Thanksgiving is over and Black Friday is upon us, so it is time to starting thinking about the prefect present for the lawyer in your life –perhaps even yourself. Attorney Reid Trautz runs the Reid My Blog! website and recently unveiled the 2008 edition of his annual Holiday Gift Guide for Lawyers. There are lots of fun ideas in here if you are looking to go beyond the standard gifts like a tie, but what caught my attention is that, for the second year in a row, the iPhone makes the list. He explains:
Faithful readers will recognize the iPhone is a
repeat in The Guide this year. Thanks to my dear wife who read the 2007 Guide,
I received my iPhone for Christmas and have never looked back. This terrific
tech tool may seem like a toy because it is so fun to use, but it is built for
serious business. With Outlook Exchange integration and a growing plethora of
useful web applications, this is the smartphone to have, hands down!
[UPDATE 12/15/08: The website Patent Baristas also has a list of “Best Gifts for Patent Attorneys” with the iPhone at the top of its list.]
I can’t agree more. The original version of the iPhone would not have made my 2007 list for any lawyer in a Microsoft Exchange environment, but the 2.0 software and 3G version of the iPhone released earlier this year make the iPhone an easy pick for the lawyer in your life, especially if he or she likes gadgets.
Until recently, it was hard to give an iPhone 3G as a gift. You can’t buy an actual iPhone without setting up service, transferring the phone number from the prior phone, etc. which eliminates the element of surprise. But Apple just fixed that problem by releasing the new iPhone 3G Gift Card. You can buy it either online or in a retail Apple Store, and the amount can be for anything from $25 to $2,500. Umm, $2,500? Well you see, it is just a normal gift card that can be used for anything at the Apple Store, but when you put $200 or $300 on it, your lucky recipient can afford an 8GB or 16GB phone. (I have the 16GB model myself, but unless you have a ton of music and video that you want to keep on the iPhone, the 8GB is perfect for most lawyers’ needs — unless you really want the white model, which only comes in 16GB.)
And if the lawyer in your life already has an iPhone? Give them an iTunes gift card to let them fill it up with apps, music and videos.
Happy Holidays!
I heartily concur with your suggestion of the iPhone as a gift.
Do you need my address, or can you just send it to the office? 😉
Thanks for the good tips. May we humbly suggest populating the iPhone with tunes from LawTunes’ (www.LawTunes.com) lawyer-created law-related legal humor rock-and-roll CDs, “Merry Lexmas From The Lawtunes,” “The Lawyer’s Holiday Humor Album,” “Legal Holidaze,” and the latest, “The Lawtunes: Live At Blackacre”? Songs (available on iTunes and on CD at http://www.LawTunes.com) include “It’s Gonna Be A Billable Christmas,” “Rainmaker Reindeer,” “Hey, Santa, I Appeal,” “North Pole Bar Exam,” “I Got A Footnote In My Stocking,” “We’re All Just Elves,” “Ridin’ On A Red-Eye With Santa On Christmas Eve,” and many more, taking on the law, lawyers, and legal practice in a hilarious, but positive, way. LawTunes’ albums are dedicated to the proposition that lawyers’ zealous representation of clients and furtherance of the public good can be only enhanced by a healthy willingness of lawyers to poke fun at themselves appropriately on occasion. They contribute to the effort to make people think a little differently about lawyers, and show that attorneys are not necessarily humorless, boring, or incapable of self-deprecation. Thanks again and Happy (Legal) Holidays.