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No Lawyer Jokes, Please (8/23/00)
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What with the amount of intellectual property litigation in the Valley rising faster than clock speeds and blood pressure put together, one thing is clear: legal representation is a serious growth market. And what kind of computers are all those millions of lawyers using? The answer may surprise you. Well, okay, it probably won't, since it's Windows, but what might make you gasp slightly is that the use of Macs in the legal profession is reportedly on the rise.
According to an article in Law Office Computing Magazine, even as early as February of 1998, a disproportionate 8.9% of small law firms reported that Macintosh was the dominant platform in their offices. What with the subsequent release of the iMac, the PowerBook G3, and all those other goodies, we don't find it too much of a logical leap to guess that the percentage of primarily-Mac-using lawyers is even higher today. While the larger firms are generally slaves to the triple threat of Windows/Office/Exchange (as AtAT's resident fact-checker and Goddess of Minutiae can painfully confirm), many smaller firms are One With Steve. So, evidently, people who want to work with Macs can either learn graphic design, or go to law school.
As for why Macs are increasingly popular among the lawyer set, we could say it's because of elegance, reliability, ease of use, and attention to detail-- the last being a virtue by which attorneys make their living and that Apple just happens to have in truckloads. But that'd be naïve. No, the reason that lawyers are liking Macs is because the company who makes them is drumming up so much business for them. With Apple loath to go after the enterprise market as a whole, perhaps it should consider targeting the legal profession once again as a healthy and growing addition to the current core markets of education and creative professionals. Heck, the way things are going, Apple's lawsuits alone will probably be responsible for a 5-7% growth spurt in the lawyer head count over the next few years; why not recoup some of those legal fees by selling them all Macs?
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SceneLink (2502)
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And Now For A Word From Our Sponsors |
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 | | The above scene was taken from the 8/23/00 episode: August 23, 2000: Intel shows off its 2 GHz Pentium 4-- while so far, Motorola's G4+ is rumored to run reliably only at 400 MHz and lower. Meanwhile, Nintendo jumps on the cube bandwagon (just wait for the lawsuits), and in gratitude for all the extra business, more and more lawyers turn to Apple's computers to do their thing...
Other scenes from that episode: 2500: It's Not Funny Anymore (8/23/00) You know that comedy phenomenon where something funny gets repeated over and over again? (The "What does a yellow light mean?" / "Slow down" driver's test bit from Taxi springs eagerly to mind.) You start out laughing heartily... 2501: Here A Cube, There A Cube (8/23/00) Who ever imagined that a regular six-sided polyhedron could cause so much darn trouble? You know, of course, that Steve Jobs never recovered from the cube fetish he first indulged at NeXT, and thus took the wraps off the Power Mac G4 Cube at last month's Macworld Expo...
Or view the entire episode as originally broadcast... | |  |
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