BlackBerrys set legal beagles free

Law firm MacRoberts has never looked back after dishing out BlackBerrys to its staff - because of the improved productivity and client retention they've seen since encouraging mobile working with the devices.

The firm has clients located across the globe and with only two offices - one in Glasgow, the other in Edinburgh - many of the staff spend a significant proportion of their time travelling.

To make sure its employees could keep in constant contact with the offices and their clients, MacRoberts handed out BlackBerrys and 3G datacards to its mobile workers.

David Murphy, director of IT at MacRoberts, said they decided to opt for BlackBerrys as access to email was one of the most important facilities for staff away from the office.

The firm trialled Orange's SPV PDA but getting to emails took too long compared to the intuitive push technology BlackBerrys offered.

Mobile-working appears to be helping MacRoberts' business. Murphy said: "You could probably say [mobile-working helps with] retaining clients rather than gaining clients but productivity has definitely been improved."

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Murphy added the BlackBerrys initially gave MacRoberts an advantage over the competition but recently other firms have caught up and clients now see mobile-working as a standard expectation of legal teams, instead of a benefit.

MacRoberts plans to stay ahead of the game and continue to encourage mobile-working by handing out more datacards to those employees who are regularly on the road and giving their BlackBerrys access to more of MacRoberts' business applications.

MacRoberts selected T-Mobile as their mobile operator for the BlackBerry, as the firm was already a customer for voice services and the operator had provided excellent customer service, according to Murphy. This meant getting the operator to provide additional services was a logical next step, he said.

MacRoberts first gave 10 staff BlackBerry handsets as part of a 30-day trial. Murphy said the trial was very successful, adding: "There was no chance of us getting the BlackBerrys back at the end of the 30 days."

The mobile initiative ramped up quickly with 60 BlackBerrys currently used by MacRoberts' 260-strong workforce.