tracking tools, a home/office inventory database, and a la carte download of Apple's office suite components. While the Mac App Store is accessible via the current OS X version, Snow Leopard, it will be more tightly integrated into Lion via a Launchpad tool that puts all apps in a single screen as on the iPhone/iPad. Many of those apps will also function in a full-screen mode in which the Menu Bar and Dock disappear. Certainly not huge developments but indicative of the direction Apple hopes to push computer interfaces ? simple, purpose-driven, and intuitive. It works on portable, touchscreen devices but it will be interesting to see how it translates to desktops and laptops where touch-screens are replaced with large, multi-touch trackpads.

The Clio survey may help clarify why this shift in interface design is so important...