Practice Management

Losing a laptop or notebook computer could be disastrous to many attorneys.  Yet, we tend to carry them were we go so that we may stay in touch.  We dare not check our computers because we want to do some work on the Plane while flying, or at least impress others we do not know with your importance.  Regardless, I know people who have lost their laptops at an airport, but I did not realize the situation was so profound.  According to an article on Engadget, based on a study by the Ponemon Institute, more than 10,000 laptops are reported lost at the 36 largest airports in the US each week and, of those, 65% are not reclaimed.  Further, 2,000 laptops lost at medium-sized airports, with 69% of those not reclaimed. According to the study 77% of the people surveyed saying they had "no hope" of ever recovering a laptop lost at the airport, and 16% saying they would not even do anything to attempt to recover it.

At 12,000 laptop or notebook computers a week, that is a loss of 624,000 computers a year.  According to statistics on Reseller, that would be approaching a number equivalent to half of the laptops sold by Apple last year.  This has to make you wonder if airports are the laptop trash can of the world?  Alternatively, if you are a new lawyer starting out, or a law student, how do you get your pick of these hundreds of thousands of computers sitting in some government warehouse?