Absolute Beginners Guide to Tablet PCs

The attorney is responsible for several clients and cases. To keep up with demands, she has turned to the Tablet PC. It has helped her keep notes in a single place and to easily share those notes with colleagues. The Tablet PC also helps her to stay in touch with others so she can more quickly accomplish her work.

Toolkit

• Convertible design Tablet PC This type of Tablet PC is ideal in this situation because it allows for quick keyboard use when needed.

• Noise-canceling headset Using this type of headset makes using the Tablet PC's speech-recognition features much easier.

• Dragon Naturally Speaking This program is perfect for higher-quality speech recognition and for its legal dictionary.

• Microsoft Office 2003 The attorney uses this to prepare documents and email.

• Microsoft OneNote This program is great for creating free-form notes and for brainstorming.

• Adobe Acrobat This program is used for digital document creation, and for transferring sealed digital documents.

Value Proposition

The attorney likes the portability, speech recognition, pen-annotation ability, and natural note taking of the Tablet PC. The Tablet PC can save her several hours a week that can be spent on other cases, or with her family. Speech recognition can reduce staff and time needed to transcribe voice recordings, and pen annotation is often faster and more meaningful than using a keyboard. Windows Journal allows the attorney to take notes naturally and unobtrusively.

Day in the Life

The attorney checks her email and calendar and notices that a colleague has asked for some comments on an active case. She dictates an email back to the colleague into the Tablet PC. At 8:30, she prepares for her 9:30 court hearing by downloading all relevant case files to her Tablet PC and reviews her notes on the case. At 9:00, she heads to the courthouse carrying only her Tablet PC. She no longer needs to lug around a large briefcase filled with papers and files.

Because the courthouse has a Wi-Fi network that is accessible by attorneys, she can cross-check a few facts with a colleague back at the office via email, not disturbing the quiet of the courtroom with a phone call. Facts verified, she approaches her seat in front of the judge and gets underway with the trial. During the testimonies, the attorney can take notes in Microsoft OneNote, and can organize the notes as she proceeds. Because of her ability to quickly cross-reference digital information, she finds the answer to a question a testimony sparked, and is ready for cross-examination. When she cross-examines the witness, the information she found helps tear down the testimony and win her the case.

After her stint in court, she goes to a witness's house on another case and asks some questions, again taking notes on her Tablet PC with Microsoft OneNote. This time, though, she can record the conversation in Microsoft OneNote so that she can be sure that her notes are accurate. With Microsoft OneNote, the attorney can easily move her note nuggets, allowing her to rearrange her thoughts easily on the virtual paper. This allows her to see relationships between ideas more readily.

When she is finished with her interview, she returns to her office and submits her notes to her assistant, who cleans up the documents, checks for accuracy against the audio recording, and submits the file to the server.

Summary of Benefits