I’m honored to be speaking at the Georgie ICLE Technology Show and Tell on February 24, 2011. I’ll be giving one session on “e-discovery trends” and a second session devoted to Macs entitled “Mac Attack: Should Your Firm Move To A Mac Environment?”
Now obviously, if you already use Macs in your practice, this may not be all that interesting, although I promise a few nuggets that will make it worth your while.

But if you’ve been contemplating the possibility of moving your practice to Macs away from Windows, this will be an hour well-spent as I’ll cover the differences, the pros & cons, and generally discuss the practicalities of moving to the Mac.

There’s a whole day of great stuff at the Technology Show and Tell and it’s very affordable! Make sure you come by and say hello!

I was thrilled to present the “Mac Track” at the Ohio State Bar Association Legal Technology Conference last week. I’ve been honored to be invited to speak at the conference for the past five years, but it’s only been the last three years where I’ve been asked to speak on Macs.

Three years ago at the Conference, I did one session on Macs. This year, I did three.

Three years ago, there were about 10-12 folks in the room for that single Mac session. This year, the room was full with about 25 folks, while the iPad session was packed with 40-45.

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I’m thrilled to be speaking on Macs, iPhones and iPads at the Ohio State Bar Technology Conference next week. My thanks to the fine folks at the OSBA and Affinity Consulting for the invitation.

My session include:

Macs in the Law Office

Mac: 60 Tips in 60 Minutes

iPractice on an iPad

I’ll also be speaking on cloud computing.

You can download the conference brochure from here. It’s a stellar conference packed with my friends from Affinity Consulting (Paul, Barron, & Debbie) and Sensei Enterprises, Inc. (Sharon & John).

There’s not much more that can be said other than Victor Medina just did an incredible job of putting together an amazing, engaging, and thoroughly enjoyable conference for “Mac-lovin’ lawyers” at MILOfest 2010. Everyone I talked to was committed to coming back, even with the rumors flying around that it might be in a different location.

I think it’s safe to assume by this point that MILOfest has become an annual event, as long as the stalwart Victor doesn’t mind carrying the torch (I honestly don’t know who else could lead the charge as well). To hear details about next year’s conference (when Victor releases them), join the MILO (Macs in Law Offices) Google Group.

Here is some other coverage of MILOfest 2010 from around the interwebs:

• A video interview of Victor Medina himself from Tomasz Stasiuk on his Planet10Tech blog
• Attendee reflections on MILOfest collected by Ben Stevens, THE Mac Lawyer
• A great wrap-up of MILOfest from attorney Randy Juip on www.themaclawyer.com

By the third day of MILOfest, everyone had met everyone else and there was a feeling of congeniality held together by a passion for Macs (coverage of Day 1 and Day 2).

Victor Medina kept the ball rolling throughout the whole conference, making sure presenters started on time and we were all in our seats ready to listen.

Responsibly Connected | Larry Port

First up on Day 3 was Larry Port of Rocket Matter who established a congenial tone for the third day talking about being responsibly connected.

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Using Circus Ponies Notebook & Evernote for File Management | Ben Stevens

The second day of MILOfest started off with THE Mac Lawyer himself, Ben Stevens, providing an excellent overview of how he uses Circus Ponies Notebook, Evernote and Rocket Matter in his practice.

Ben mentioned the importance of establishing a consistent file-naming convention for documents. I appreciated Ben covering this since it is something that I preach religiously to Mac-using lawyers since we don’t have a native, legal-specific document management application for Macs (cf. Worldox used in the Windows world). Many Mac-using lawyers simply store their files in a folder structure which is perfectly fine, but having a consistent file-naming convention is absolutely critical for finding documents and staying organized.

Ben mentioned that he used to name document files with the client’s last name, first name. But this method neglected to sort files in chronological order so Ben switched to naming files with the date first, then client name (many folks use a naming convention similar to “2010-11-16-Client Name.docx” or something similar so that the files are listed chronologically).

Ben then showed us how he uses Circus Ponies Notebook as a litigation timeline as he gets closer to trial (which was a very nice contrast to how Mark Metzger detailed OmniOutliner on Day 3). Ben mentioned that they store their Notebook files in Dropbox so that the rest of the office has access to the files. But since only one person can have the Notebook file open at one time, Ben said they have mostly switched over to Evernote.

(Tomasz Stasiuk has some additional comments about Ben’s presentation on his Planet 10 Tech blog.)

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The first day of MILOfest was exciting, engaging and educational.

Victor Medina (@victormedina) organized a bigger and better conference this year – attendance is up, the sessions are expanded, and everyone is giddy to be talking Mac.

You almost get the sense that folks have been looking forward to this for several months, and it’s sort of like a little Mac-therapy session – everyone has a glowing Apple on their laptop and there are iPhones and iPads everywhere.

The three sponsors from last year are back, but they brought extra folks to man the booths – Rocket Matter, Clio, and Marketcircle (Daylite / Billings) are good friends of MILOfest by now.

New sponsors this year are Summary Judgment and Smart Marketing and they’re getting a lot of traffic. Victor set up the conference room so that anyone that wants a snack or beverage has to pass by the vendor tables.

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If you’re a Mac-using lawyer, it’ll be a crying shame if you miss MILOfest.

MILOfest is a gathering of Mac-lovin’ lawyers sponsored by the Macs in Law Offices Google Groups that will be held Nov. 11-13, 2010 down in Orlando, FL. All of the details are on www.milofest.com.

MILOfest is possible because of the generous blood, sweat and tears from Victor Medina,  the managing partner of Medina Law Group.

This is the second year of MILOfest. Last year, Victor orchestrated an incredible couple of days worth of presentations and programming that focused specifically on lawyers using Macs in their practice. Everyone walked away with more information than they could handle, and more importantly, a renewed confidence in their computer operating system of choice.

This year is bigger and better. Victor has lined up a stellar cast of speakers including THE Mac Lawyer – Ben Stevens, Finis Price, Jack Newton, Larry Port, Mark Metzger, Ron Elkins, and more. I have the honor of talking about BusyCal at MILOfest.

It’s not too late to sign up to attend, and by all means get the word out to every Mac-using lawyer that you know. I will be posting updates to this blog during the conference, but that will be a pitiful substitute for all of the knowledge that gets shared in person at the conference.

Update #1: I forgot to mention that Rocket Matter has generously sponsored CLE accreditation for 17 states at MILOfest. So if you’re hurtin’ for a few more hours before the end of the year, this would be a much-less-boring way to fill your quota.

Update #2: Posted a report on Day 1 of MILOfest on Nov. 12, 2010 at https://www.macsinlaw.com/day-1-milofest2010/