One thing we haven’t covered much here are the various iPhone and iPad apps that lawyers might use to read, annotate, and otherwise manipulate PDFs. Partly that’s because there have been so many such apps trickling out. And partly it’s because, even the ones that have come to be recognized as dominate, are tricky for newbies to figure out. And there are a lot of newbies with iPhones and iPads.
One excellent application is the one created by Smile Software, which is called PDFPen. Actually, there are two apps: PDFPen for the iPhone (currently selling for $1.99, which is a discount off the usual $4.99 price), and the other is PDFPen for the iPad (currently $6.99; usually $$14.99). If you haven’t yet discovered an optimal tool for working with your PDFs on your iPhone and/or iPad, download these apps now. They’ll never be cheaper and I’m about to give you an outstanding tip on how you can learn to use these apps to their maximum.
David Sparks, an attorney in Los Angeles knows a lot about Apple products and does an incredible job of explaining to average folks how to use things like iOS apps. He has a great podcast that he does with another attorney, Katie Floyd, called MacPowerUsers. It’s not focused on the law at all, but if you’re an attorney using Macs then you should start listening to the podcast, or at least comb through the old ones for topics that apply to stuff you do with your iPad. You should also get a copy of David’s book iPad at Work, available in print or from the Apple iBook store.
Here’s what you really need to get, though, and this is totally free. If you get either one of those PDFPen apps you need to check out his two video tutorials on how to setup, and how to use, those apps. It’s not law-focused, but he’s a lawyer and he uses those tools in his practice. So it’s pretty much the same as if it was law-focused.
If you use PDFs extensively, and if you have an iPhone or iPad, you need (1) a good tool to work with PDFs on the go, and (2) some excellent training on how to use those tools. Now you know about where to get both, and at most it will cost you $9 (if you act soon, and $20, if you wait). Get the PDFPen apps, and watch David’s videos: