Law firm dumps BlackBerry for Good

摘要

Keesal, Young & Logan is a relatively small law firm, with 80 lawyers in five offices on the West Coast; in Anchorage, Alaska; and in Hong Kong. But when it comes to technology, the firm is a powerhouse. Its recently completed Web portal―four years in the making―lets attorneys access 95% of their applications remotely making the firm's VPN and remote-access server obsolete. Keesal's mobile strategy is no less progressive. The firm's director of information, Jason Hectus, ran the portal project, which involved custom-building an array of Web applications using Active Server Pages, XML and Simple Object Access Protocol. When it was time to upgrade attorneys' workstations two years ago, Hectus and his team wanted mobile devices that best took advantage of the portal. They launched a pilot with laptops, but quickly realized they were a poor fit. The upfront and support costs were too high, especially when lawyers would use them only to check e-mail. Hectus had followed the mobile marketplace for a long time, but wasn't happy with what was available. Although Research in Motion's BlackBerry provides the enterprise connectivity Hectus wanted, he wanted a mobile device that wasn't tethered to the desktop, one that provided continuous synching with Outlook, was comfortable and was natural to use. As a result, he hesitated―so long the attorneys began buying Palm Pilots, Treos and Pocket PCs.