Why Android Is For Attorneys
by Ryan McKeen
Blogging has been slow around here for the past month. In large part because I have been very busy. Clients and cases come before posts.
The other reason is that I’ve been busy playing VP of technology for my firm.
Up until a few weeks ago, we had many different email accounts for the firm. Some ended in snet.net, some ended in lttnlaw.net, and others in “yahoo”. Now we’re all first initial of our first name combined with our last name at lttnlaw.com. It’s a small victory.
How does any of this relate to google?
I decided to go all in on google. Our firm mail is powered by google. Our firm uses abacus law for scheduling and it now syncs with our google calendars.
Just got my google wave invite last week. Can’t wait to get my invites and start a firm wave.
It’s about the Droid. Not about Motorola’s Android but about the Android Platform itself. Do yourself nbsp;a favor and read Gizmodo’s article ”Android and How It Will Take Over The World.”
When I purchased a smartphone I went with the HTC Hero which is an Android phone. The calendar on my phone is in the cloud. This allows my phone to sync wirelessly with my Abacus calendar at the firm. It does this in real time.
For example, if I’m out of the office, my assistant can take a phone call and enter an appointment in Abacus for me. Or my assistant can get my mail and enter an upcoming court hearing in Abacus. All of which instantly ends up on my phone. No need for a manual sync. I can know my schedule anywhere at anytime in real time. That’s useful when you’re busy.
The syncing works both ways. Say I’m at the dentist and I get the news I have a cavity. My dentist says I need to come back. I pull up my calendar and find a date. While at the dentist, I enter that date in my calendar. It instantly shows up on my Abacus calendar at work.
Android phones are also great for handling gmail. Surprise. My work email is powered by google. This means that I get threaded emails on my phone the same way you would see emails in gmail on a desktop.
It also syncs all my contacts. It pulls from Facebook, Outlook, and Google contacts and then merges them. For example, my brother is a client. On his contact page on my phone I can see every email and text we sent, his phone numbers, when we last spoke and for how long, his birthday, and his most recent facebook status update. It’s highly useful for keeping in contact with clients.
I’ll save my thoughts on google voice for another post.
In the meantime, if you’re an attorney struggling with what technology to outfit your firm with, my advice is to think Google.
Android does in fact do whatever attorneys need it to do.
