Top Tech Tools to Ease the Pain of Flying

Like Betty White and hatchbacks, business travel is seeing a revival. After dropping 14.1 percent in 2009, according to the Global Business Travel Association, spending for work-related trips rose 2.3 percent in 2010 and is expected to notch a 5 percent increase this year. But travel today is a whole new beast, full of fees, waits, and inconveniences, even for a seasoned road warrior. The good news: Some handy online services and apps can minimize the aggravation, maximize productivity, and even improve the quality of traveling life. Here are our top picks for lawyers on the go.

• Global Entry (globalentry.gov). Let’s face it: They could put a winning Powerball ticket at the end of those airport lines, and it still wouldn’t be worth the wait. Normally, we’d view a government initiative that saves us time and stress as a sign that the world’s about to end, but Global Entry — a pilot program from U.S. Customs and Border Protection — is a great idea for lawyers who travel outside the country. Sign up, pay the $100 processing fee, and — assuming you didn’t knock over a 7-Eleven in your youth — you’ll get fast-tracked through passport control whenever you arrive back in the United States. Instead of waiting in line, at many (but not all) major airports, you’ll step in front of a kiosk, where you’ll swipe your passport, place your fingers into a fingerprint reader, and smile into a camera (or maybe just stare blankly after that 18-hour flight from Hong Kong). High-tech wizardry will compare your biometrics to what the government has on file (part of the application process requires a trip to the airport to have fingerprints and a digital photo taken) and send you on your way. Any goods you’ve brought back can be declared at the kiosk — so you’ll spend less time filling out forms on the airplane and more time figuring out which video channel isn’t showing the Adam Sandler movie.

• OneBag.com (onebag.com). There are two things you should know about Doug Dyment, a speaker and writer who runs this site: He’s obsessed with traveling light, and he’s not obsessed with writing concisely. There’s a lot to wade through here, and not all of it is interesting, but if you take the time, you’ll find some handy tips for cramming as much as possible into your carry-on. Dyment has strong feelings about checking bags — his musings on airport scales read like JFK assassination conspiracy theories (although his recommendation to ask for a reweighing on another scale if your bag comes up as too heavy is a sensible one we somehow never thought of before).