Using Personal Phone as Work Phone Forum

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futureSA

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Using Personal Phone as Work Phone

Post by futureSA » Wed Jan 23, 2019 6:44 pm

Hi everyone.

I'll be starting as a Summer Associate this summer and I recently decided to use my personal phone as the work phone as well. My understanding is that the firm will install various software onto the phone, which will obviously decrease my privacy level. Will I still be able to watch porn on my phone, or will I have to buy a tablet or whatnot? I obviously don't want the firm to be able to view personal entertainment choices.

If anyone has experience with this it would be much appreciated.

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LaLiLuLeLo

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Re: Using Personal Phone as Work Phone

Post by LaLiLuLeLo » Wed Jan 23, 2019 6:58 pm

I watch porn all the time on my phone. I was told by our IT people that they can’t actually see browser history or anything outside the work apps. But even if they did, I don’t care. They can judge my taste in porn.

pi.radians

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Re: Using Personal Phone as Work Phone

Post by pi.radians » Wed Jan 23, 2019 7:11 pm

Samsung phones allow you to install all work related apps in a Secure Folder. It's basically a phone within a phone, and IT will only have remote access to that. You can set it up to look like an app folder or like an entirely unique launcher, and you can set your work email to not display notifications on your regular launcher.

2013

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Re: Using Personal Phone as Work Phone

Post by 2013 » Wed Jan 23, 2019 9:30 pm

Unless it’s during work hours and at your desk, I don’t think anyone cares if you’re watching porn.

QContinuum

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Re: Using Personal Phone as Work Phone

Post by QContinuum » Wed Jan 23, 2019 11:59 pm

My advice is to just go for a second phone. Yes, it's clunky to have two phones, and it takes a bit of getting used to, but a dedicated, specially configured work phone works much more smoothly (at least IME) than using work apps installed on your personal phone. It also psychologically feels nice to have that extra bit of separation between your work and personal life.

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dabigchina

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Re: Using Personal Phone as Work Phone

Post by dabigchina » Thu Jan 24, 2019 12:16 am

QContinuum wrote:My advice is to just go for a second phone. Yes, it's clunky to have two phones, and it takes a bit of getting used to, but a dedicated, specially configured work phone works much more smoothly (at least IME) than using work apps installed on your personal phone. It also psychologically feels nice to have that extra bit of separation between your work and personal life.
As a summer, this is probably less necessary, but I totally agree for full time. I hate it when my phone goes off only for it to be a personal text message.

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Re: Using Personal Phone as Work Phone

Post by Anonymous User » Thu Jan 24, 2019 11:43 am

dabigchina wrote:
QContinuum wrote:My advice is to just go for a second phone. Yes, it's clunky to have two phones, and it takes a bit of getting used to, but a dedicated, specially configured work phone works much more smoothly (at least IME) than using work apps installed on your personal phone. It also psychologically feels nice to have that extra bit of separation between your work and personal life.
As a summer, this is probably less necessary, but I totally agree for full time. I hate it when my phone goes off only for it to be a personal text message.
Some firms don't offer a work phone option (my first firm did but my current firm doesn't).

OP, I wouldn't worry about it too much. I guess it depends on what software your firm uses, but I doubt they are going to install something that takes over your phone or monitors it to that level. My guess is it will be Blackberry Work or some similar secure email app, plus a token generator for logging your laptop onto the firm's network remotely. Neither of those would let them see what you are doing outside of the apps.

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Re: Using Personal Phone as Work Phone

Post by Npret » Thu Jan 24, 2019 11:58 am

futureSA wrote:Hi everyone.

I'll be starting as a Summer Associate this summer and I recently decided to use my personal phone as the work phone as well. My understanding is that the firm will install various software onto the phone, which will obviously decrease my privacy level. Will I still be able to watch porn on my phone, or will I have to buy a tablet or whatnot? I obviously don't want the firm to be able to view personal entertainment choices.

If anyone has experience with this it would be much appreciated.
This is your biggest concern? Just buy a cheap tablet. It’s very difficult to take this question seriously.

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LaLiLuLeLo

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Re: Using Personal Phone as Work Phone

Post by LaLiLuLeLo » Thu Jan 24, 2019 1:08 pm

Also you two phone people are nuts. It’s such a pain in the ass to carry around two phones all the time. I tried for a bit and lost my mind. If you’re worried about not knowing if an alert is personal or work just change the alert settings. I have my vibrates different for a work email vs. everything else (which has developed into a terrible Pavlovian response when I feel or hear that vibrate)

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boredtodeath

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Re: Using Personal Phone as Work Phone

Post by boredtodeath » Thu Jan 24, 2019 4:20 pm

LaLiLuLeLo wrote:Also you two phone people are nuts. It’s such a pain in the ass to carry around two phones all the time. I tried for a bit and lost my mind. If you’re worried about not knowing if an alert is personal or work just change the alert settings. I have my vibrates different for a work email vs. everything else (which has developed into a terrible Pavlovian response when I feel or hear that vibrate)
This. Carrying around two phones is insanity, especially for guys.

And no, the firm does not have access to anything you do on your phone outside of the work apps. Lawyers are so fuckin' paranoid.

shock259

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Re: Using Personal Phone as Work Phone

Post by shock259 » Fri Jan 25, 2019 1:40 am

boredtodeath wrote:
This. Carrying around two phones is insanity, especially for guys.

And no, the firm does not have access to anything you do on your phone outside of the work apps. Lawyers are so fuckin' paranoid.
Seconding this. Also, even if they did monitor other activity, are they really going to fire me for looking at porn in my spare time on my own personal phone? If so, they'd have to fire at least 3/4 of the associates that use their personal phone for work emails.

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Re: Using Personal Phone as Work Phone

Post by legalpotato » Fri Jan 25, 2019 11:51 am

shock259 wrote:
boredtodeath wrote:
This. Carrying around two phones is insanity, especially for guys.

And no, the firm does not have access to anything you do on your phone outside of the work apps. Lawyers are so fuckin' paranoid.
Seconding this. Also, even if they did monitor other activity, are they really going to fire me for looking at porn in my spare time on my own personal phone? If so, they'd have to fire at least 3/4 of the associates that use their personal phone for work emails.
I always lol at first years who go with 2 phones cause they read some deranged advice on TLS - by year 2 that 2nd phone is always gone!

se7en

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Re: Using Personal Phone as Work Phone

Post by se7en » Fri Jan 25, 2019 12:03 pm

Make sure you dont watch using the firm wifi..

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QContinuum

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Re: Using Personal Phone as Work Phone

Post by QContinuum » Fri Jan 25, 2019 1:53 pm

shock259 wrote:
boredtodeath wrote:
This. Carrying around two phones is insanity, especially for guys.

And no, the firm does not have access to anything you do on your phone outside of the work apps. Lawyers are so fuckin' paranoid.
Seconding this. Also, even if they did monitor other activity, are they really going to fire me for looking at porn in my spare time on my own personal phone? If so, they'd have to fire at least 3/4 of the associates that use their personal phone for work emails.
Carrying around two phones is not "insanity," unless you're wearing skinny jeans or something or your personal phone is as bulky as a 1980s satphone.

Of course no firm would fire anyone for looking at porn over the weekend on their personal phone. That doesn't mean it's ridiculous for someone to not want to give their firm's IT department a backdoor into their personal device. This is the same tired argument made by surveillance state advocates: If you aren't doing anything illegal, why would you object to giving the government free rein to monitor your every move? Folks may use their phone to sext their SO, for example, and it's totally reasonable to not want to take the risk of their racy content being exposed to the eyeballs of their firm's IT personnel - or, for that matter, hackers who may be able to exploit the backdoor.

dabigchina

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Re: Using Personal Phone as Work Phone

Post by dabigchina » Fri Jan 25, 2019 8:33 pm

I think a bigger concern is how much blackberry work will destroy your battery life.

nixy

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Re: Using Personal Phone as Work Phone

Post by nixy » Fri Jan 25, 2019 9:07 pm

legalpotato wrote:
shock259 wrote:
boredtodeath wrote:
This. Carrying around two phones is insanity, especially for guys.

And no, the firm does not have access to anything you do on your phone outside of the work apps. Lawyers are so fuckin' paranoid.
Seconding this. Also, even if they did monitor other activity, are they really going to fire me for looking at porn in my spare time on my own personal phone? If so, they'd have to fire at least 3/4 of the associates that use their personal phone for work emails.
I always lol at first years who go with 2 phones cause they read some deranged advice on TLS - by year 2 that 2nd phone is always gone!
Eh, I use two phones. I just don't even want to have to think about my work stuff when looking at my personal phone.

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Re: Using Personal Phone as Work Phone

Post by Anonymous User » Fri Jan 25, 2019 10:05 pm

I did two phones for about a month when I started. Not worth it at all, purely a hassle with zero redeeming benefit (serious).

All it is is a burden. Plus the firm pays us if we use our own phone.

All you have to do is download the firm email application, that's it, it's just like checking regular email.

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4LTsPointingNorth

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Re: Using Personal Phone as Work Phone

Post by 4LTsPointingNorth » Sat Jan 26, 2019 3:10 am

Keep your work phone separate from your personal phone. With the way data security protections and remote wiping capabilities exist at many major law firms, combining two phones is better described as now using your "work phone" as your "personal phone" regardless of whether you owned and used the device before starting at the firm. You may not get fired for what you do on the shared device, but you may also lose control of what gets done to the software on that device or of what usage gets monitored.

But that point is secondary to the serious psychological downside of consolidating your work and personal life into one central messaging device. The idea of waking up every morning to a slate of notifications without first knowing whether those emails and messages are of a personal or professional nature is nauseating to me. Similarly nauseating is the thought of my phone vibrating after hours with an unexpected new message triggering that initial panic of not knowing whether it's a friend trying to confirm plans or a client asking for something unexpected.

A big part of lasting as a lawyer seems to lie in effective compartmentalization, and one of the best ways to compartmentalize is to physically separate your personal life and your work life across two discrete devices. The mental health benefits far outweigh the discomfort caused by carrying two devices. In particular, you can consciously recharge by doing things like purposefully leaving your work phone at home for an hour while you go on a date or to the gym, etc.

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