5 Practical Gifts for a Tech-Savvy Lawyer's Office
If Thanksgiving is coming, you'd better believe that "Black Friday" deals are too. Hopefully you won't actually be out shopping on Black Friday -- or on Thanksgiving, for crying out loud. In any case, you don't need to wait until Black Friday before finding deals for the tech-savvy lawyer in your life -- "Black Friday" is basically a month-long thing now.
So what do you get for Attorney 2.0? Gadgets, of course. In the first part of an ongoing series about tech stuff, here are some of our favorite tech gifts for the lawyer's office (all prices are current as of publication):
1. Headphones.
If you work in a cubicle environment like we do at FindLaw, you can't turn Taylor Swift up to maximum (as much as my fellow blogger William Peacock would like to). Instead, get the lawyer in your life a pair of over-the-ear headphones like this sweet studio set for only $68.
2. A Wireless, Multifunction Printer.
The lawyer's home office needs a laser printer for cheap, high-volume printing and copying (and maybe faxing, but all you need these days is one of those email-fax services). A lawyer also needs a scanner, but not one of those flatbed deals; a sheet-fed scanner is ideal for scanning a pile of documents with the push of a button. Like the Showtime Rotisserie Barbecue, you just set it and forget it.
We like this Brother wireless multifunction printer. It prints! It scans! It copies! And for $130? You can't beat that with a stick.
3. A Backup Drive.
Yeah, yeah. It's terribly prosaic -- like getting someone vegetables for their birthday -- but seriously, backups are one of those things that you have to make happen. If you know a lawyer who isn't using Dropbox or any of the other cloud storage services (and if not, why not?), then make backups easy for him with a 1 or 2 TB hard drive. Yes, that's terabytes -- because they're unbearably cheap now, currently $99 for a 2 TB drive.
4. A Big Monitor.
If your lawyer friend sits in her home office -- or at the dining room table -- all day squinting at a laptop screen, then it's time to get a big monitor. Newegg has many deals on monitors, including this 24" Dell LED monitor for $170, which is $70 less than what it normally costs. Once you've got a big monitor, your whole world changes.
5. A Wireless Router.
Your wireless multifunction printer isn't much good without a wireless router, is it? And if it's been a couple years since your lawyer friend got a wireless router, then it might be time for an upgrade. All your devices made in the last few years support 802.11n, which transmits at up to 450 megabits per second (that's 50 megabytes per second).
Any more "most-haves" for the tech-savvy lawyer(s) in your life? Send your suggestions to Twitter (@FindLawLP) or Facebook (FindLaw for Legal Professionals).
Related Resources:
- Every Black Friday Tech Deal We've Found (CNET)
- Spread the Holiday Cheer with Awesome Gifts for Your Coworkers (FindLaw's Greedy Associates)
- Three Pragmatic Gadgets for Law Grads (FindLaw's Technologist)