-By Robert Sisson & Philippe Doyle Gray

Robert J. Sisson – Attorney, Sisson & Kachinsky Law Offices

Bob is a criminal defense attorney, licensed to practice in the states of Wisconsin and New York. He is also admitted to practice before the United States Supreme Court. He belongs to the following associations: American Bar Association; Wisconsin Bar Association; New York State Bar Association; National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, along with respective local bars associations. Bob is also multiple recipient of the Empire State Counsel award.

Bob has a passion for technology and always strives to be on the cutting edge. He is a long time attendee of ABA Techshow, but a first time presenter in 2015. Growing up in Buffalo, New York- he attended State University of New York at Buffalo, where his undergraduate, Masters, JD and PhD studies were done at SUNY Buffalo.

Bob is the owner/operator of Sisson & Kachinsky Law Offices. Being a Viet Nam era U.S. Navy Veteran, Bob has found his criminal law practice extremely rewarding, focusing on helping our returning Armed Forces Veterans with their legal concerns. He welcomes every legal challenge- no matter how small or big it may be. His use of technology started out with the first Palm Pilot (during law school) and he has embraced technology ever since then, and never looked back.

Bob strives to continue to experiment and learn how existing and new products, from Cloud based programs to wearable technology, can make our every day jobs as Practicing Attorneys- easier and more productive. Bob blogs on Tumblr on wearables.

Philippe Doyle Gray – Barrister, 8 Wentworth Chambers

Philippe Doyle Gray is a barrister from Sydney, Australia. He is a commercial equity senior junior, and a member of 8 Wentworth Chambers, from where he predominantly practices in document-intensive civil litigation involving allegations of dishonesty and fraud—but his passion focusses on technology.

His peers elected him as the Honorary Secretary of the New South Wales Bar Association and a member of its governing council. Since November 2014, he has also been a member of the ABA’s Law Practice Division governing council—the first lawyer who practices outside North America to hold such a position.

In addition to his full time private practice, he is the legal-technology instructor for the New South Wales Bar Association’s bar practice course (compulsory for all attorneys wanting to become barristers), the legal-technology program-director for the Association’s continuing professional development program, and a guest lecturer about technology for the judiciary at the Judicial Commission of New South Wales.

His personal achievements include climbing to the summit of Mt Kilimanjaro via the Machame route during Tanzania’s “long rains” the very first time he ever climbed a mountain—and then having enough sense at 20,000 feet above sea level to resolve never to climb another mountain again.

Several times each week, he publishes tips and hyperlinks to technology-related articles of interest to lawyers. Connect with him on LinkedIn, Google+ or follow him on Twitter @pdoylegray

This post is a very small portion of the materials they prepared for their presentation “How to Never Forget Anything – Incorporating Evernote Into Your Practice” Thursday, April 16 4:00-5:00 PM.

Networking with Evernote

Conferences and trade shows provide many networking opportunities in a short period of time. It is easy to be overwhelmed with all the new people you meet and things you see. Every minute that you spend trying to remember who you met, what you saw, where you were, and when you were there, is a minute’s networking you lose. There is a tension between being exposed to new things and fresh faces on the one hand, and remembering all those new things and fresh faces after the event, on the other.

Imagination is for humans; memorisation is for machines. Evernote can free you to focus on making human connections and leaving lasting impressions. Let’s focus on 2 priorities: (1) dealing with business cards, and (2) putting faces to names.

Dealing with Business Cards

Evernote has a built-in business card scanner—one that is better than most. Like most other mobile-device scanners, you use your mobile device to take a photograph of the business card. But instead of simply taking a photograph, you open the Evernote app and take a photograph from within Evernote. Just before clicking the shutter, make sure that the camera is set to “business card.” You can see how this works in this 1-minute video.

What makes Evernote business card scanning so good comes from other settings that are a little obscure: (1) saving to contacts; (2) assigning notebooks and tags; (3) your own contact information; and (4) LinkedIn These settings allow you to (1) extract information from the photograph of the business card and then automatically create a contact in your regular contacts list with that information; (2) automatically sort the scanned business card into a notebook or with a tag {I use a dedicated notebook into which all my scanned business cards can be found, so that I can glance over them like a business card wallet}; (3) send your own contact information to the person that you just met, making life easier for them; and (4) if both you and the person whose business card you just scanned are both on LinkedIn, then you can send an invitation to connect on LinkedIn. You can see how to access those settings in this 4-minute video. And you can learn more deeply about these uses in this 12-minute video.

And if that’s not enough, Evernote also records time and place metadata. Having scanned a business card, you will create an Evernote. Open that note, and then go to the information panel accessed by pressing on the lower case letter “i” in a circle, like in the picture to the right.
You will see fields for created, updated and location. The values for created and updated will be identical—they are the date and time when you took the photograph of the business card. Feel free to edit the created field to the actual date and time that you met the person.

The field for location will be the address, or latitude and longitude, of where you were (more accurately, where your device was) when you took the photograph of the business card. Again, feel free to edit the field to a street address. The advantage of doing both these edits is that you can then sort Evernotes by date and time: if you can remember approximately when you met a person, then you can find their business card in Evernote by searching around dates; similarly, if you can remember approximately where you met a person, then you can find their business card in Evernote by using the map view—depending upon the platform, the map view is called Places or Atlas. Concise instructions for searching by location are in Evernote guide KB23193326.

Recently, Evernote launched a new app, Scannable. It’s a scanner that follows the current trend of working without pressing any buttons—you just hold your device and allow it to take a photograph when it wants to. You can see how it’s supposed to work in this 1-minute video. But I can’t get it to work that way. My iPhone 4S and my iPad 3 never seem to want to take a photograph; I look like I’m divining for water. And even if I could get it to work, why would I want to? It doesn’t add anything to my Evernote scanning experience; I already have a perfectly satisfactory scanner app for the occasional receipt or document that can’t wait for my return to the office—TurboScan. Perhaps you will have more luck.

Putting Faces to Names

Evernote’s record of time and place metadata is useful because even though we met someone, got their business card, read it, scanned it, and connected with them, we can’t remember them. We’re bad at remembering names, but we’re good at remembering faces. So what can Evernote do to help?

Take a photograph of the person using Evernote. Just ask “Do you mind if I take your photograph; I’m bad at putting faces to names?” Nobody ever refused me. And when they say yes, look out to see if they have a convention badge. Take a photograph of their face and their convention badge. The key is to photograph their face and their convention badge at the same time. Then, having their business card, you can later search through your notes for their name, and you should find that photograph of their face—because Evernote can recognise text in images. If there isn’t a convention badge, look for a company name on their shirt. No luck? Then look to see if the person concerned is standing in front of something with their company name on it—it could be a tradeshow display, or it could be a sign at their place of work. If there’s text in the image, then there is a good chance that it can be read and searched for in Evernote. You can see how that works in this 2-minute video.

And remember, you will record the time and place metadata in their photograph. So if all else fails, take 2 photographs: one of them, and then, as soon as you can, take a photograph of their business card. The 2 sets of time and place metadata will be similar, so you can more easily search for time or place, and narrow down the list of possibilities.

Recognise that if you have this problem, then others have this problem too. And they may not use Evernote. So, make business cards for yourself that include a photograph of your own face.

Group photographs pose special problems. What you need to do is annotate the image with everyone’s names. In August 2011, Evernote Inc. purchased Skitch. This is dedicated image– and pdf–annotation software. It’s really easy to use, and brings to life the idiom that a picture is worth a thousand words. Skitch is available as a separate application, but a great deal of Skitch functionality has now been brought into Evernote. What is now available is explained in a succinct, Evernote how-to guide: KB28944986. For group photographs, use the stamp tool to make a stamp, then add text to the stamp (the person’s name), and finally add a pointer to the stamp that points to the right person.