As I’ve described before, I consider myself a practical technologist  – I choose tech tools based on cost and what they can do to help me right now rather than paying top dollar for the latest-and-greatest gadgets that may not work for my practice. Likewise, I track technology on a “need to know” basis – keeping abreast of developments that I might need, instead of staying on top of everything that’s out there.

So two months back, when I began prepping for my first jury trial in more than a decade, not to mention my first in federal court, of course, I was aware of the iPad as an option for trial technology. But with my focus largely on appellate work (where I limit my notes, if any, to a single page of paper) or pre-historic regulatory hearings (in one case, we were assigned our own blue plastic tub to store the hundreds of pages of paper documents circulated each day), I realized that I’d fallen behind on modern trial tech and needed to get up to speed – and fast.  So here are the steps that one iPad novice took to ensure a smooth and seamless maiden voyage with my iPad at trial.