Eversheds eschews BlackBerry in favour of iPad

The firm has launched a two-month pilot with around 50 members of its senior staff called Eversheds Anywhere, in which they will test out the trendy, but bulky, device. If the pilot is deemed successful all lawyers could get their own iPad.

Eversheds chief information officer Paul Caris said: “The iPad is an incredibly intuitive device which will be popular with our lawyers. We’re an innovative law firm and our lawyers are constantly on the move around the world. We want to provide clients with a quality and progressive service and our people with the most flexible working environment and believe that the new iPads and this groundbreaking collaboration will allow us to do that.”

Eversheds lawyers currently work with BlackBerry smartphones but a spokesperson pointed out that there’s “a lot you can’t do on Blackberry that you can do on an iPad. It’s got greater capacity, you can be in Asia and download precedents. It depends on what kind of lawyer you are, if you’re travelling a lot then it’s for you.”

However, the iPad is larger and heavier than the BlackBerry. The Apple product is typically 243mm long and weighs around 700g, compared with the Blackberry Bold 9700 model, which is 110mm and weighs approximately 120g.

The pilot is being funded equally by Eversheds and the two external IT companies the firm uses. The Eversheds spokesperson said that the initial investment was probably “in the thousands”.

This comes after US firm Morrison & Foerster became one of the first corporate law firms to launch its own iPhone application - MoFo2Go. The “app”, which is available as a free download, provides firm news and partner biographies (16 March 2010).