BlackBerry has tended to be device of choice for suits, lawyers included, but apparently that’s changing. A few firms, notably Chapman and Cutler who have been sporting Apple products since 1992, have over half of their staff using iPhones. Corporate network access through web-based utilities is more than satisfactory with the iPhone’s ample Safari browser, and the recent Exchange support makes it a passable e-mail device. Chapman and Cutler are what you might call an extreme example, however – most firms simply offer the iPhone as an alternative for those interested, but the lack of security options, battery life, and e-mailing capabilities remain a deterrent for most lawyers.
“Coming from the BlackBerry world, you get used to the conveniences they have refined,” says [David Gregson, chief information officer at Kilpatrick Stockton]. “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. 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.” Kilpatrick currently has no plans to deploy iPhones firmwide, although it has recently given them to two partners in New York who work with Apple.
[via National Post]