Macs in the Law Office - Still fighting the fight…

Chuck Newton, who runs the Third Wave Lawyer, recently had a post on his thoughts about the Macbook Air and further on about the value proposition of using Apple products or Macs in the Law Office.

Chuck makes the usual commonly misguided points about Macs, which makes even the reluctant-fanboy in me feel the need to respond. So, let’s take these one at a time:

Chuck says:

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.

Well, I guess that one lawyer’s experience is hardly dispositive of an issue, but let me tell you about the cost of my Apple products (I’m assuming you’re points concern the non-cross-platform items, i.e. not iPods or iPhones). I run a small law firm in New Jersey that has 4 attorneys and 2 staff members. Put aside the issue of whether I need all of these people or the overhead for a second and let me tell you that the entire office uses Mac computers. Here are the ages of the computers we have: 1 laptop (Macbook) from 2006, 2 eMacs (all-in-ones) from 2000 and 3 PowerMac towers from 1998. That’s right - I have 3 computers that have been functioning for 10 years. So, the average money I spent in hardware per year for the last 10 years for those users was $200 per attorney. For the “staff” computers the cost is much lower (maybe $50 per attorney per year). If one is all about cheap, you can’t do better than that.

At the same time, in the last two years, I have spent $0 in IT costs and about 15 minutes in down-time when I thought one of the eMacs was broken and drove to my neighborhood repair dude (who fixed a loose internal connection, charged me nothing, and had me back in the office working in those 15 minutes). So, in running the firm, I have almost no down time and no upkeep costs simply because of the fact that I’m running Apple machines. When I worked for a firm that used Windows, they had a bevy of “loaner” laptops for the folks whose machines needed repair. I needed the loaners anywhere between 2-3 times per month. Imagine what that would have cost if I was running the large firm.

Finally, and I only disclose because I think it’s relevant to the conversation, about $0.50 of every dollar goes to profit. There is no way I could maintain that kind of margin if I were running Windows machines. I don’t have any IT firm on retainer to help me to stay running. The shelf life of my computer hardware is ridiculously off the scale. I finally upgraded some machines because if their inability to run the newest software (which is 4 generations beyond what it was when they were first purchased).

The point is - there is no way I could agree to the position that using Macs in my law office presents a higher cost proposition than Windows.

Chuck also says:

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).

First, as a true fanboy, I’d have to take you to task for not capitalizing the “A” in Apple (you are off Steve Jobs’ Xmas list). But, my second point is that that statement is just wrong. I have a number of clients who have been with the firm longer than 10 years. We’ve never used anything but Mac products. We’ve never needed to have a Windows machine to operate in the Windows environment (which of course I will admit is the case). Between the Mac’s native ability to create, read and comment on .PDFs and the number of free (FREE) office suites that create, read and edit Word and Excel documents - there’s never a translation problem. In fact, clients were surprised to learn that we run a Mac environment precisely because there was never a problem.

Another point that should be made is that running Macs allows me to better compete with other lawyers because of the superior way in which they allow me to be creative. A few concrete examples - my proposals, presentations and work product is better on an order of magnitude as compared to my fellow Windows-using colleagues. Part of that can be done with software that comes right with the computer (and should be deducted from any comparison on price) and other costs as much as $29. Now, others can say that all of that flourish is unnecessary, but I would argue it’s what contributes to the thought that all lawyers are boring (and I don’t mean you, Chuck - anyone who posts as much good jazz as you do can’t be boring - but you get my point). Without shipping it out to trial presentation firms, graphic designers or marketing gurus, I can create all kinds of great brochures, stunning “powerpoint” presentations and even my own letterhead at no or little costs. Plus, I have fun doing it. The hardware and software allow me to work (serve as tools) and I don’t have to spend any time learning how to use the tools - there’s inherent value in that. As an example, if the difference between a micro-notebook running Windows versus Mac OSX natively is truly $1,400 as suggested (and I would take issue with that), and you spend more than 10 hours tinkering with stuff that you don’t want to be tinkering with - haven’t you made that money already?

Actually, let me address the cost difference comparison being suggested. To say that a sub-notebook running Windows (and I’m familiar with most of them) is comparable to the MacBook Air is to purposely discount or ignore any of the advantages of the Air. For instance, most of the Windows machines compromised by reducing the size of the keyboard and screen size (and quality). For people who think that pecking things out with their thumbs is frustrating, try typing on a slightly-smaller-than-usual keyboard where nothing is where your muscle memory is telling you it is. The Air, on the other hand, has a full-sized keyboard, and as a writing machine - that’s crucial for me. The other thing about screen size and quality I can see if people don’t want to pay more for that. I would suggest that a screen that uses LED and saves battery life is preferable to one that doesn’t (forget about the environmental advantages - just focus on spending more time working, less money on batteries) and that’s worth something to me.

Finally, there’s no way that I would recommend an Air to a new-convert as their sole working machine (and here I open myself up to a price counter), but the Air is really more of a second machine. What you want (and I know you want one, Chuck) is a Macbook. It’s an excellent laptop, only about 5 lbs., and powerful enough to run your entire office. In fact, until last week, it served as my only computer for the last 2 years. It’s never been down, it’s never given me the blue screen of death and I don’t have to spend my precious time tinkering with how to get it to work “right.”

So, if you give me enough time and enough of your ear, I promise I can convince you to switch. In fact, it’s almost sacrilege that a cost-sensitive, solo-practitioner who’s at the bleeding edge of how to be a lawyer is using anything but a Mac. In fact, you should listen to our podcast (which I recorded, produced and published for free from my Macbook) to hear some other, more notable, folks tell you the same thing….you do have an iPod, right? Here’s the link.

See - I even managed to avoid being a reactionist-jerk in my response. That’s better than average for challenging a Mac-fanboy to a duel.

Posted by Victor J. Medina,
Medina, Martinez & Castroll, LLC