I know I'm late to the party.. That said. I have tried a bunch of different pocket knifes with both scissors and pliers, and a bunch of multi-tools. First of all, as with everything, what to get is heavily dependant on your OWN personal needs.

My personal opinion: Go for a multi tool, plier-style and not a pocket knife. Simply because you can get one small enough to fit almost any small-size-requirements and still have pretty good pliers and a big enough set of other tools.

If you are gonna get a pocket knife, and can't have both pliers and scissors, go with the pliers over scissors, even though I haven't yet found one with pliers meeting my wishes a scissors function can be 'emulated' good enough with a knife blade, replacing the function of pliers can be far harder.

And last, my EDC choice for a long long time, this is a bit big but I could still carry it in the back pocket of my jeans: http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B0006G5F1M/ref=mp_s_a_1_5?qid=1420228761&sr=8-5&pi=AC_SX110_SY165_QL70

Sidenote about this, part of the size of the gerber I linked comes from it being designed for one handed plier access, just press the safety buttons and a wrist snap extends them. With some practice it's also possible to access the knife blade with one hand if need be.