Since my first post on using an iPad in my Advocacy II trial, law students and lawyers have asked me in person, via twitter, and through comments, whether they can (or should) use an iPad as a replacement laptop.
The preliminary answer, if your attention span is as short as mine, is probably not (yet).
Here are the current problems as I see them:
No Ability to Multitask
As you may know, this may change a bit with the upcoming (think fall) release of the 4.0 OS. Still, I’m not sure to what extent it’s going to make things more reasonable. As I understand it, only a limited number of applications will be allowed to multitask (apps like Pandora et al), which doesn’t seem like it will cure the problems that attorneys and law students face.
What kinds of problems are we talking about? Well, right now there’s no real ability to look at one document while typing another. For that matter, there’s no native ability to take notes while browsing the web. If I want to take notes on a webpage, I need to copy a chunk of text, close Safari, open Pages, paste the text in, and hope that I don’t need to repeat the process too many more times. If you spend a lot of time taking information from websites and synthesizing it into your own material, you’re going to be frustrated. This also means that if you’re used to referring to another document (evidence, perhaps?) while writing, you’re going to be hindered.
Less on the deal breaking spectrum and more on the annoyance spectrum for a law student like me is the lack of an ability to chat (via facebook, gchat, etc.) while surfing the web. If I want to type to my friends on the iPad, it requires 100% of my attention because I can’t really do anything else. Not that I don’t love my friends, but they only need 10% of my attention at any given time.
Again, this may change with the new operating system or the invention of specialized apps; only time will tell.
No Flash
I know, I know, Steve Jobs issued a compelling 90,000 bullet point list of why the iPad won’t support Flash, but the fact of the matter is that a large number of websites currently require Flash to provide their functionality. That’s not to say that Flash can’t (and probably should) be phased out with HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript but right now when I try to view a law school lecture on my school’s website, I don’t want my iPad to tell me, “Sorry, we don’t like the idea of Flash, so you can’t view this lecture!” I was also unable to attend a LexisNexis seminar due to iPad compatibility problems.
It seems that, at least for now, law students and attorneys looking for CLEs, lectures, and the like, are going to run into the anti-Flash wall. That is, until we start adopting the iPad en masse and legal websites start designing content just for us.
Pages for iPad isn’t Very Polished
I’m fairly upset by this. I loved taking notes with Pages when I used my Macbook Pro in law school. Given the current release of Pages, however, it is just not possible to take notes. The reason is that there’s very limited outlining functionality. If you want to indent a multilevel list, you need to click with your finger to the screen at least 2 times, and probably 3 times. Incredibly, there is no shortcut for this and it takes forever. No one is going to be able to do it in a classroom environment. Period.
This probably isn’t as huge a deal for practitioners, but for law students it’s probably a deal breaker until this problem is patched and/or substitute programs come along. Coincidentally, if you’re aware of any reasonable substitutes to Pages for note-taking in class, please let us know in the comments.
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(I’m assuming you’re not a video game geek like me, because if you were, you’d already know that the iPad isn’t replacing your gaming machine.)
Legal research is going to be hindered by all of these drawbacks in some way. These problems would be greatly ameliorated if Pages would allow you to pull up two documents side-by-side, and Safari would allow you to run Pages simultaneously. Right now, however, that seems like wishful thinking.
In the end, I still love my iPad. I take it along with me whenever I’m mobile and don’t need to produce serious legal work product (though for just reading cases, it’s second only to my Kindle DX).
If you have questions or comments about the iPad (whether it relates to this article or not) feel free to drop a line in the comments. It may even spawn a new post if it’s interesting enough.
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{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Thank you for that post – it gave me a lot of great insight!! I am starting law school in the fall and keep going back and forth about whether to get in ipad or a Macbook. Now I think I am leaning back towards the Macbook. Thanks again!
@Ann Fick, I think that’s probably a wise decision. Not to mention that I just realized yesterday that footnotes and endnotes aren’t possible in Pages for the iPad. Insanity.
Good luck with your first year!
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