This article from the October 2012 Palm Beach Bar Bulletin will explain that PDF documents are not “fixed” but, instead, can be easily modified on your iPhone or iPad.
It gives instructions to learn, in 10 minutes, how to sign documents on the road.
Have clients retain you in one step.
Sign or revise documents while travelling without resorting to a fax machine.
Article is here.
I recently spoke at the Association of Corporate Counsel (ACC) South Florida Third Annual CLE Conference, along with fellow Akerman lawyers, Michael Marsh and Brian Miller, about iPhone app development issues for inhouse counsel (more colorfully titled, “CYA (Cover Your Apps).”
Just in time for you to upgrade to iOS6, here are fifteen iPhone/iPad apps selected for inhouse counsel:
ACC Docket – get the ACC publication (and news) 
ACC Member to Member – connect with ACC members as well as news/blogs/etc
CardMunch – scan & save business cards; see person’s LinkedIn profile
ABBYY Business Card Reader – scan business cards; save into iPhone contacts
Photosynth – take 360 panoramic pictures of accident / work area
Seat Guru – find the best seat on your next flight with comments from fellow fliers
Gate Guru – find shops, bars, restaurants in your airport gate
Adobe Reader – teach this app your signature then sign PDF documents on the road (no more faxing)
PDF Expert – revise, highlight & annotate PDF records (don’t carry reams of documents when you travel)
Picture It Settled – tool for predicting time/amount of settlement during mediation
Sayfie Review – stay on top of Tallahassee politics
Florida Bar News –
Exhibit A – use this presentation program for meetings, mediation, trial, & arbitration
Heart Rate – outside counsel have you stressed? Find out
A federal court in Illinois recently approved a party’s interception of user data on public WiFi systems at hotels, coffee shops, restaurants, supermarkets and other commercial outlets. This practice, known as sniffing, involves someone with a laptop, a Riverbed AiPcap Nx packet capture adapter (or equivalent), and free Wireshark network analyzer software, intercepting unencrypted packets between the public wifi hotspot and everyday users. In the course of sniffing, the person with the heavily-armed laptop can see your emails, financial information, photos, and whatever else you transmit.
Fortunately, in the case of In Re Innovatio IP Ventures, LLC Patent Litigation, the “sniffing” party agreed to overwrite the personal data of the wifi users. This, of course, does not mean that other, non-litigants within the airspace of a free wifi hotspot are so scrupulous. Nonetheless, the court determined that, absent a true “interception” of the user data, there was no violation of the Wiretap Act.
The take away lesson, however, is that your information which is sent over free, unencrypted wifi is sufficiently insecure that the court determined it was “readily accessible to the public.” In short, a person who intercepts you wifi data on an unencrypted wifi network is not committing wiretapping. As one might expect, the argument was that the data packets were only accessible to those with sophisticated packet sniffers. But the court concluded that such sniffing devices ran $200 – $700 and were not so unusual even though “the majority of the public is likely unaware that communications on an unencrypted wifi network are so easily intercepted by a third party.”
Worse, “[t]he public still has a strong expectation of privacy in its communication on an unencrypted wifi network even if reality does not match that expectation.”
Some further discussions can be had here and here (the latter suggesting that there is a $55 sniffing device available…).
The Fourth District Court of Appeal ruled yesterday that it was grounds for disqualification if a judge was Facebook-friends with the prosecutor. In Pierre Domville v. State of Florida, a criminal defendant moved to disqualify Judge Andrew Siegel because the prosecutor was one of the judge’s friends on Facebook. The Court relied upon Judicial Ethics Advisory Committee Opinion 2009-20, which notes that such public display of connection creates the appearance of impropriety.
So what is a judge to do? The quick-and-clean option is to de-activate all social media accounts. That may not be desirable. The more reasonable option is to revisit social media accounts and determine if they can be open to anyone so that there is no acceptance or rejection of contacts. Ironically, Facebook (like Twitter) has a fairly easy solution: open a fan page so that anyone can follow you (obviously, the content on an open fan page is likely a bit less personal than what you might share in your circle of Facebook friends). Contact your current Facebook friends explaining that anyone who might reasonably appear in front of you is going to be de-friended (no offense). Leave the “private” Facebook account for personal and family contacts who will not appear before you.
UPDATED (9/15/12): Daily Business Review’s “Judges React to Fourth DCA Opinion Over Facebook Friendships.”
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