The Atlanta Lawyer December 2018 / January 2019 | Page 18
TECH TALK
Essential Tech for First-Year Attorneys
By Casey Holloway
Cushing, Morris, Armbruster & Montgomery,
LLP, Associate Attorney
[email protected]
It seems like every speech about
“Things I Wish I’d Known as a
New Attorney” includes at least a
few minutes of the speaker focus-
ing on how important it is to be
organized. Organization is even
more important for new attor-
neys, as most of us do not have
an exclusive receptionist (or a new
associate) helping to manage and
organize our workload. The great
news is that technology is really
all you need to keep yourself or-
ganized. What follows is a brief
description of a few technologies
that will help you get organized
and stay organized in your first
of practice.
Microsoft OneNote. Nearly every-
one who has ever used a computer
has likely used some form of Mi-
crosoft software-be it Microsoft
Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc.;
however, the hidden gem of the
Microsoft platform is OneNote.
OneNote is essentially a digital
notebook that you control. You
can add and remove as many pag-
es as you need, organize it based
on your preference, and you can
even include images, audio, links
to emails, and nearly anything else
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December 2018/January 2019
you can imagine. You can upload
a photo of text into OneNote and
convert it into editable text. There
is also an option to “tag” items, and
after you’ve tagged an item, One-
Note will create a to-do list for you,
displaying only the items you’ve
tagged. If you’re on a document-
heavy case, having an automati-
cally created to-do list could be
invaluable. The best part? You can
invite anyone to collaborate on
your so-called digital notebook
and you and your invitees can
work in the document at the exact
same time. OneNote is included
in the Microsoft Office Suite, so if
you have access to Microsoft Word
(and I’d be willing to bet you do),
you likely have access to OneNote
as well. If you prefer to use it on
your iPad or other tablet, there’s
an app and OneNote syncs across
all of your devices.
Todoist. Todoist bills itself as “the
best to do list app & task manager”
and works the way we think. For
example, in a traditional calendar
(like iCalendar) when you input
tasks, you have to describe the
task, then select a date, then se-
lect a time, then set whether you
or not you want the task to repeat.
In Todoist, you can simply write
“conference call with team every
other Tuesday at 11:00 AM #clos-
ing” and Todoist will automatically
set a recurring task (and reminder)
for every other Tuesday at 11:00
AM. You can even organize the
tasks you set into “projects” via a
hashtag. In the preceding example,
the reminder set for every other
Tuesday would be stored under
the project titled closing. This way,
once you set tasks for certain proj-
ects, you can sort by the project
and see everything you have to
do and when. Todoist is designed
to be collaborative-you can share
projects and then delegate tasks to
your invitees. Todoist file sharing
allows users to upload files from
a multitude of other platforms,
including Dropbox, Google Drive,
and of course, your computer’s
hard drive. These files are saved
right in your tasks for easy access.
Fun Fact: the company behind
Todoist, Doist, is a fully remote
company. Todoist is free (with an
option to upgrade to Todoist Pre-
mium) and is available on nearly
any platform.