Tablets Tablets Everywhere
One thing that became obvious at ABA TECHSHOW in Chicago this year was that lawyers are embracing tablet devices like the iPad in great numbers. Some people claimed that iPads even outnumbered laptops at the event. I’m not sure if that claim would have stood up to a head count but it was certainly plausible. The little tablets were everywhere.
So, fine, if you’re thinking about bringing a tablet device into your practice I have some advice for you.
Connectivity
There’s no getting around it – most tablet devices are barely useful without some kind of Internet connectivity. You can’t check your e-mail, can’t log into your cloud-based billing system, can’t research that case law. You know that nifty dictation assistant app you have? The one that tells you what the weather is and helps you navigate to the client’s office? You might as well be speaking Klingon if you don’t have connectivity – all of the popular mobile speech recognition apps require Internet connectivity to translate your words.
Wi-Fi is great, but you can’t always rely upon having good public Wi-Fi. As attendees at ABA TECHSHOW discover year after year even when wireless is provided it can be rather hit or miss. That’s why if your tablet is really a business machine you need to get down to business and get one that supports 3G (or now LTE for the newest models). When you have Wi-Fi access – great, use it. When you don’t (or when it isn’t secure) you’ll hopefully have a 3G or 4G data connection to fall back on.
Virtualization
Tablet devices annoy, irritate and even frighten IT people. Why? Well because users come in every other day with whatever gadget they bought at Best Buy last night and insist the IT guys integrate it into their line of business systems. IT ends up having to support 50 different devices with 6 different operating systems and users aren’t always very understanding when IT tries to explain that the glorified picture frame the user bought won’t run the firms’ entire practice management system. Add to that the consequences when a user leaves a tablet loaded with confidential firm (or worse, client) data in a cab or a bar…there are a lot of really bad things that can result.
So what’s the solution? Inevitably the solution is going to be virtualization. A return, of sorts, to the glass house where all of the data (and most of the processing power) actually lives in a data center much like the old mainframe days. Joe User, on his tablet device, won’t actually be firing up an app to check his e-mail or edit a document – he’ll just fire up his virtual desktop app which (after asking for his username and passphrase) will reach out through that network connection we talked about and connect to one of the servers back in the data center. That server will then provide Joe User with a virtualized version of his desktop – just like on his real computer.
From there he can launch apps, compose documents, handle e-mail, enter his time…almost anything he can do from his desktop machine. Except he’ll be doing it on a 9” screen and may or may not have anything resembling a real keyboard.
Since no data lives on the tablet it’s far more secure. The tablet is essentially just a portal to the virtualized desktop living on the server. Since the remote access apps are either browser-based or at least largely cross-platform there are fewer support headaches for IT (Until somebody comes in with a RIM Playbook or other oddball device).
Better Windows 8 Than Never
Don’t have a tablet yet? You may want to wait just a bit…in the next several months you should start to see Microsoft Windows 8 tablets hit the market. It’s hard to know yet how good they’ll be but if you’ve seen a Windows 7.5 Phone on a decent piece of hardware (like a Nokia Lumia 900 or HTC Titan II) you have to be intrigued by the possibilities. True, they may never have as many apps as an iPad does and if your primary use for the tablet device is to play Angry Birds, well, maybe an iPad is the toy for you. But for actual business users the Windows 8 tablets will almost certainly be worth a look.
You may still end up opting for an Android or iPad device after checking out the Windows 8 tablet, but if you can wait until they arrive to make that call at least you won’t have to look longingly at them and wonder when your colleagues show up with them.
Conclusion
The tablet platform appears to be here to stay. Make sure if the tablet is a tool for you that you get the right tool for the job and that you use it securely. Oh, and give your IT guy a break. It’s hard to already be an expert on a device that didn’t even exist last week.
I agree with almost everything in the article, particularly that connectivity and virtualization are crucial for a tablet.
Then I saw this:
Up until that point, I actually expected you to say “The RIM Playbook is probably the best device currently on the market for lawyers”.
I am not associated with RIM in any way, but I’ve been really impressed with the Playbook, and find it a great tool in my practice.
First, the smartphone of choice for lawyers is overwhelmingly the Blackberry. That may change, of course (20 years ago, the word processor of choice for lawyers was overwhelmingly Wordperfect).
The Playbook is designed to work along with a Blackberry, in ways other tablets cannot.
With respect to connectivity, the Playbook does not have built-in 3G/LTE connectivity, but it nonetheless has mobile connectivity. It can tether with any phone (Blackberry or other) that supports Bluetooth Dial Up Networking protocol. Depending on your phone’s data plan (make sure to check it – some plans charge ridiculous fees for tethering, like $6/Mb), this may well save money, as you will only be paying the monthly fees to Bell/Rogers/Telus for your smartphone, not for your smartphone and 3G tablet.
With respect to virtualization, this is already built into the Playbook if you also have a Blackberry smartphone. The “Blackberry Bridge” is a special form of tethering that essentially allows you to use the Playbook as an extended screen for your Blackberry, so you can access emails, files, and your intranet on your Playbook, using your Blackberry’s secure internet connection. If you take the tablet out of Bluetooth range from the Blackberry, the confidential emails, open documents, and the intranet browser will ‘disappear’ from the Playbook. Assuming your IT department has already set your Blackberry up to be secure, the Playbook will be secure. There is nothing more for the IT department to do.
Though the Playbook was much maligned in the initial reviews when it was released in early 2011 (mostly because the software was not-quite-finished; most of the issues raised in old reviews have since been addressed), one thing that the reviews generally agreed on was that the Playbook had the best tablet-based browser on the market, and that it was the closest thing to a desktop browser available on any tablet, iPad included. That is hugely important if you are talking about running web-based apps.
I purchased a Playbook in January, and use it regularly in my practice. My office uses an intranet-only browser-based client management program. Using the Blackberry Bridge, I can log into the program securely from anywhere I have cell phone coverage, with full secure access to case data, documents and so forth. Our IT department did not have to do anything to allow this to work.
We get faxes as PDF attachments via email. Though the text of a PDF fax is too small to read on a smartphone, a fax can easily be read on a tablet screen.
Playbook also has support for reading and editing Microsoft Office documents, which again can be opened if received as email attachments. And such document stay on the Blackberry, so there are no additional security issues with the Playbook. I asked my IT department about using the Playbook when I got it, and the answer was they did not need to do anything, it would just work. It did.
So, don’t be so quick to dismiss the Playbook. It already does most of the great things your article says tablets should do. It probably will save your IT department headaches, not cause them, because it has the virtualization aspect already taken care of.
The tablet, IMHO, is a realization of the little pads crew members handed each other on the original Star Trek. It’s a huge step forward, and as the prices fall, I expect to see people with as many pads “open” on their desks as books.
However, it’s short on keyboards. They vary from flimsy to virtual to clunky. The bets of the lot may be the blackberry, and that’s a thumb-keyboard.
I currently use the smallest netbook that has a comfortable keyboard (an Acer Aspire), because I write almost as much as I read.
In the security sphere, my connection to the IT network is rdesktop (sometimes also called RDP), so when necessary I have the same working experience as someone chained to a desktop. I also have all my local computing power, at the cost of having to run the (U.S.) NSA’s secure version of Linux, so a random thief/hacker doesn’t walk off with more than the hardware (;-))
I think I can predict a continuing life for the laptop, in part for a larger screen and in part for a keyboard I can use all day. Along with a plethora of pads!
–dave