Right now I am in California (getting ready to visit the Googleplex–feel free to be jealous). Yesterday, for the first time, I flew on a flight that had in-flight Wi-Fi. The cost was reasonable ($5) and the flight was longer than I liked, so I decided to try the Wi-Fi.
The Wi-Fi worked fine and I had no problems using it. I love the fact that I was able to keep up with my email on the flight, so that when I landed, I didn’t have to spend the first hour after arrival playing email catch up.
While working through my email, I was able to experience the benefits first hand of going paperless and using a virtual fax service rather than an actual fax machine.
While somewhere over the great plains, I received an email from a client that I had represented two years ago. She told me that she needed me to fax something to someone related to what I had assisted her with two years ago.
Fortunately, I ran a paperless office that integrates with the cloud. This means that, from the airplane, I was able to retrive the document from Spider Oak. If I had my laptop, I would have been able to retrive it directly from my hard drive. However, I am traveling only with my iPad, therefore, I had to retrive the document from the cloud.
Finding the document was easy. Once I had the document, I had to fax it to the recipient. Because I use a virtual fax service, send this email was no different from sending an email.
Despite the fact that I was 38,000 feet in the air, in about a total of 10 minutes time, I had received the email, retrieved the requested document from a case that had been closed for two years, and had faxed it to the person my client wanted to have it.
Without technology, obviously none of this would have been possible. Because of the technology, however, I was able to handle this task quickly and efficiently, regardless of my location.
Brian, great post and sounds like a great day for the paperless and digitally-connected attorney. Multi-device access (desktop, tablet & mobile) is certainly a game changer for firms and their attorneys.
Brian – are you confident that the WiFi on the airplane is secure enough that documents and information accessed and sent via email during the flight can’t be accessed by hackers or others on the flight who know how to break into internet signals? If so, can you explain for the rest of us? Thanks!
Michelle
The wireless on a plane is no more nor less secure than publicly available wireless at any other location. You should use caution when accessing information over such a connection. For example, I would not have accessed my banking information over this connection. On the other hand, the document I accessed was already available publicly. Therefore, I had no concerns about someone accessing the document.
Brian- I am interested in further researching storing my legal documents on the cloud, rather than the local server in the office, but everyone I speak to in my legal community stays with the local server for security etc. Have you written a blog or presentation on that issue as I was intrigued with the fact that you could locate your client’s document and virtually fax it to them within a matter of minutes while you were flying .
Thanks.