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About that Crackberry…

Website Above the Law reported that a partner at law firm Quinn Emanuel Urquhart Oliver & Hedges chided a young associate by emailing the whole firm that associates should be checking their Blackberries once an hour unless they are sleeping or in a tunnel. Apparently the unfortunate new lawyer didn’t see an email from the partner just before he left the office asking him to stay to take care of a project.

When I started law practice way back in the 1980s, there was no Internet, no email, and the fax was this very new machine. I had a PC at home but it wasn’t hooked up to anything. Don’t get me started on how much of a pain it was just to get a distribution of drafts of documents out to a team of lawyers on a transaction which can now be done with one click of a mouse. When we left the office, we left. Of course the phone was there at home, but we all had answering machines, and I know a number of my colleagues would simply screen calls so that a call from the firm could be ignored while the associates claim to be out or unavailable.

Nowadays, getting deals done is more about brainpower than manpower, which helps make a boutique firm like mine much more competitive with the big boys. But with instantaneous communication of course comes cost. I recently turned off the vibration on my Blackberry that went off when each email came through. I check it often, but I will check it when I check it. Unfortunately young associates in law firms don’t have that luxury. Our 24/7 world gives us many conveniences, but that old idea of private time or small escapes is pretty much gone.