My firm-issued Dell laptop is so shitty that it becomes painfully hot to the touch within less than an hour of normal use. The only way I can use it is attaching it to an external monitor, flipping the laptop itself upside down (so the vents can function even a little bit), and cranking up the A/C. One time it turned on from standby when it was in my bag during my commute and it nearly burned my hand when I went to grab it.
To put it in perspective, remoting in with Citrix on my desktop (back when that was an option in my firm) was significantly faster than using this terrible laptop. Anyone that knows how bad Citrix is knows what that means for this laptop.
I know this is ridiculous but it works: buy a cheap large aluminum sheet pan on Amazon and turn it upside down and sit your laptop on that. Aluminum is a great heat conductor and will act like a giant heat sink. Or, wrap the laptop in aluminum foil so it combusts and you get a new one…
(This technique also works very well in reverse for defrosting things out of the freezer)
I think in general they work fine, but I wish web would get them switch out more often, doesn't have to be a newer modelo justo for them to reset them once in a while. With so much use and so many programs for everytype of protection, they end Up developing very anoying bugs.
Seriously — had mine for three years before it got switched, it had me throwing tantrums over how slow and bad it was toward the end. Seems the IT teams at all firms are loath to swap them out.
This is how my IT guy operates and he doesn’t understand why people, especially attorneys, don’t like him. Has nothing to do with a budget, he’s just a cheap fuck.
It's not the laptop -- look up the specs and the stuff they give us is actually pretty powerful and expensive. It's the software and bloatware we're loaded with, both for security and because everything is on the cloud so there's a constant lag.
Yea this should be far more upvoted. Our firm gives pretty nice Lenovos that are not cheap, but even brand new they lag because of all the security software.
Yeah these are $1500+ machines, plus usually upgraded RAM and other stuff. People here are comparing them to their personal macs that they don't ask more of than to stream Netflix while having 16 tabs open. It's apples and grapes. I actually know people at the firms that let you get a mac and they complain about tech just the same.
its hard to imagine that there is no laptop manufactured that can handle shitty law firm software though. and i will say at least my firm stupidly buys i5 dells that while just as expensive as i7 x1s, are dogshit.
I totally agree that if they actually cared about the problem they'd upgrade until it wasn't a problem anymore. That would probably mean getting $3000 laptops instead of $1500, and they're cheap. And, why stop at i7? There's a Lenovo Thinkpad that runs on i9, 128 Gig ram. It's $10k. https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/p/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpadp/thinkpad-p16-gen-2-(16-inch-intel)/21fa002bus
Of course, if they cared about the problem they wouldn't load us with bloatware to begin with, and they'd work with imanage etc to be less glitchy.
I'm not saying we can't complain about tech issues or that the laptops we're assigned aren't up to the task. But it's just not factual that they aren't good laptops. They're better than what you use for personal.
We just refreshed all of our tech. Per our IT guys, people were complaining about the weight of the X1. P series is sweet, but nobody is lugging that brick into the office.
Crazy how many people are still in the 1998 mentality of blaming slow performance on the hardware. I think phone/laptop marketers deserve a lot of credit for it
I mean, my gut reaction when my work laptop sucked was that it must be the laptop. I never had a thinkpad before, all I knew was it was slow and didn't look sexy. Meanwhile my personal laptop that I'd done research on is way better. Then I once googled the specs and price of the thinkpad and realized it didn't add up.
Was just given a new X1 on Thursday because my old thinkpad essentially stopped working. Don't worry, IT is too busy getting the summers' laptops set up to fully set up mine. So now I have 2 half working thinkpads until further notice.
HP and it’s awful. Loaded with so much bloatware and malware programs that doing anything takes twice as long as it should. They “upgraded” laptops a year ago and somehow the newer models were slower and with worse battery life.
This is almost certainly a result of the apps we use and not the laptop. I have a Dell with an i7 it should run anything I throw at it. But with all the it controls, imanage integration, and remote shit running in the background it still gets hot and chuggy when I try to do anything in it.
Is it too conspiratorial to think that firms are deliberately issuing shitty hardware (or at least not bothering to get decent tech setups in place) because any time spent waiting for a Word doc to load, browser to open, etc. means more billables?
I don't think it's a conspiracy it's more like a partner complains that they want a certain functionality, so IT pushes an addon to everyone, and now Word takes another 20 seconds to load.
I doubt it. I think they just pick whatever will be easiest to service for them for the next 3 years or so. Which doesn't always correlate to what's best for the people using the laptops
M2 MacBook Pro. That said most of the firm uses Dell laptops. My dept uses pretty heavy resource machines.
I moved to Mac because I do data intensive work and the security software has resource issues issues in windows that was not an issue in Mac OS.
If I run into tech problems I’m kind of on my own, but I run Linux at home so honestly Mac is easier
Do you use Citrix? How do you use iManage, Litera, etc on your MacBook? I also have an M2 MacBook Pro for personal use and I’ve tried using Citrix on it, but there’s a slight input lag that just drives me insane, so I can’t imagine doing intensive work on it
MS office is native on it. Outlook is native on it. A ton of my work is browser based. If I’m doing data analysis and it’s not in a web based platform then I’m in excel or a powerBI or custom wrapper. Or I’m using Remote Desktop Connect and remoting in to a Windows based VM connected to my firm’s intranet.
As far as InTapp - yes I do need to use Citrix, and it’s annoying to have a minor lag for time entry. Makes my brain itch.
Legal tech. Used to be ediscovery, but that doesn’t really cover it anymore as I work KM, legal ops, innovation, light dev work, etc.
Lots of data analysis, work in excel, powerBI, ADB, home grown tools, etc.
One that barely works and adds at least 15 minutes to every hour spent working. Between ridiculous security protocols that fold like a cheap suit when a user clicks a link and Litera, it’s like the computer system actively wants me to fail.
In house- thinkpad. At last company was given the dell version of a surface to pilot and it was terrible- not lappable for nighttime couch work or airport work.
It didn’t balance unless you had your feet/knees flat and didn’t move. I also couldn’t balance it on the arm of a chair/couch - needed to use a lap desk if I wanted to work on the couch. If I traveled more it would have made a great secondary device but I already have an iPad Pro with keyboard case and pencil which I use for note taking.
POS lenovo :).
Other firm I worked at said they were 1 year out from macs. But working for that firm was not worth the luxury of being able to use a mac. Besides, I can use my own mac using a remote desktop
The amount of time I wasted dealing with IT issues in biglaw was absurd - I am still angry about it lol. I left biglaw and joined a patent lit boutique started by people who had one of their goals be to not have shitty computers for attorneys (more like computer loaded with crap that make them shitty as others have said - that is more the problem). We use MacBook Pros and operate in the Apple environment only, so no virtual desktops, Citrix, or other nonsense like that. I actually got to give input on the size of the screen, battery, and processor etc I wanted. It was very expensive, but we keep our computers on long cycles because they actually work well. We also don't do things like integrate our email with our doc management platform etc. and install nonsense on them. My battery will last a good 8 hours and I rarely hear the fan run. We don't need an IT person and as a result we don't have IT making decisions that makes their lives easier rather than ours, we just have a contractor we can reach out to if we have problems but I think I've reached out once? There also seems to be this myth that you have to use Windows to practice law or something; maybe that was true a long time ago, but not now.
One thing you’ll learn working at large law firms is that these kinds of decisions are almost always made by the IT department, and are based on the core principle of “what is most convenient for the IT department.” After all, your purpose at the firm is to make their jobs as simple and efficient as possible.
I used a Mac for work before law school (tech job) and honestly by the time they load it up with a full suite of ms software and it has a couple of years of wear it's as bad as some work-issued windows laptops. The problem is tech support giving out old equipment and inefficient enterprise software. At my current firm I complained enough times that my laptop was hot and slow and randomly dying and the brand new Thinkpad they gave me is great 90% of the time (10% is when I'm using shitty time entry software or too many big pdfs and excels open).
X1 Carbon, which is a pretty great machine all things considered. The problem is all firm-mandated bloatware that slows the thing down.
My computer is a month old and using Outlook is a fight every day. Drives me insane.
Shitty ass Dells with a trackpad so sensitive, I once deleted an entire portion of an executed contract by accident. Deal went through without issue, but it was stressful. Firms cutting corners on the most basic stuff. Just give me a Mac and I’ll be happy.
We had the same shitty 15 inch dell laptop that they gave the junior associates too! It was so bloody heavy and would not operate without being plugged to a charger 24/7. Requested for a change multiple times but was ignored. Final straw was when I was in a call with my senior partner and my laptop just shut down. Partner immediately sent out an email to IT guy and I got a thinkpad the next day!
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Dell XPS 13, and it overheated and underperformed until I put a fan under it. Was still underperforming, so I eventually got a Latitude. Worked better but it didn’t handle all the firm’s software very well.
Thinkpad - finally just got mine upgraded to a new version with a touch screen, it’s pretty nice. The adjustment from Mac, my personal laptop, was a big pain at first but I kind of like the Thinkpads now.
My firm-issued Dell laptop is so shitty that it becomes painfully hot to the touch within less than an hour of normal use. The only way I can use it is attaching it to an external monitor, flipping the laptop itself upside down (so the vents can function even a little bit), and cranking up the A/C. One time it turned on from standby when it was in my bag during my commute and it nearly burned my hand when I went to grab it. To put it in perspective, remoting in with Citrix on my desktop (back when that was an option in my firm) was significantly faster than using this terrible laptop. Anyone that knows how bad Citrix is knows what that means for this laptop.
Leave it on in your bag over nights and weekends until it fries itself and they have no choice but to give you a new one.
Simpson lol?
I know this is ridiculous but it works: buy a cheap large aluminum sheet pan on Amazon and turn it upside down and sit your laptop on that. Aluminum is a great heat conductor and will act like a giant heat sink. Or, wrap the laptop in aluminum foil so it combusts and you get a new one… (This technique also works very well in reverse for defrosting things out of the freezer)
Lenovo ThinkPad
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I think in general they work fine, but I wish web would get them switch out more often, doesn't have to be a newer modelo justo for them to reset them once in a while. With so much use and so many programs for everytype of protection, they end Up developing very anoying bugs.
Seriously — had mine for three years before it got switched, it had me throwing tantrums over how slow and bad it was toward the end. Seems the IT teams at all firms are loath to swap them out.
whatever slowest and hottest laptop they can find in their storage
This is how my IT guy operates and he doesn’t understand why people, especially attorneys, don’t like him. Has nothing to do with a budget, he’s just a cheap fuck.
Lol Paul comma Weiss eh?
The fact that they don't have Closing Folders is baffling.
Lenovo with an i7 processor which is very nice
It's not the laptop -- look up the specs and the stuff they give us is actually pretty powerful and expensive. It's the software and bloatware we're loaded with, both for security and because everything is on the cloud so there's a constant lag.
Yea this should be far more upvoted. Our firm gives pretty nice Lenovos that are not cheap, but even brand new they lag because of all the security software.
Yeah these are $1500+ machines, plus usually upgraded RAM and other stuff. People here are comparing them to their personal macs that they don't ask more of than to stream Netflix while having 16 tabs open. It's apples and grapes. I actually know people at the firms that let you get a mac and they complain about tech just the same.
its hard to imagine that there is no laptop manufactured that can handle shitty law firm software though. and i will say at least my firm stupidly buys i5 dells that while just as expensive as i7 x1s, are dogshit.
I totally agree that if they actually cared about the problem they'd upgrade until it wasn't a problem anymore. That would probably mean getting $3000 laptops instead of $1500, and they're cheap. And, why stop at i7? There's a Lenovo Thinkpad that runs on i9, 128 Gig ram. It's $10k. https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/p/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpadp/thinkpad-p16-gen-2-(16-inch-intel)/21fa002bus Of course, if they cared about the problem they wouldn't load us with bloatware to begin with, and they'd work with imanage etc to be less glitchy. I'm not saying we can't complain about tech issues or that the laptops we're assigned aren't up to the task. But it's just not factual that they aren't good laptops. They're better than what you use for personal.
yup we're on the same page
We just refreshed all of our tech. Per our IT guys, people were complaining about the weight of the X1. P series is sweet, but nobody is lugging that brick into the office.
Crazy how many people are still in the 1998 mentality of blaming slow performance on the hardware. I think phone/laptop marketers deserve a lot of credit for it
I mean, my gut reaction when my work laptop sucked was that it must be the laptop. I never had a thinkpad before, all I knew was it was slow and didn't look sexy. Meanwhile my personal laptop that I'd done research on is way better. Then I once googled the specs and price of the thinkpad and realized it didn't add up.
That’s why trump’s lawyer was rocking a gaming laptop.
Dude! You're getting a Dell!
My current firm uses the ThinkPad X1, which is pretty mediocre but also a massive upgrade from the POS Dell my old firm used
Was just given a new X1 on Thursday because my old thinkpad essentially stopped working. Don't worry, IT is too busy getting the summers' laptops set up to fully set up mine. So now I have 2 half working thinkpads until further notice.
Microsoft Surface Laptop
Same and I actually really like the Surface (especially compared to think pads or bulky HPs!)
Surfaces are great. Idk why everyone doesn't use them.
So jealous....
I worked at two firms who transitioned from Lenovo ThinkPads to Microsoft Surface Laptops and it is noticeably better IMO.
I hate that they don’t work well with a normal usb c charger.
HP and it’s awful. Loaded with so much bloatware and malware programs that doing anything takes twice as long as it should. They “upgraded” laptops a year ago and somehow the newer models were slower and with worse battery life.
We might be working at the same firm...
Lenovo Thinkpad. I’m on my THIRD one. I started six months ago. Stupid things keep going haywire on me and crashing.
A shitty Dell, but the firm issues Macs if you request one/stay in ITs ass.
MacBook Pro
Seriously? I had no idea there were big law firms not using Windows!
Ours gives an option but everybody with a Mac has to use a virtual windows desktop or whatever. Very annoying.
Same, and while I like MacBooks for personal use, I’d rather use literally any windows laptop before using Citrix on a Mac. Fuck Citrix
Yeah, it’s an option. But MacBook Pro is absolutely on the table and can be used with solely native applications.
This is almost certainly a result of the apps we use and not the laptop. I have a Dell with an i7 it should run anything I throw at it. But with all the it controls, imanage integration, and remote shit running in the background it still gets hot and chuggy when I try to do anything in it.
Is it too conspiratorial to think that firms are deliberately issuing shitty hardware (or at least not bothering to get decent tech setups in place) because any time spent waiting for a Word doc to load, browser to open, etc. means more billables?
It’s not even the hardware. It’s the dozens of bloatware “security” programs and office add-ons.
I don't think it's a conspiracy it's more like a partner complains that they want a certain functionality, so IT pushes an addon to everyone, and now Word takes another 20 seconds to load.
I doubt it. I think they just pick whatever will be easiest to service for them for the next 3 years or so. Which doesn't always correlate to what's best for the people using the laptops
M2 MacBook Pro. That said most of the firm uses Dell laptops. My dept uses pretty heavy resource machines. I moved to Mac because I do data intensive work and the security software has resource issues issues in windows that was not an issue in Mac OS. If I run into tech problems I’m kind of on my own, but I run Linux at home so honestly Mac is easier
Do you use Citrix? How do you use iManage, Litera, etc on your MacBook? I also have an M2 MacBook Pro for personal use and I’ve tried using Citrix on it, but there’s a slight input lag that just drives me insane, so I can’t imagine doing intensive work on it
MS office is native on it. Outlook is native on it. A ton of my work is browser based. If I’m doing data analysis and it’s not in a web based platform then I’m in excel or a powerBI or custom wrapper. Or I’m using Remote Desktop Connect and remoting in to a Windows based VM connected to my firm’s intranet. As far as InTapp - yes I do need to use Citrix, and it’s annoying to have a minor lag for time entry. Makes my brain itch.
Just curious based on that response, what’s your general area of practice?
Legal tech. Used to be ediscovery, but that doesn’t really cover it anymore as I work KM, legal ops, innovation, light dev work, etc. Lots of data analysis, work in excel, powerBI, ADB, home grown tools, etc.
One that barely works and adds at least 15 minutes to every hour spent working. Between ridiculous security protocols that fold like a cheap suit when a user clicks a link and Litera, it’s like the computer system actively wants me to fail.
The problem is not so much the laptop but the amount of shitty bloatware firms install on it…
In house- thinkpad. At last company was given the dell version of a surface to pilot and it was terrible- not lappable for nighttime couch work or airport work.
Why not lappable?
It didn’t balance unless you had your feet/knees flat and didn’t move. I also couldn’t balance it on the arm of a chair/couch - needed to use a lap desk if I wanted to work on the couch. If I traveled more it would have made a great secondary device but I already have an iPad Pro with keyboard case and pencil which I use for note taking.
To those in here saying Macs… you hiring?
latest macbook pro 17 inch
U guys are getting laptops? I got a touchpad
Lenovo Thinkpad. Battery lasts about 75 minutes
Lenovo thinkpad - slow enough to where the firm's billables go up by 50%, but still fast enough to not miss deadlines.
POS lenovo :). Other firm I worked at said they were 1 year out from macs. But working for that firm was not worth the luxury of being able to use a mac. Besides, I can use my own mac using a remote desktop
HP and it’s a beast
MacBook
MacBooks
Used Thinkpads before, but switched to Microsoft Surface Pro. Life is good
The amount of time I wasted dealing with IT issues in biglaw was absurd - I am still angry about it lol. I left biglaw and joined a patent lit boutique started by people who had one of their goals be to not have shitty computers for attorneys (more like computer loaded with crap that make them shitty as others have said - that is more the problem). We use MacBook Pros and operate in the Apple environment only, so no virtual desktops, Citrix, or other nonsense like that. I actually got to give input on the size of the screen, battery, and processor etc I wanted. It was very expensive, but we keep our computers on long cycles because they actually work well. We also don't do things like integrate our email with our doc management platform etc. and install nonsense on them. My battery will last a good 8 hours and I rarely hear the fan run. We don't need an IT person and as a result we don't have IT making decisions that makes their lives easier rather than ours, we just have a contractor we can reach out to if we have problems but I think I've reached out once? There also seems to be this myth that you have to use Windows to practice law or something; maybe that was true a long time ago, but not now.
One thing you’ll learn working at large law firms is that these kinds of decisions are almost always made by the IT department, and are based on the core principle of “what is most convenient for the IT department.” After all, your purpose at the firm is to make their jobs as simple and efficient as possible.
I used a Mac for work before law school (tech job) and honestly by the time they load it up with a full suite of ms software and it has a couple of years of wear it's as bad as some work-issued windows laptops. The problem is tech support giving out old equipment and inefficient enterprise software. At my current firm I complained enough times that my laptop was hot and slow and randomly dying and the brand new Thinkpad they gave me is great 90% of the time (10% is when I'm using shitty time entry software or too many big pdfs and excels open).
Lenovo X1 Carbon, they're pretty decent but I HATE how they spec'd them.
ThinkPad X1 Carbon
Laptop doesn't matter as long you aren't using citrix. I've heard that many NYC firms are still using citrix in 2024. Pathetic.
Thinkpad. It’s fine but I need more RAM
My dell could genuinely fry an egg on its back when running outlook alone
X1 Carbon, which is a pretty great machine all things considered. The problem is all firm-mandated bloatware that slows the thing down. My computer is a month old and using Outlook is a fight every day. Drives me insane.
Lenovo thinkpad carbon x1 touchscreen (not sure if they all touchscreen or not)
Shitty ass Dells with a trackpad so sensitive, I once deleted an entire portion of an executed contract by accident. Deal went through without issue, but it was stressful. Firms cutting corners on the most basic stuff. Just give me a Mac and I’ll be happy.
Wait, you don’t take your laptop home with you everyday?
You can pick between MacBook Pro or Lenovo Yoga (the one that folds entirely back flat) or some other Lenovo option.
A shitty Dell. The poor thing’s cooling fan screams for its life if try to open more than 3 Word documents at a time.
We had the same shitty 15 inch dell laptop that they gave the junior associates too! It was so bloody heavy and would not operate without being plugged to a charger 24/7. Requested for a change multiple times but was ignored. Final straw was when I was in a call with my senior partner and my laptop just shut down. Partner immediately sent out an email to IT guy and I got a thinkpad the next day!
We currently have HP Elitebooks 840 that are getting close to EoL and we will soon get Dell Latitudes
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I use my own tech and the firm told me to not raise a reimbursement.. Lmao
Lenovo. Anything else (unless your client is Dell or Sony or Apple or whatnot) is just bad decision making.
Dell XPS 13, and it overheated and underperformed until I put a fan under it. Was still underperforming, so I eventually got a Latitude. Worked better but it didn’t handle all the firm’s software very well.
Thinkpad - finally just got mine upgraded to a new version with a touch screen, it’s pretty nice. The adjustment from Mac, my personal laptop, was a big pain at first but I kind of like the Thinkpads now.
Top tier Lenovo Thinkpad.