Lawyers ditching crackberry for iPhone
By Ronald O Carlson
What do you call 100 iPhone using barristers? Were we talking about anything other than Apple products, you would have to add the phrase “at the bottom of the ocean” before I’d call a 100 lawyers doing anything a “pretty good start.”
Law.com reports that a growing number of lawyers are embracing the iPhone. At this point this trend is little more than a bunch of anecdotes, but anything that can pry a Blackberry from a lawyer’s hand must be considered powerful.
This trend is particularly apparent at Chapman and Cutler, a firm that’s also Mac friendly, switching to the fairer platform way back in 1992. According to Law.com, of the legal beagles at Chapman, more than half or about 80 have switched to the iPhone. Law.com reports:
The first-generation iPhone was decidedly a consumer product, with gaping security holes and poor support for corporate e-mail—two deal-breakers when it came to business use. But with the release of its 2.0 software—along with the new iPhone 3G, capable of running over a faster cellular network—the device’s corporate chops were vastly improved.
Further, an even larger firm with several hundred lawyers, Sonnenschein, Nath & Rosenthal, reports that perhaps 100 have purchased the iPhone on their own not wanting to wait for their employer’s 24-month replacement cycle to kick in.
Still, not everyone with a legal degree is dropping their Blackberry or Palm Treo and leaping for the iPhone. To date, three major issues tend to rub some potential users the wrong way: the touchscreen keyboard (and no Bluetooth option), poor battery life and lack of specific applications, like the Treo’s integrated modem tethering functionality.
Regardless of the iPhone’s current limitations, Apple’s steady push to add features business and enterprise users want means these issues likely won’t be stumbling blocks for long. Moreover, most of what Cupertino’s engineers have withheld can be added by jailbreaking the iPhone—a good example of this is tethering as are third party battery packs.
Still, that the iPhone is making serious inroads with lawyers despite some serious shortcomings is kind of amazing. Who’s next, the president?
Could even the iPhone pry the Blackberry from the president’s hands…
What’s your take?
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