Some Big Firm Lawyers Give Up BlackBerrys for iPhones
Some lawyers are giving up their BlackBerrys for iPhones, preferring the latter gadget’s big screen and slick interface. Others are holding on to their BlackBerrys because they offer greater e-mail capabilities. And some, like Weil Gotshal associate Amber Taylor, are using both.
Taylor told the Industry Standard that she uses her BlackBerry for office e-mail because it runs on LotusNotes and is not supported by the iPhone. But she likes the iPhone for online legal research and personal e-mail. “I was really anticipating the switch from two devices to one, but I just bought a Kindle 2, so at this point my purse is going to be full of electronics no matter what,” she told the Standard.
The American Lawyer reports that several large law firms are supporting iPhones. About 160 lawyers at Chapman and Cutler use iPhones instead of BlackBerry or Treo devices. Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal’s chief information officer says the firm has “a couple of hundred” iPhone users. And Howrey has about 100 lawyers using iPhones.
David Gregson is chief information officer at Kilpatrick Stockton, one of Apple’s outside counsel. But he told the American Lawyer there are some benefits to using a BlackBerry. “A BlackBerry is really an e-mail device with a phone added on, where the iPhone is a phone with e-mail added to it,” he told the legal publication. “You can’t search through e-mail or cut and paste, like you can on a BlackBerry. You can only sync with your inbox, not with subfolders. You can’t set priority when sending messages. Attorneys are going to be disappointed if they are real power users.”
But Shane McGee, a Sonnenschein counsel, is an iPhone convert. McGee told the American Lawyer that the BlackBerry is “still a platform maintained and developed for e-mail, and while that is very important, we now communicate via instant messaging, SMS [short message services], social networking sites—things the iPhone does well. Its Web browser is fantastic.” McGee can access the law firm’s network on the iPhone and use its Safari browser to search and retrieve more than 6 million documents, according to the article.
Also see:
ABA Site-Tation: “Smartphone Comparisons: iPhone 3.0 Versus Android”
Gizmodo: “Giz Explains: What Makes The Five Smartphone Platforms Different”
ABA Journal: “Smartphones: Which is Best for You?”
