Would you choose a law firm on the basis of its choice of computer?

London-based Eversheds has signed a deal to provide its lawyers with Apple iPads, according to The Lawyer. The firm, which describes itself as "an international law firm for the 21st century," has reportedly launched a two-month pilot program with about 50 members of its senior staff, and if that program is successful, then all lawyers could get their own iPad. (No word on whether Iggy the iPad-loving cat had a hand--or paw--in Eversheds's decision.)

The Lawyer notes that Eversheds lawyers currently work with BlackBerry smartphones, but a spokesperson pointed out that there's "a lot you can't do on BlackBerry that you can do on an iPad." It seems unlikely that the firm would completely replace BlackBerrys with iPads, though, doesn't it? For one thing, would you really want to use an iPad as a phone, even if you can?

Meanwhile, a New York Times article discussing recently unsealed documents in a three-year-old lawsuit against Dell over allegedly faulty computers shows that even the law firm representing Dell in the lawsuit--Alston & Bird--had complaints about its computers, and may have gotten the runaround. (Hat tip to ABA Journal.) According to the Times, the documents demonstrate that Dell employees were aware that the company's computers were likely to break, but tried to play down the problem to customers and allowed them to rely on trouble-prone machines. Among the documents: e-mail messages that indicate "Dell balked at fixing 1,000 suspect computers" for Alston & Bird.

At least Alston can take comfort in knowing that it's not the only law firm that faced Dell's interesting customer support tactics. Dell employees went out of their way to conceal problems with faulty motherboards, according to the Times, noting an e-mail exchange among Dell customer support employees regarding computers at Simpson Thacher & Bartlett, with one Dell worker stating, "We need to avoid all language indicating the boards were bad or had 'issues' per our discussion this morning."

Since Alston & Bird is representing Dell, we assume those 1,000 computers have been fixed. But what happens when the trial is over?