Mac Law Students

If you’re at all fascinated by Axiotron’s ModBook, check out this review by Jacqui Cheng. Perhaps the most important section of the review for law students is this:

During my time reviewing the ModBook, it was brought to my attention that students (particularly those in sciences and engineering) would particularly love to take notes on the machine because of various graphs and drawings they might record. This may be true. However, when I was in college, things in class moved pretty quickly—I had a hard enough time keeping up with pencil and paper. The ModBook slows things down because you have to use the stylus to scroll, create new pages, etc. I would hesitate to use this for note-taking (even of the drawing kind), but your mileage may vary.

The overall assessment is that the ModBook is great for graphic artists, and potentially useful for note-taking, but only if you prefer taking notes by hand and are willing to deal with its limitations as a “normal” laptop.

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It is an odd feeling to be finished with all of my law school coursework. Today I turned in a paper and two take home exams. Assuming I didn’t blow it completely on any of them, I’m all done.

I was giddy with excitement as I ran through each of the exams one last time to be sure I hadn’t misspelled anything or written a grammatically impossible sentence. I was still giddy as I walked into the faculty support office and delivered the paper and those two exams. But as I left the office the old familiar gnawing doubts crept into my brain. What if my pathetic, feeble shareholder’s agreement for my startups class is so much worse than everyone else’s that I don’t even get a passing grade? What if I missed something vital in the paper I just turned in, despite hours and hours of research and distillation and wordsmithing?

To a large extent law school is about becoming comfortable with ambiguous outcomes. I suppose for some students getting an A in a class is like a math equation: If I put x number of hours into this class over x period of time, I will get an A. It was never like that for me. I’ve been taken by surprise negatively and positively with exams. I worked incredibly hard on my first law school paper and was convinced that it was not up to par. I got the top grade in the class. The following semester I walked out of my evidence class feeling like it wasn’t all that bad after all. It was.

I’m not sure when I’ll shake the nagging doubts, and simply acknowledge that it is really over. Perhaps in many weeks, when my diploma arrives in the mail, that written instrument with my name on it will erase those doubts and allow me to finally savor the ending to this lengthy, winding story.

To those of you who are graduating, congratulations! To those of you who are about to wind up finals or already have, enjoy the summer!

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Dennis Bishop, the Director of Information & Technology at the University of Oregon School of Law, sent me this comparison of Mac and PC use at his school. The numbers speak for themselves. Dennis notes, “We consider ourselves a testament to other law school IT departments that allowing Macs can actually make your life easier.”

He also informed me that his IT shop is an Apple authorized repair center; they do all warranty work in-house. According to Dennis, “Students love getting their Macs fixed without sending them to Apple.”

Total as of Fall 2007/2008

• 209 Macs
• 136 Dell
• 77 Non-Package (not one of the school’s recommended choices)
• 65 Unknown

Fall 2007/2008 Incoming Students

• 102 MacBook/MacBook Pro
  • 24 MacBook (Black)
  • 56 MacBook (White)
  • 22 MacBook Pro
• 25 Dell Latitude D630
• 24 Non-Package Laptops (HP, Toshiba, Inspirons, others)

Most of the remaining 26 students are waiting for their Dells (supply chain problems) but two of these students who decided they would rather have Macs.

2Ls

• 66 MacBook/MacBook Pro
• 42 Dell
• 42 Non-Package
• 12 Unknown

3Ls

• 41 MacBook/PowerBook/iBook
• 69 Dell
• 11 Non-Package
• 53 Unknown

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Apple Stores are the best place to go for support, with phone support not getting such high marks, but in general Apple is handily beating the competition in computer suppport:

Apple’s tech support team helped their customers solve problems with their computers more than 80% of the time. Industry-wide, help-desk teams from all companies solved their customers’ problems around 60% of the time.

Get the full scoop at Network World.

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I’ve got a take-home final, a contract to write, and a privacy law paper to finish. So I decided to write a blog post! This one isn’t about Macs in law school. It’s about how Apple’s successes over the last few years have as much to do (if not more) with distribution channels than with great product design.

If you’re interested in such things (JD/MBA folks?), take a look: Apple’s Success = Design + Distribution.

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