In an interesting article over at InfoWorld, Tom Kanishige documents the massive rollout by New York firm Proskauer Rose of iPad 2s to its attorneys. Whoa. iPad 2s for attorneys on a firm-wide scale? It might be the largest enterprise roll-out of iPads to lawyers to date. Wait. What about the cloud? What about the apps? What about the lack of a keyboard?

Apparently, Proskauer, in a very forward thinking move, decided to give its lawyers the choice between either a laptop computer or an iPad 2 / desktop combination and 500 out of 700 took the latter option. As one could imagine, the decision to offer the option and attendant IT support for the rollout was no simple process. IT management had to determine the “rules of engagement” for iPad use, ultimately deciding to permit personal use of the device along with business use (who could resist showing off their shiny new tablet to family and friends?) and prohibiting use of cloud apps like DropBox (these are sensitive legal documents, after all). A lengthy internal user manual was produced and MobileIron was tasked with managing and securing the iPads remotely. Proskauer agreed to permit lawyers to expense two of my personal favorite iOS apps Goodreader and DocsToGo Premium, the latter for its ability to show tracked changes. The remaining applications will cost the lawyers themselves (nice money save for the firm there) but Proskauer has compiled a list of “recommended” business applications.

Sounds pretty cool, right? I would LOVE my company to present me with an iPad 2 (it could keep my original iPad company). But Proskauer really can’t simply sit on its laurels on this one – with all the documented changes to the iOS platform coming in the near future (and undocumented ones that are certain to follow in the not so near future), Proskauer’s IT people will have to be quite nimble. Take iCloud for example – with the prohibition against using cloud services, what will happen when iCloud becomes baked into the entire iPad OS?

I am sure they are on it. In the meantime, welcome to the Shiny, Proskauer!