Practice Management

I normally leave tech to Rick Georges over at Future Lawyer.  But, if anything, the Third Wave is about ease and portability.  It is about being to operate with a the smallest footprint possible in the legal world.  It is also about being connected.  PDAs and smart phones just do not hack it for me in this regard.  First, they do not have the overall functionality I need to run my office cheaply and on the fly.  Besides, with age my vision is not as good as it once was.  Second, they are expensive to operate.  I am all about cheap and I hate cell phone bills coming in in the hundreds of dollars a month.  That is also the reason I have been unimpressed with the MacBook Air.  I am not into novelty and design as an excuse to take money out of my pocket.  That ended with me when I bought a Pet Rock in the 70s.  Apple is all about being the end thing, and some lawyers like that.  It is pretty.  It is cool.  (The company is threatening to sue New York City -- "The Big Apple" -- for using green apple with a leaf as its logo in its green campaign)!!  And, these lawyers are willing to burden their practices with the costs of apple products (both as to purchase price and in operating it in this Windows environment in which lawyers must too often compete).  Sure, a Mac can run both its own OS and Windows, but I do not need the "in thing" just to surf the web, to pay three grand for the machine only to have to also spend large sums to put windows on the machine, as well as all of the relevant software.  What I have come to find out is that if you are playing with Macs in a law office environment, you are burning through money.  And, for what?  For a little glitz, for a little glamor, and for a little feel good.  Sure, Mac is kind of in front of the cycle on innovation and design, but you are paying a premium for what -- a year's jump on everybody else.  Besides, Apple will just redesign it in a year and then make lead you to buy the new "in" machine you just have to really really have.

In this regard, I was gad to read about the Ultrathin Intel Atom-bsed Netbook which was shown at the Intel Developer Forum in Shanghai.  Beyond a tool for a school child, and beyond the laptop for everyone, this could be the poor lawyer's MacBook Air.  Sure it is not as well endowed as a full-fledged notebook, but it is also likely to cost somewhere closer to $300.00 instead of $3,000.00.  It can act like a supplement to your PC and do enough things to operate your practice effectively on the fly.  Let's face it.  as we move into a more browser-based world, I do not need a unltrathin that can land a 747.  I need to be able to check my browser-based extranet, merge my collected information into a pleading, upload the pleading to the federal court, and then notify my client and other parties by email that this has been accomplished.

Here is too a cheap unltrathin!