Careers Business Ownership 7 Popular iPad Apps for Lawyers and Law Firms Share PINTEREST Email Print Business Ownership Industries Retail Small Business Restauranting Real Estate Nonprofit Organizations Landlords Import/Export Business Freelancing & Consulting Franchises Food & Beverage Event Planning eBay E-commerce Construction Operations & Success Becoming an Owner By William Pfeifer William Pfeifer Facebook Lawyer University of Alabama School of Law Samford University William L. Pfeifer, Jr., is a former writer for The Balance Small Business and an attorney who has written extensively on legal issues and the practice of law. Learn about our Editorial Process Updated on 11/20/19 The iPad isn't just a game or a toy. It's a tool that increases efficiency with some applications pushing to the forefront as top iPad apps for lawyers. Attorneys are increasingly using iPads in their law practices as part of developing paperless law offices or simply as tools that enable them to do more of their work remotely or while sitting in a courtroom. Whether you want to telecommute, work remotely, operate a paperless law office or have a virtual law practice, the iPad is a must-have tool for your law office. 01 of 07 Dropbox Dropbox Dropbox is a free file-sharing system that allows users to share files such as photos, documents, and videos from one device to another, whether they be computers, iPhones, iPads, or even Android and Blackberry devices. Any files shared to a Dropbox folder are automatically shared among the devices and people the attorney has authorized. A lawyer can carry the iPad to court to read and notate client files rather than carry paper files. Dropbox is one of the best tools a lawyer can add to his law practice for creating a paperless law office. The bigger the file, the greater the benefit. 02 of 07 ReaddleDocs Appaddict.net ReaddleDocs is a document manager for the iPad that saves documents so they can be accessed anywhere. ReaddleDocs can access PDFs, MS Office documents, Apple iWork files and any other document that's been converted to PDF. The PDFs can be highlighted using multiple colors, and notes can be added. Files can be uploaded or downloaded using file-sharing services such as Dropbox, GoogleDocs, MobileMe, and iDisk. This iPad app for lawyers is an excellent tool for reading and marking depositions and trial transcripts. Important pages can be tabbed, important passages can be highlighted, and reference notes can be added from the iPad without having to open the file on the computer. 03 of 07 GoodReader Miapple.me Attorneys are divided over whether GoodReader or ReaddleDocs is the best document viewer for the iPad, so many lawyers download both. GoodReader can display books, movies, maps, and pictures while also providing the ability to annotate documents, zoom up to 50x, conduct a text search, and leap from point to point in the document with PDF hyperlinks. GoodReader allows lawyers to "flatten" PDF annotations, so they're non-editable but are displayed in any application that can use PDFs. GoodReader was the #1 selling non-Apple iPad in 2010. Both GoodReader and ReaddleDocs are very reasonably priced, so there's no reason not to download both to find out which works best for you. 04 of 07 Fastcase Fastcase The Fastcase iPad app provides portable access to the entire Fastcase law library and legal research system entirely for free. The app produces legal research results at a fantastic speed, allowing the user full access to state and federal cases all over the U.S. Additional services are available by upgrading to a full Fastcase subscription, but a subscription isn't necessary for using the free iPad app for legal research. Ever been in a courtroom and wished you could look for a case to cite that you forgot to print? With the Fastcase iPad app, lawyers can do last-minute legal research without leaving the courtroom. 05 of 07 Square Register Square If you want to accept credit cards with your iPad or even your iPhone, Square Register is the credit card processor for you. You'll receive a free card reader that plugs into an iPhone or iPad to take credit card payments from MasterCard, Visa, American Express and Discover when you register on their website. There are no monthly fees. You're charged a fee based on each credit card transaction. Square Register doesn't even run a credit check on you before accepting you into the program, but they take a little longer to pay than some credit card processors. 06 of 07 TrialPad Lit Software, LLC TrialPad for the iPad is a powerful tool for organizing case presentations for the courtroom. Unlike many apps that have merely been adopted by lawyers to use in their practices, TrialPad was specifically designed by lawyers for use in the courtroom. It lets attorneys organize, annotate and manage their case files for court hearings, jury trials, mediation presentations, and other settings. A document or photo in TrialPad merely has to be converted to a format compatible with Adobe PDF. Along with tools such as highlight, redline, and redact, TrialPad allows you to display images and exhibits using a projector or a monitor. 07 of 07 iAnnotate Bestappsite.com iAnnotate is a PDF reader and annotation tool that provides more power than most annotation apps. The iAnnotate app is one of the most important iPad apps for lawyers who want to go paperless because it makes it easy to open documents from email, fill out forms, sign contracts, make notes, and mark documents through highlighting or underlining. If you make a mistake, erase it with Undo, Redo, or Erase. The app can import Word and PowerPoint documents, and it converts websites into PDF documents. Annotations can be flattened into the PDF so no one can modify them after you send them out, and you can tab through multiple open documents.