The Mac Lawyer Using Macs in Law Firms | Attorney Ben Stevens

Are More Law Firms Switching to Macs?

By J. Benjamin Stevens on Posted in Switching to Macs

Mac_vs_pc_2
“Hi, I’m a Mac.”  “And I’m a PC."  You’ve probably
heard personifications of these two computer operating systems
bantering on TV, where the young, hip Mac always comes out ahead of the
buttoned-down PC. In law firms, like in most businesses, the reverse
typically happens.

However, several lawyers who run their
practices exclusively on Macs are spreading Apple gospel to other legal
professionals. Rob Hyndman, principal of Hyndman Law, writes about his
allegiance to Mac in his technology blog. Several months ago, Kansas
attorney and fellow tech blogger Grant Griffiths co-founded the Google
group Macs in the Law Office, or MILO. This group joins other online
“Mac law” discussion spots like www.macattorney.com, www.maclaw.org, www.TheMacLawyer.com and www.MacLawStudents.com, as well as Apple’s own marketing to lawyers at www.apple.com.

And
this year might not be business as usual for law IT departments. Many
PC users must switch to a new computer operating system within the next
two years. Unlike previous transition periods, there may be competition
this time for Vista, the successor to Microsoft’s market-leading
Windows XP operating system. And the most user-friendly challenge comes
from Apple Inc.’s Macintosh line.

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Source:  "Will Macs Replace PCs as the Computer of Choice at Law Firms?" by Luigi Benetton, published in The Lawyers Weekly.

  • John Di Giacomo

    I hope more offices switch to Mac. As a law student, I’ve almost completely switched over to OS X. There are only three pieces of software preventing me from dumping my Parallels installation: Word 2007, Softest (ExamSoft), and LexisNexis’ “Copy With Cite” feature (it only works under Windows for some odd reason). Using Vista for a few months was enough for me.

  • http://www.maclawstudents.com/blog Erik Schmidt

    Great roundup, Ben.
    John alluded to ExamSoft’s SofTest as one holdup. One of the reasons many schools use SofTest for their exams is that they track what their state bar exams use. In spite of the fact that the three other exam software vendors all have Mac-native versions available, ExamSoft still dominates.
    As you might expect, the folks running the bar exams are cautious, so even though Boot Camp works fine with SofTest, anecdotal evidence tells me that most of them refuse to allow Boot Camp use.
    When most bar exams are no longer PC-only, I think we’ll see further acceleration of the growth of Macintosh in law offices.

  • http://www.cdas.com Al J. Daniel, Jr.

    I’m a NYC litigator in a 25 lawyer entertainment law firm (only one other Mac guy in the office). There were at least two big law firms-Dorsey & Whitney and Howrey & Simon which were once Mac shops. See American Lawyer article at http://ltn-archive.hotresponse.com/april00/mac_spotlight_p70.html but gave up in the late 90s. I was pretty shocked to see Macs on every desk when I attended a deposition at Dorsey’s in NYC in the 90s. Apple once pitched to the legal industry (80s-90s?) and there were Mac versions of mainstream Time Slips and Amicus Attorney, now all gone. I can do all my litigation work easily with MS Office on a Windows network, but the lawyer-specific PC programs are still PC only (and will probably stay that way). Way too bad. Maybe Macs increasing appeal will change that. We can only hope. AL, NYC.

  • john

    Apple’s biggest weak spot remains Office. Running Mac Office under Rosetta is painful, but sadly still essential. The advanced formatting, indexing, and changes-tracking features are still lacking in OpenOffice, and Pages doesn’t even try. If it weren’t for Mac Word, using a Mac in a legal environment would be impossible.
    The continued dominance of Office is odd. The most analogous situation is the dominance of Photoshop. (I do have to admit that Office 2007 for Windows is an impressive product.) But most other markets for relatively advanced software–video and sound editing, publishing–are much more competitive.
    Apple has a chance to overtake MS in the Office software space if it dares–incorporate iWork with an online service like Google Docs that makes the days of emailing spreadsheets and documents around over. But Apple has not shown much vision when it comes to social and collaborative software.

  • http://www.litigationdynamics.net/blog Blake Boyd

    Great news! iWork 08′ was released yesterday.
    Along with updates to Pages (word), and Keynote (powerpoint), Apple released it’s first version of “Numbers ’08″, which will compete with Excel.
    Personally I’m extremely excited about the new features in Keynote. As they are going to make presentations for the courtroom that much more enticing.

  • fbc

    Question: I’m a newcomer to Mac, having only purchased my first Mac in December 2006. (I’ve used PCs since 1987).
    What’s wrong with dual booting into Windows XP on a Mac?
    Second question: what about another word processor, like OpenOffice? I have used that freeware office clone for modifying Word documents (I’m from the federal courts, where we used WordPerfect for everything) without any major complaints.
    Any thoughts?