[HN Gopher] Running a Law Firm on Linux
___________________________________________________________________
Running a Law Firm on Linux
Author : pimterry
Score : 223 points
Date : 2021-11-12 14:12 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (decoded.legal)
(TXT) w3m dump (decoded.legal)
| jamesmishra wrote:
| Law firms often charge by the hour, right? If my law firm
| switches to Linux, would they bill me more hours if they run into
| technical issues?
| pseingatl wrote:
| OH YES THEY WOULD.
|
| Nothing like paying a $500/hr lawyer for debugging a Word table
| (how can I center text in a table?) or an autonumbered nested
| list.
|
| Not to mention trying to figure out why a whole section doesn't
| appear in the ToC because "Update Table of Contents" only
| changed page numbers (Styles weren't used for that section).
| pseingatl wrote:
| Styles? Not exactly. Unless the people you're sharing the
| document with have the same defined styles, your "normal" won't
| look like theirs, nor will their "body" look like yours, never
| mind headings, where H1 can look like H2 which looks nothing like
| what you've got.
| encryptluks2 wrote:
| I think one thing important to not overlook is the value of HTML
| templating systems. I was exploring using Hugo for creating legal
| documents, and each paper and form can easily be populated using
| frontmatter. HTML is a lot more friendly for making legal
| documents than Word IMO, and can be exported to PDF all the same.
| terminalcommand wrote:
| Also a lawyer here, I think the biggest hurdle is MS Word. MS
| word is the defacto IDE of the law world. We spend most of our
| time in Word.
|
| The drafting of documents won't be a problem with libre office.
| You can send a PDF to the client.
|
| But working with other lawyers/parties could be a challenge. I am
| not certain how Libreoffice could handle a 500 page memo being
| worked by 50+ people including thousands of track
| changes/comments. I even stumble upon bugs in MS Word while
| working on such documents.
|
| You also need a reliable compare tool to generate redlines.
|
| Video conferencing is also important. You may access zoom/teams
| through web but it won't be as convenient as the desktop client.
|
| For an independent lawyer / small-mid sized office, linux may
| work. But for large companies the tooling may not be there.
|
| For example is there an easy way to clean metadata off of
| documents in Libreoffice, are there any compare tools, drafting
| assistants etc.?
|
| And if you're doing any litigation, the e-signature systems
| (dongles) also need to work reliably.
| stilisstuk wrote:
| Similar work profile, but: MS office is a huge pain to work
| with. 30 pages, 3 authors, comments, revi sions, deleted
| images, and it often crashs. And track changes doesn't work on
| tables (!)
|
| Mind: LibreOffice is properly worse, but that doesn't change
| that MS office is abyssmall.
| brightball wrote:
| Office365 Word in browser?
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > But working with other lawyers/parties could be a challenge.
| I am not certain how Libreoffice could handle a 500 page memo
| being worked by 50+ people including thousands of track
| changes/comments. I even stumble upon bugs in MS Word while
| working on such documents.
|
| I stumble on bugs in Word Online with far, far fewer
| participants (e.g. 2).
|
| Confluence holds up very well.
| b20000 wrote:
| if you are editing a 500 page document you should use other
| software for writing, perhaps use latex, and put the document
| in git. but i get that there are lots of lawyers who don't want
| to learn any new tools. for all the other stuff you mentioned
| you have solutions for linux that work and conferencing
| software has clients these days for linux. you can use diff or
| visual diff tools for comparisons.
| sgc wrote:
| I have written several 500 page documents in libreoffice both
| as sole author and as one of two or three primary
| contributors. It works quite well because it is easy to
| define styles and virtually never apply direct formatting.
| There would no doubt need to be a plugin to force this
| behavior in a large group. Multiple Indices and Tables of
| Contents were also well supported. More advanced tooling can
| still be used since it is an xml based file format (like MS
| office at this point I believe). For example I could write a
| complex regex to create different rules for applying an index
| without too much fuss. On most or all of those docs I was
| collaborating with others (editors etc) using track changes.
| It worked fine for us. But that was always under a dozen
| people in the group. There are various simple odt to git
| solutions available.
|
| Now I am not necessarily advocating this path, but we were
| philosophically opinionated on this point in our groups, so
| we were happy to do it.
|
| Latex is not excellent for authoring, although I understand
| it can be a necessary evil for documents with a lot of
| formulas or other difficult to format constructs. There is a
| lot to be said for the simplicity of a WYSIWYG editor when
| writing, so you can focus cleanly on the content you are
| trying to write.
| c0nsumer wrote:
| > It works quite well because it is easy to define styles
| and virtually never apply direct formatting.
|
| This is one of the biggest mistakes people make in using
| Microsoft Office. It has an outstanding style/formatting
| system in, yet people will still manually mark up headers
| and whatnot, and then get frustrated when piled-up syntax
| changes have unexpected results.
|
| Define the styles and apply the styles and it works GREAT.
| Especially in a large document when you want to change the
| style later on.
| pseingatl wrote:
| Styles? Not exactly. Unless the people you're sharing the
| document with have the same defined styles, your "normal"
| won't look like theirs, nor will their "body" look like
| yours, never mind headings, where H1 can look like H2
| which looks nothing like what you've got.
| Buttersite wrote:
| This is the most HN comment ever
| qsort wrote:
| Come on, let's be realistic, what's the chance of that
| happening? The network effects are enormous, that's like
| saying "just don't use javascript lmao".
|
| Even in tech companies most of the non-technical staff works
| with MS Office.
| pjmlp wrote:
| That is like telling data scientists that they should use
| Python and SQL instead of Excel.
|
| Good in theory, in practice, everyone keeps doing like
| everyone else.
| mavhc wrote:
| Isn't Data Science a large percentage of Python usage?
| pjmlp wrote:
| Python took over Perl's role already in the early 2000s.
|
| Is the new BASIC in what schools are concerned.
|
| There are plenty of domains where it gets used.
|
| However I bet plenty more people are doing data analysis
| in Excel than Python.
| andi999 wrote:
| I am wondering: did you do such a thing before in real life?
| Like a joint grant proposal with a few people and like 20-40
| pages? How did the git work flow work in practice?
| OJFord wrote:
| Git (VCS in general) seems like this absurd accidental secret
| of our profession.
|
| I use Fusion360 occasionally for hobby stuff, and its version
| 'control' is a joke, it's unfathomable to me how (especially
| since they're fellow engineers, technical people!) people can
| use and collaborate with it to build serious stuff.
|
| I think there's a lot of money to be made and a potential
| huge turning point in end user software for figuring out 'git
| for non-technical users'. People will argue it's not even
| good for SEs (I happen to like it) UI sucks etc. but that's
| not the point, it's fine, GUIs exist, that'd be an easy
| problem if everything was stored in plaintext. The key will
| be in figuring out how you make it attractive to people
| building software for such users, that they want to use your
| VCS mechanism, that it's easy to do so and doesn't require
| plaintext diff-sane on disk format (if they wanted/were
| willing to do that they would already and git would be fine).
|
| Perhaps some kind of CRDT (or similar) based
| collaboration/storage/version control service, with APIs such
| that you can have whatever proprietary format you want on top
| of it, but under the hood it handles sync, multi-user,
| merges, reversions, rebases, cherry-picks, diffs, etc.
| danielrhodes wrote:
| Attorneys don't use Git, but they do use version control
| software. Examples are NetDocs, iManage, and even
| GDrive/Box/Dropbox (which are also document management
| systems). It largely depends on the firm.
|
| There are some differences between what they need and what
| software engineers need.
|
| Lawyers will sometimes use version control as layers in a
| release system, almost like development/staging/production
| (where production is the final executed copy). So version 1
| will be the form, and version 2 will be the draft, etc.
|
| Other times they will use it in a similar manner to
| engineers. But the top version is the working copy, and
| once they are satisfied with that draft they will version
| up.
|
| Engineers use git to track changes and revert changes, but
| attorneys do not typically need to revert and once a
| document is executed, prior drafts aren't really that
| important.
|
| So there are fundamental differences between how lawyers
| and engineers look at version control.
|
| It would be pretty nifty if attorneys/clients could
| collaborate using a version control system, but it's hard
| enough to get attorneys to try any tool let alone a group
| of attorneys, so it would be a real stroke of luck to wedge
| yourself in here successfully.
|
| Background: made a document management system for a law
| firm.
| jatone wrote:
| > attorneys do not typically need to revert and once a
| document is executed, prior drafts aren't really that
| important.
|
| this isn't 100% true. lawyers very much care about
| changes in legal codes over time. its incredibly time
| consuming to do historical legal research given how legal
| code changes are recorded. strike paragraph 5, insert
| 'foo' in section 5.3.1. etc.
| stonemetal12 wrote:
| If your product would be made better by version control,
| Fossil works really well as a white label VCS mechanism. It
| is BSD licensed, and the repository is just a sqlite db.
| While it has basic UI, ticketing, and collaboration tools
| no one says you have to use it. I have seen it used where a
| fully custom UI with proprietary diff tools was provided
| instead of the default setup.
| tixocloud wrote:
| There's a plethora of opportunity for version control for
| almost every other domain. The technology is already there.
| The key to winning the market is in process change and
| sales/distribution.
| FemmeAndroid wrote:
| Frequently, you're dealing with passing documents between
| parties in different organizations, and it is not uncommon
| for these parties to have an adversarial relationship. You
| are engaging in a collaborative activity where you need to
| quickly be able to understand and respond to document updates
| and changes.
|
| In those situations, you really cannot tell a lawyer at
| another firm "Here's the process you need to setup to view
| and edit documents. I use latex to write documents. Please
| track your changes in a shared repo." You'd be wasting time
| and getting people furious.
|
| As the person you're responding to said:
|
| > The drafting of documents won't be a problem with libre
| office. You can send a PDF to the client.
|
| > But working with other lawyers/parties could be a
| challenge.
|
| If you're just writing documents within your organization,
| you can do whatever you want. But once you go outside the
| organization, you really need to stick to what the industry
| has agreed on.
|
| It's not that lawyers aren't interested in new technology.
| There are a lot of great developments in legal tech. But can
| you imagine how your client would react if they found out the
| lawyer they're paying $400 an hour was spending hours trying
| to figure out what latex was and how to edit it effectively
| so they could start to modify a document while they're on a
| deadline?
|
| Word works. Get on with the work.
| pseingatl wrote:
| Back in the day the $400/hr lawyer was making copies.
| Today, he's trying to fix autonumbering and styles issues
| with Word. Both are horribly wasteful.
| beermonster wrote:
| > I am not certain how Libreoffice could handle a 500 page memo
| being worked by 50+ people including thousands of track
| changes/comments
|
| I don't really use MS Word but could Office 365 be used for
| this, requiring just a browser?
| senkora wrote:
| Note that Zoom has a native Linux client that works well.
| mijoharas wrote:
| I would strongly disagree with you on the "works well" part.
|
| (it is hell on earth on a wayland machine. It can't
| screenshare unless you're on gnome or something, and on sway
| it seems to have a 50% chance of crashing every time it opens
| a meeting.)
|
| On the other hand, the web version is coming along nicely. I
| may uninstall the desktop app since it's such a PITA.
| senkora wrote:
| That's fair. My experience is with Ubuntu, GNOME, and X
| Windows, which is probably the happy path for Linux support
| right now.
| flurdy wrote:
| PopOS! Gnome & Wayland. Native Zoom works very well.
| Never crashes. And finally has virtual backgrounds. Only
| issue is Firefox windows are invisible when screen
| sharing, so I use Chromium for those sessions if I need
| to show a browser.
| fartcannon wrote:
| I know a group of lawyers who still operate using type writers
| and dictaphones.
| pseingatl wrote:
| There is something to be said about writing a considered
| response rather than a postcard-type reply to an email. The
| practice has (out of court, at least) and that has affected
| the quality of the work.
| agumonkey wrote:
| War legend: peeps in big retail chain printed Excel sheets on
| A3 pages to edit them with a pencil to later patch the
| original one.
| hef19898 wrote:
| For my professional life it is Excel, for pretty much similar
| reasons.
| Ottolay wrote:
| These days the online version of Office365 Word is pretty good.
| I would 100% pay for and use Office365 over LibreOffice on
| Linux.
| Shicholas wrote:
| if only lawyers used git, sigh. fighting word is almost like
| fighting the system itself - some courts require filing in
| .doc!
| stefan_ wrote:
| Is Word the biggest mistake of computing ever? I get it, in
| 1980 when you are trying to get adoption of your obscure
| machine, it helps to emulate what is de vogue in the real
| world.
|
| But now it's 2021, and there is zero reason anymore for
| anyone to "layout a letter" or similar nonsense like that.
| Computers are everywhere and the key to efficient processes,
| but we are stuck using them to make facsimiles of the World
| circa 1980.
| pseingatl wrote:
| Ever tried to shoehorn ten or more footnotes into an email?
| Shicholas wrote:
| I'm with you, but today most sr. attorneys & judges still
| print out all emails/documents to then redline. the legal
| field will need another 10-20 years before the foundation
| is present to even discuss removing Word.
| [deleted]
| jseliger wrote:
| I do grant writing for nonprofits, public agencies, and some
| research-based businesses and have the same issue: Word and
| Excel are defaults. Funders expect them and other organizations
| use them. Proposals typically have complicated formatting
| patterns other needs.
| hitpointdrew wrote:
| I also would think that Libre Office just wouldn't cut it with
| all the track changes. It's a bit of a shame that the industry
| is so cemented to Word, git is 1000 times superior than track
| changes IMO. But I understand that git has a bit of a technical
| hurdle that a lot of lawyers might struggle with.
| pseingatl wrote:
| Try Textmaker from Softmaker. 100% Word compatibility, $80,
| native Linux.
| hitpointdrew wrote:
| I am not a lawyer, and don't work in law. I was just
| observing how that industry is cemented to Word. I
| personally hardly ever use word, and have no need for a
| Linux replacement for Word. My work is all plain text
| mostly in sublime or vim.
| julkali wrote:
| I wonder if it would be legal to offer Windows Machines as a
| Service. So that you connect via Remote Desktop and pay by
| usage ... might violate MS' TOS though.
| venti wrote:
| Paperspace does offer that:
| https://workstream.paperspace.com/
| qsort wrote:
| Isn't that a literal description of Azure?
| mavhc wrote:
| No, but AWS and Azure offer Windows clients you can RDP
| into.
| actually_a_dog wrote:
| Interesting. I know back in the 80s, law firms were in love
| with WordPerfect for some reason. When did the switch occur
| from WP to Word, and why?
| 0xdeadbeefbabe wrote:
| Because of "Reveal Codes".
| nobody9999 wrote:
| >Because of "Reveal Codes".
|
| I _still_ miss WordPerfect for that reason.
|
| I don't know how many times I've had to reformat (or even
| completely redo) Word documents because the formatting got
| messed up.
|
| In WordPerfect, it would just be <alt>-<F3>, find the
| offending formatting code and fix it. Et Voila!
| MerelyMortal wrote:
| My dad was a lawyer. I think it's because WordPerfect worked
| in DOS.
| teddyh wrote:
| Short version, IIRC: Microsoft made MS-DOS, but their
| application software offerings for MS-DOS (Word, Works) were
| not compelling enough; other vendors had that market
| (WordPerfect, Lotus Symphony) pretty much sewn up. Then came
| Microsoft Windows. Other companies did _not_ want to spend
| huge amounts of resources porting their applications to what
| was essentially a niche Microsoft add-on on top of MS-DOS.
| Microsoft, on the other hand, had _every_ reason to bet _big_
| on their own product, and they invested massively in porting
| their own software to Windows. Then, when Windows became
| popular, all other application software vendors were way
| behind in producing reasonable graphical Windows versions of
| their software, except Microsoft, who gained a massive user
| base of the Windows versions of their programs, since they
| were much better in the Windows environment than everything
| else. Microsoft used this advantage to stay on top of the PC
| market for _years_ , and arguably still do.
| dctoedt wrote:
| > _back in the 80s, law firms were in love with WordPerfect
| for some reason. When did the switch occur from WP to Word,
| and why?_
|
| When my then-law firm was switching from MS-DOS to Windows, I
| was on the committee that was deciding: WordPerfect for
| Windows, or Microsoft Word? Some said "WP, of course, because
| it's the standard for law firms." My response: Who gives a
| [hoot] what other firms are doing - we exchange a lot of
| documents with clients, so what are _they_ doing? That made
| the answer obvious: Word.
| wonderwonder wrote:
| Pretty sure you can edit most office documents in google docs
| via the browser without issue. Only additional step would be
| uploading them to Google Drive.
| mavhc wrote:
| Or if they're Word docs, in MS Web Office
| Shadonototra wrote:
| That's even worse, now you dependent on their "cloud"
|
| The key is to not be depending on their format, and be open
| and ABLE to move away from dependency X whenever you want
| mavhc wrote:
| I thought the key was to make a load of cash and/or help
| people with their lawyery needs
| Shadonototra wrote:
| if your endgame goal is solely more money and have a
| slave like life where you can't make any choice, then i
| don't think any of that matter at all anyways
|
| but you can still save money by not being dependent on
| their bloated (now you need better hw) and more expensive
| offering (now you dependent on their bloated cloud
| infrastructure)
|
| but hey, that's just my opinion, we can still have
| choice, right, right?
| afavour wrote:
| > have a slave like life
|
| Everything is relative. It's been a long time since I ran
| a Linux desktop (use it on the server plenty, though) and
| I could describe a "slave like life" where I had to
| endlessly fix driver issues, updates that broke
| functionality, etc etc. I expect my life would have been
| easier if I bought hardware specifically intended for
| Linux but then we're back to "you can't make a choice".
| Linux saves money in the most straightforward sense: the
| software is free. But if it ends up being more work to
| maintain or to train people to use then it _is_ costing
| you money still. Your time is worth money.
|
| IMO it's healthier to see pretty much every tech decision
| we make as boxing ourselves in some way or another. Use
| Windows PCs, you're boxed into Windows. Use Linux PCs and
| MS cloud products, you're boxed into MS cloud. Use Linux
| through and through you're boxed into dealing with subtle
| LibreOffice bugs when handling documents. Which box fits
| you most comfortably is a matter of opinion rather than
| fact.
| Shadonototra wrote:
| Installing drivers is a problem solved long long ago
|
| > updates that broke functionality
|
| that's a windows thing, shall i mention the recent
| windows 10 updates (they still are unable to fix the mess
| they created) totally breaking printing functionality?
|
| Also you miss the point, nobody said "get stuck with
| linux and use nothing else"
|
| LibreOffice? i never mentioned that
|
| I mentioned the use of QEMU to boot what ever OS if you
| need run dependency X, Y or Z
| mavhc wrote:
| Or Android Office running on desktop
| tjalfi wrote:
| > Pretty sure you can edit most office documents in google
| docs via the browser without issue.
|
| That's just the tip of the iceberg. Using Google Docs means
| that you're opting out of the substantial ecosystem of legal-
| specific Word add-ins - document templates for court filings,
| semantic analysis for contracts, metadata scrubbing, etc.
| earthscienceman wrote:
| As a scientist I'm really tempted to ask:
|
| Why not latex and track changes? I already know the answer of
| course, but it's interesting how much of this type of thing is
| 'cultural' and institutional momentum.
| colejohnson66 wrote:
| TeX and any derivatives aren't WYSIWYG. People (non-tech and
| even some in tech) don't want to write code to generate their
| document. They want to pull up Word, type some stuff, click
| the table button or something, and go on their merry way.
|
| If there's an issue on page 45 of the printed document, they
| know exactly where that is in Word due to it being WYSIWYG.
| In TeX, it's not that simple.
|
| TeX is extremely powerful. I love it (although it does feel a
| bit "hacky"), but for the majority of people, it's overkill.
| Word's change tracker is good enough.
| nybble41 wrote:
| LyX is available as a (almost) WYSIWYG editor for TeX. The
| developers actually describe it as WYSIWYM (What You See Is
| What You Mean) but the key point is that the user is not
| limited to writing raw TeX code.
|
| Fixed pagination is not guaranteed, even in Word.
| Especially when you consider features like change tracking.
| If you want fixed pages, export to PDF.
| pseingatl wrote:
| Or the change in paper size when you send a document that
| has been set up for letter paper and the person receiving
| it has A4 as the default, not to mention different styles
| and German quotation marks.
| radicaldreamer wrote:
| Is working on a Mac as difficult?
| gbrown wrote:
| There's a desktop Zoom client. Also, the web office 365 Word
| works... okish.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| Basically all of these things are teething problems. The early
| adopters have problems, the problems get solved, then they're
| solved for everybody.
|
| What's going to be interesting is how attorney client privilege
| interacts with the third party doctrine and proprietary systems
| increasingly moving your documents to The Cloud, often without
| telling you or making it obvious that it's happening.
|
| That could drive early adoption by law firms that don't want to
| be the first to get burned by that.
| tubby12345 wrote:
| >The early adopters have problems
|
| > LibreOffice Initial release: 25 January 2011; 10 years ago
|
| don't think it's getting solved mated
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| Different populations have different problems. When was the
| first time it was adopted by a major law firm?
|
| Example: The OP cares about "redlines" because lawyers use
| that all the time and most others don't.
| RNCTX wrote:
| I worked for one of the online legal databases for
| several years. They had a Windows desktop app in addition
| to the website for accessing content.
|
| I managed to get the desktop app working in Linux after
| messing with Wine and permissions (it had some cache
| files written to a relative directory and what not) and
| after telling management about it they figured the
| potential market for such a thing would be small enough
| that they could just send any support requests about it
| directly to me for setup help, and likewise tell the
| sales reps to forward inquiries to me if Linux came up on
| a sale or demo install.
|
| In the decade I worked there I got exactly one call from
| a Linux admin at a law firm asking for the docs on using
| the desktop app.
| npongratz wrote:
| It gets even worse. LibreOffice forked from OpenOffice [0]:
|
| > OpenOffice.org Initial release May 2002; 19 years ago
|
| Which itself originated as StarOffice [1]:
|
| > StarOffice Initial release 1985; 36 years ago
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Openoffice.org
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StarOffice
| tiahura wrote:
| "What's going to be interesting is how attorney client
| privilege interacts with the third party doctrine"
|
| Not really. If I take a file to Kinkos to get copied, it's
| still privileged.
|
| Contrary to the thinking of many technophiles, for almost
| every "How is the law going to deal with X technology?" there
| are useful analogies that were figured out decades ago.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > Not really. If I take a file to Kinkos to get copied,
| it's still privileged.
|
| What happens if you take a file to Kinkos to get copied and
| don't notice that the service agreement allows them to keep
| a copy of it and sell the contents to third parties or use
| it for advertising?
| tiahura wrote:
| Still privileged. Jurisdictions vary, but generally the
| question is wether the broader dissemination was
| intentional.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| Then the other side gets to argue that everybody knows or
| should have known that The Cloud works like that, and
| accuse you of doing it intentionally because you wanted
| the cost savings or convenience of the product with those
| terms.
|
| Also, "jurisdictions vary" can be quite a relevant caveat
| for all the people in the jurisdictions that vary.
| [deleted]
| pdabbadabba wrote:
| Maybe so. But your client will still be pissed that, from
| their perspective, your carelessness put them at risk. In
| my practice, it would be a disaster for this question to
| even arise.
| tiahura wrote:
| What's your practice area? Most big law firms outsourced
| photocopying 15 years ago. Not to mention outsourced doc
| review and ediscovery hosting.
|
| See generally FRE 502(b).
| pdabbadabba wrote:
| I'm a regulatory lawyer working in telecom and commercial
| space policy, though I'm not sure it's my practice area
| that's primarily driving my thinking here. (Though it may
| also be true that, since I am not primarily a litigator,
| I have different confidentiality concerns in mind that
| some other lawyers. My firm and I do take these issues
| very very very seriously--perhaps in ways that would be
| impractical for a different firm in a different area of
| practice.)
|
| Although I'm certainly aware of the proliferation of
| outsourced doc review and e-discovery, I would hope that
| the firms using these services are reviewing their
| agreements with these providers to make absolutely sure
| that they do not include language like GP posited: that
| they may "keep a copy of it and sell the contents to
| third parties or use it for advertising." Whatever the
| implications may be for attorney-client privilege, this
| also creates a risk of actual disclosure to hostile third
| parties, which would be a huge issue if you were working
| on anything commercially sensitive.
|
| I'd also note that, depending on one's practice, you
| might also find yourself adverse to national governments.
| That creates a whole new risk profile with respect to
| could-hosted document management services, etc.
| tjalfi wrote:
| > Basically all of these things are teething problems. The
| early adopters have problems, the problems get solved, then
| they're solved for everybody
|
| It's not just teething problems.
|
| Using OpenOffice and Linux means that you're opting out of
| the substantial ecosystem of legal-specific Word add-ins -
| document templates for court filings, semantic analysis for
| contracts, metadata scrubbing, etc. Most of these tools are
| only available for Windows although some of them support
| Macs. A small practice can get away with using Linux but a
| large firm would be foolish to do so.
| traceroute66 wrote:
| It should also be pointed out that the lawyer who runs
| decoded.legal is very much a tech savvie lawyer that enjoys
| playing with tech.
|
| Something which I am led to believe is not a character trait
| typically attributable to our learned friends.
| Shadonototra wrote:
| People have no excuse nowadays.. MS Word?
|
| Setup QEMU and boot the VM whenever you need MS Word
|
| And look for alternatives
|
| You stuck with an OS that spy on your because you made yourself
| depending on their software
|
| --
|
| I think there is a huge open market for open cloud based office
| suite
|
| Microsoft is stuck with their local software, we gotta be quick
| tiahura wrote:
| I need Word all day. I need to copy and paste from excel and
| acrobat. I need merge from Outlook, etc.
|
| Most of what many many attorneys do involves Word. If
| everything you're doing is in the VM, what's the point?
| smoldesu wrote:
| > If everything you're doing is in the VM, what's the
| point?
|
| "Your honor, with all of the evidence we've leveled today,
| my client would like to motio- hold on, what's this? Wait,
| no I didn't tell you to install updates now! Cancel,
| cancel, does anyone here know how to stop a Windows
| update?"
| tiahura wrote:
| It happens all the time. In the middle of medical
| malpractice cases, divorce cases, murder cases - a virus
| update, an acrobat update, an email notification, etc.
| Everybody deals.
| pseingatl wrote:
| My favorite was at a hearing where opposing counsel had
| printed off that morning a copy of a letter he felt was
| dispositive. Word automatically "update(d) fields" and so
| the six-month old letter bore the date of the hearing.
| The judge didn't understand the concept and said the
| letter could not possibly be accurate; what other content
| was changed? His motion was denied. Thank you, Word!
| Shadonototra wrote:
| > If everything you're doing is in the VM, what's the
| point?
|
| If your goal is to run Linux as your host OS, then it
| solves the problem of not being able to do X with software
| Y
|
| You can do everything else in Linux, including looking for
| alternatives
|
| You can copy/paste files from host/guest, including sharing
| clipboard
|
| Also using a VM helps you fixes in time your windows
| install, problems? bugs? shitty updates? destroy that VM
| image and swap with a copy of the install one, BOOM you are
| in power
|
| Docker and QEMU stories are the proof that having choice
| frees and empowers everyone, enables countless of
| possibilities and options, who would have thought
| abduhl wrote:
| Most peoples' goal at work is to do their job, not run
| Linux as their host OS.
| Shadonototra wrote:
| OP's title: "Running a Law Firm on Linux"
|
| Why do you want to make it sound like they didn't make
| that choice?
|
| If you don't want to run as your host OS, you don't
|
| Nobody forces you anything, it's the opposite, GIVE
| PEOPLE CHOICE
| nobody9999 wrote:
| >Most peoples' goal at work is to do their job, not run
| Linux as their host OS.
|
| This. I spent six years doing IT infrastructure for a
| large law firm (~1000 lawyers+2000 support staff).
|
| Legal services are pretty much the same as other
| professional services (I spent 12 years consulting too),
| where the goal is to maximize utilization and
| realization[0].
|
| As has been mentioned by others in this discussion, the
| work product of lawyers are mostly documents (actual in
| court activities are a tiny proportion of the work that
| lawyers do), and in a firm of more than a few people,
| documents are almost always worked on collaboratively.
|
| There's an entire ecosystem of tools and applications
| that support such document production, including
| collaborative redlining tools, document management
| systems, legal citation tools, workflow management
| systems and a raft of other tools/systems that enable
| efficient development, editing and distribution of
| attorney work product.
|
| Those systems are primarily Windows-based, many of which
| are Word plugins, and attempting to integrate them all --
| even in an all Windows environment -- is challenging.
|
| In fact, until 15 years ago or so, WordPerfect was the
| tool of choice for most law firms. And migrating to Word
| was incredibly painful without any changes to the
| underlying OS.
|
| That said, most of the systems _I_ implemented ran on
| Linux or BSD, as they were network support platforms
| (change management, logging /monitoring tools,
| authn/authz platforms and Internet-facing applications).
|
| However, attempting to move an _existing_ law firm of
| more than a couple lawyers from the existing ecosystem to
| one that runs on Linux would be folly. Because of the
| lack of tooling in the Linux environment (e.g., try
| running a software development shop using _only_ Nintendo
| Switches), and, more importantly, the loss of billable
| hours fighting with such an environment.
|
| There are lots of other issues, but I just tried to hit
| the high points.
|
| _Could_ Linux be a good platform for law firms?
| Absolutely. But the workflow and tooling that exists in
| the Windows environment would need to be replicated
| first.
|
| It's a chicken and egg problem -- why would legal
| software developers write code for Linux when the entire
| ecosystem is based on Windows? And why would law firms
| use Linux when the tools they _require_ to generate
| revenue don 't exist on Linux?
|
| [0] https://blog.beyondsoftware.com/the-importance-of-
| measuring-...
| ghastmaster wrote:
| > If everything you're doing is in the VM, what's the
| point?
|
| Precisely. When I was new to Linux, trying to figure out
| how to do things, I was inundated with people telling me to
| just dual boot or run a VM. The whole point of switching
| was to be free of other systems.
| dr_hooo wrote:
| Having QEMU with MS ready defies the entire purpose. Also not
| the typical easy to setup you want to unleash on a lawfirm.
|
| And what may the alternatives be, keeping the requirements of
| GP in mind?
|
| Sadly I don't think we are there yet....
| Shadonototra wrote:
| > And look for alternatives
|
| I said this ^
|
| Using QEMU solves the problem of not being able to run
| dependency X, blocking you from having choice ;)
| ar_lan wrote:
| What about something like Office 365? Wouldn't this handle this
| problem just fine?
| massysett wrote:
| I'm glad this is working for him, but it's only been three
| months. The most important thing Word gets me is an excuse. If
| someone sends me a Word doc and I open it in Word and something
| is screwed up, I can say "oh, um, maybe something is wrong on
| your end." If I'm using anything else--LibreOffice, Pages,
| Google Docs, anything--then there's a possibility that it's the
| software's fault. I can't be messing around with that in
| moments when it counts. Like it or not, Word is the standard,
| and anyone using software that is not the standard is carrying
| a burden.
|
| I'm an attorney and it's my job to practice law, not be
| ideological about my tools. I keep a Thinkpad with Debian on my
| desk and use it to track my tasks in Taskwarrior, because it's
| the best tool for the job. For document exchange, there is
| absolutely no substitute for a Windows PC with Microsoft Word.
| I say this as someone who hits Word bugs and loathes Word. But
| I'm a lawyer, not a professional Linux tinkerer.
| hcurtiss wrote:
| I'm principally a transactional attorney. The one piece of
| software that keeps me tied to Windows in addition to Word is
| Workshare Compare. To my astonishment, even after jacking
| prices after the recent acquisition by Litera, there is
| literally no substitute for elegantly and cleanly preparing
| redlines. This cannot be that difficult. Somebody build a
| competitor!
| james_in_the_uk wrote:
| Word's built in compare feature works fine these days, in
| my experience. It handles changes/moves pretty well now
| too. Assuming your employer has a recent version of Word,
| not an ancient one because that's what works with all of
| their wierd doc formatting macros.
| stackbutterflow wrote:
| I'm curious to know how you and the parent comment came about
| to know about HN, what an IDE is, Debian.
|
| My friends working in non tech fields wouldn't even know that
| something other than Windows exists.
| massysett wrote:
| For me it's always been a hobby. I also write my own
| software tools in Haskell. I've used other distributions--
| Ubuntu, Slackware, Arch, and SUSE.
|
| I used to think about some sort of software career but I
| now know that doing it for a living is nothing like doing
| it as a hobby. Plus I like my job. Writing a good legal
| opinion has surprising commonalities with writing good
| software.
| n_decoded_legal wrote:
| > I'm curious to know how you and the parent comment came
| about to know about HN, what an IDE is, Debian.
|
| I started using Linux while I was at university, reading
| law. But I spent as much time with computer science and
| computer engineering friends as I did with other law
| students - in fact, probably a lot more - and spent plenty
| of time tinkering with servers and networks. And that's
| stood me in good stead for tinkering with legal stuff to do
| with networks, servers, and related things.
| rococode wrote:
| Keep in mind there are thousands of lawyers out there whose
| job is to write software patents or litigate for big tech
| companies. I'm sure there are plenty of lawyers not working
| in tech who know about tech stuff just out of curiosity,
| but the ones who _are_ in tech definitely know much more
| than surface-level things.
| beermonster wrote:
| It does seem there are some cool lawyers out there!
| ncphil wrote:
| Retired lawyer (from the 80s and 90s). Second career as a
| sysadmin now with the lofty title "enterprise architect",
| which in my case is more like "a senior guy who can do all
| kinds of stuff".
|
| Back in the day DisplayWrite and WordPerfect were the
| standards, with Word coming up behind fast. I used XyWrite
| in my own tiny practice. That said, Word Online under a
| Microsoft 365 sub would get you most of where you need to
| go, but I have to admit that some are going to be more
| comfortable with the desktop version of Word for the
| reasons given above. In that case... KVM virtual machine
| running Windows! So long as the host has sufficient
| horsepower (4 or 8 cores, 32 GB RAM), that can actually be
| an added benefit: two computers for the price of one.
|
| On the scanner driver issue, I'm going to curb my natural
| urge to go into full on problem solving mode (an
| occupational hazard for both sysadmins and lawyers).
| Network scanners are a "hive of scum and villainy" if there
| ever was one. My own adventures with an HP MFP can be found
| in this gist: https://gist.github.com/plembo/1630c74806c1c9
| 7c2dcee03752865.... The TLDR is that HP supports SANE
| through their own proprietary api, which is probably not
| going to work with a different manufacturer's scanner (for
| example, Canon).
| throwawayapples wrote:
| With regards to the scanning issue, you could scan to
| FTP; new Brother workgroup MFC printers can even scan to
| SFTP and I'm sure other manufacturers are the same. (Note
| that smaller, cheaper $150 Brother lasers cannot scan to
| FTP/SFTP; that feature seems to be reserved for printers
| in the $400+ range.)
|
| For example, you can scan multi-page documents in B&W or
| color (even double-sided) to individual JPEG's PDF's
| right from within the printer's sheet feeder itself, and
| have them uploaded via SAMBA or SFTP. I'm sure the very
| large enterprise printers/copiers/etc can probably do
| this with for multiple accounts as well, so that each
| user on an entire floor could scan directly into their
| own _incoming_ directory.
| kaffee wrote:
| What's the current best tool for generating redlines from two
| PDF/Word documents?
|
| Makes sense that this would be important (e.g., when comparing
| contract versions).
| pseingatl wrote:
| It's not Word. Word also doesn't do a compare with pdf, which
| has to first be converted to Word. Add a few new paragraphs
| and the comparison fails.
| whateveracct wrote:
| > Also a lawyer here, I think the biggest hurdle is MS Word. MS
| word is the defacto IDE of the law world. We spend most of our
| time in Word.
|
| > The drafting of documents won't be a problem with libre
| office. You can send a PDF to the client.
|
| > But working with other lawyers/parties could be a challenge.
| I am not certain how Libreoffice could handle a 500 page memo
| being worked by 50
|
| This is addressed in the article actually! They said
| LibreOffice has served them perfectly well.
| pseingatl wrote:
| Textmaker by Softmaker Office is a 100% Word-compatible Linux
| native word processor with mark-up. And much cheaper than
| Word. There's a Window version as well.
| ghaff wrote:
| He says it has worked for him so far--with only minor issues.
|
| Personally, in that situation, if I really didn't want to use
| Windows for everything (and I've barely used Windows for the
| past 10 years), I'd probably get a Windows system for running
| Word and any other necessary Windows software and have my
| computer system of choice for everything else. In the grand
| scheme of things, computers are cheap these days.
|
| (Or as someone else commented, run Windows in a VM. Though I
| might consider even that to be potentially unpredictable as a
| platform that my entire business essentially depended on.)
| n_decoded_legal wrote:
| > He says it has worked for him so far--with only minor
| issues.
|
| I'd say the same about Word. Mostly fine, but some minor
| issues, usually linked with auto-numbering getting in a
| fluster, or deciding to turn all the numbering into black
| blocks.
|
| But I definitely prefer Word's flexibility for displaying
| tracked changes.
| ghaff wrote:
| I mostly use Google Docs these days and, in general, I'm
| a fan of how it's focused on the 90-95% use case. But
| every now and then I run into something it just can't do
| or that it does relatively poorly. (Revision tracking
| from multiple people in particular, complex section
| breaks of various kinds, doubtless other things.)
| hpcjoe wrote:
| Not a lawyer. Zoom client on Linux works and is IMO more
| reliable (e.g. doesn't BSOD me) than windows, about the same
| reliability on Mac.
|
| Teams is unreliable on every platform (having used it for years
| on Linux, Mac, Win). Would recommend against it.
|
| Clearing documents metadata in Libreoffice, yes. It existed as
| far back as 7 years ago when I was running my own company, and
| my lawyers and I would be exchanging documents with potential
| investors.
|
| This said, I also (when needed) run windows 10 in a kvm window,
| with Office installed, when libreoffice, or office365 is simply
| inadequate. This is ... rare. I mostly boot the kvm to patch it
| these days. Haven't needed its capabilities in at least a year
| (then again, I am not a lawyer).
|
| Dongles (yubi-key, etc) all work great on Linux/Mac. YMMV
| though, if they aren't common systems. Again, you can run
| windows on a VM, and pass through that specific port (USB,
| etc.). It works, though sometimes the software is buggy so that
| it sends a reset, and you have to unplug/replug the dongle.
| This is from my Yubi-key experience on my windows kvm running
| on my linux laptop.
| benbristow wrote:
| > Zoom client on Linux works and is IMO more reliable (e.g.
| doesn't BSOD me)
|
| The Windows client has never BSODed on me. Sounds like a
| problem at your end.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| Agreed, if a Windows machine is BSOD'ing then it's almost
| always a hardware issue: usually RAM or the video card.
|
| On the note of stability, at my old (pre-COVID) gig, the
| brand new top-of-the-line Mac computers were the least
| stable computers we used; they'd regularly crash during
| video editing and couldn't be trusted for live-streaming
| our events. For live-streaming, they used Windows or nix
| computers (depending on the function). All of our broadcast
| partners used Windows or *nix computers as well.
| hpcjoe wrote:
| I'm not the only one at my co that has experienced it
| BSODing. Windows generally BSODs on work machine at least
| once a week. Windows 10 patched monthly, locked down as
| hard as a machine can be under Windows.
|
| 30 plus years of Windows tech has taught me not to trust it
| with anything important.
| luma wrote:
| If you have a system that is experiencing BSODs on the
| order of once a week, you have a _serious_ problem that
| is absolutely atypical of normal Windows behavior.
|
| Blaming the operating system hasn't brought you to a
| solution, perhaps the issue lies elsewhere.
| rjzzleep wrote:
| I don't think you understand how enterprise managed
| windows machines work. They come full of very intrusive
| tooling and usually custom built windows images.
|
| Dell on the other hand - on of the largest suppliers of
| enterprise PCs - offers no warranties for any custom
| image Windows machines even if they use Dell official
| driver bundles.
|
| I once came into a Windows Enterprise shop with the same
| arrogance and thought I could easily fix their issues,
| but I was proven wrong. You're welcome to try it
| yourself.
| luma wrote:
| I don't directly deal with Windows desktops but am
| directly responsible for an estate which includes north
| of 40k Windows Server systems. As a result, I do have a
| pretty solid handle on managing Windows at scale (at
| least in the datacenter). We don't see a BSOD a week
| across that entire estate, let alone a single system.
|
| BSODs are a sign that something is SERIOUSLY WRONG.
| Usually, failing hardware or sometimes shitty drivers.
| Almost never is it a sign of something fundamentally
| wrong with the operating system itself.
| orangepurple wrote:
| It might even be damaged RAM
| nybble41 wrote:
| Or an unreliable power supply or EM interference, if it's
| affecting multiple machines.
| [deleted]
| gbrown wrote:
| It does keep running and using CPU after exiting though, so I
| always have to 'pkill -f zoom' it.
| jedimastert wrote:
| I guess I might have to try using Libreoffice again.
|
| Then again, I haven't made a "document" on anything but Google
| Docs for a pretty long time. If I'm writing for my website, I'm
| usually physically writing or using Docs so I can have it on my
| phone to fiddle with when I get a random minute. After that I'll
| transfer to markdown directly on my server.
|
| Does anyone know a reasonable way to edit text files from a
| server on mobile? I'm looking for the lowest friction possible,
| but I don't mind editing raw text files (in fact I prefer it).
| thepete2 wrote:
| I find the Markor app (open source) great for editing text
| files, you can also customize it quite a bit. Then for
| uploading possibly syncthing would work.
|
| (I do this to sync my text files between my PC and phone, works
| great)
| RealStickman_ wrote:
| I personally moved to Joplin and have it sync with my
| Nextcloud instance using webDAV. It's been working very well
| for me so far.
| bbqmaster999 wrote:
| Libreoffice subtly reformatting the documents sent to me by my
| divorce lawyer was not the most fun thing let me tell you.
| cesarb wrote:
| The last time I had a problem with LibreOffice reformatting an
| important Word document, the issue were the fonts. In my case,
| installing the "wine-*-fonts-system" (times new roman, tahoma,
| wingdings) packages was enough to make LibreOffice format that
| document correctly; another option would have been to copy the
| original fonts from a Windows install.
| ghastmaster wrote:
| At my small firm, we rarely(never?) send the actual word
| document to clients/businesses/lawyers/courts.
|
| The documents are always converted to PDF first.
| bobdupneu wrote:
| I stopped sending word documents to our clients when one
| client silently changed a section of a document without
| telling me (he disabled tracking changes for that part of the
| document). The document was then rejected by the clerk
| because of that. As I was there I convinced the clerk to let
| me make manual amendments to the document with my good old
| pen and made it go through. I had to let the client know
| about the change to make sure he would accept it. I was
| surprised that he blamed me for the situation... Switched to
| pdf. Stopped the hypocrisy.
| david422 wrote:
| A long time ago I was using linux and created my resume in
| Libreoffice and sent it to various job postings as a Word doc.
| Never had any luck.
|
| Then years later I learned that what looked perfect (my resume)
| in Libreoffice looked pretty terrible when opened with official
| MS Word. I always wondered if that impacted my application. A
| guy that couldn't bother to format his resume appropriately.
| pseingatl wrote:
| These days you need an ATS-compatible machine-readable cv
| because no human being is going to see it. Text works
| perfectly fine.
| juniperplant wrote:
| This is the case where I would have used PDF. Didn't
| employers accept that?
| pseingatl wrote:
| They use ATS. Think text.
| Mikeb85 wrote:
| I learned long ago to never send an editable format to anyone
| who's not going to edit it.
|
| Every device can open PDFs and see it exactly as it should
| be.
| andylynch wrote:
| Mostly. Assuming you having the same font installed or
| embedded- to be sure about this you want to go further and
| use PDF/A
| 1_player wrote:
| It's still much easier to create a cross-platform PDF
| that works on any device, than writing a document in
| LibreOffice and expect it to be 100% interoperable with
| Word, and viceversa.
|
| In fact, I haven't created a broken PDF on any operating
| system in 15 years. Font embedding in PDFs is a solved
| problem.
| pseingatl wrote:
| Of course, clients never know the facts as well as the
| lawyers. And lawyers never make mistakes for clients to
| edit. Yesterday I saw a document which claimed that a
| security agent had made available a $20 million dollar
| facility. The term they wanted--and would have corrected,
| was "Lender." There are a few programs that let you edit
| pdf's: Flexipdf is one of them. Otherwise, you get a paper
| copy with edits, or worse, an email with references to
| lines, which you can't correct because then the pagination
| changes.
| nobody9999 wrote:
| >I learned long ago to never send an editable format to
| anyone who's not going to edit it.
|
| I'd go further and say not to send an editable format to
| someone (read: recruiters) who _is_ going to edit it. Too
| many times, I 've gone to an interview and the
| interviewer's copy of my resume has been modified (not just
| names/contact info, but skills and experience) by a
| recruiter.
|
| Which is why I _always_ bring hard copies of my resume to
| an interview.
|
| Edit: Fixed grammatical errors.
| seltzered_ wrote:
| Interesting to see the blogger is using what seems to be an HP
| tablet with debian. [EDIT: No, it's a surface pro 6, thanks for
| the correction!] I switched from a mac to an HP Elite X2 G4
| running linux and while it took some setup most things work
| pretty fine and am happy it's a bit easier to open up and repair
| compared to other tablets.
|
| - https://www.reddit.com/r/Surface/comments/ptdug1/feeling_goo...
|
| Most of my concerns before switching have been less around
| software development but the administrivia - screen recording,
| surfing/organizing files, etc. - I keep a spreadsheet around such
| workflows here:
| https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/148zTJUwfVv9xfDcpSoH3... .
|
| I kept an old macbook around to help with the transition but the
| last time I needed it was for screenrecording (OBS has some
| wayland issues causing slow framerates) and browser testing.
| Kessler83 wrote:
| I've used GNU/Linux in large, Windows/Mac dependent companies for
| 25 years. You need to convince the IT-department, and you need to
| survive the first week learning how to connect to whatever system
| is in place, but after that, it's free of incidents to the point
| of being boring.
|
| My advice for convincing the IT-department is to pick something
| that is known to be very secure and stable. I use Debian Stable.
|
| My advice for the first week is to initially use the web
| interfaces for printers, e-mail etc. Move onto native solutions
| at your own pace.
|
| When somebody tells you how GNU/Linux isn't good enough, 99 times
| out of a 100, it is someone who has limited actual hands-on
| experience, or someone who is a bit insecure and territorial
| about the Windows/Mac systems that he does know. Ask them how
| they know, and tell them you will look into the specific issues
| they mention. Return later and show them what you have found.
|
| Word documents cause problems in Windows/Mac contexts too,
| constantly, so don't fret if you run into trouble. In addition to
| Libreoffice, a very quick way to deal with small inconsistencies
| in layout is to use pandoc with a template word-file. Basically,
| export a new word-file from your old one, using the template to
| strip the inconsistencies away.
|
| Aim to learn Bash and regexp, at least to some degree. It can
| save you a _ton_ of time.
|
| GNU/Linux has fantastic tools for working with pdfs, comparing
| files of various kinds, quickly find information in a large file
| system and many other things. They evolve all the time. Make it a
| habit to check how others handle the same task you handle.
| Perhaps they have found a new and even better way?
|
| Gradually start using Emacs Org-mode. There is nothing that
| compares.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| Why not use WSL?
|
| You get all the benefits of a Windows machine (printing and
| whatever pre-installed software will just work) and a Linux
| environment.
| rpmisms wrote:
| The real question here is how does Linux scale video? Is it
| bicubic or nearest neighbor?
| pseingatl wrote:
| They were discussing just this point in the Rittenhouse trial.
| upofadown wrote:
| Why would law firms want to exchange documents in a dense, opaque
| format like Microsoft Word anyway? Legal documents are mostly
| about the actual words, not all the word processing stuff that
| Word is about. You would think that the legal world would of come
| up with their own application specific format by now.
| rpmisms wrote:
| Honestly, how bad would git be for handling that? I've worked
| on regulations for a governing body before using git, and it
| was fantastic for tracking proposed changes. You just submitted
| a PR.
| traceroute66 wrote:
| You've never worked with a law firm have you (either as a
| client or internally).
|
| Two words: Tracked Changes
|
| Everyone knows how Word tracked changes works. _Especially_
| lawyers and their clients.
|
| Beyond the above. Formatting. Firms will have have substancial
| know-how in Word formatting. Sure the contract is about the
| words, but when you present it to the client, it is all nicely
| formatted in a standardised format.
| wvenable wrote:
| This a weird argument; It's like asking why graphic designers
| use Photoshop instead of coming up with their own image
| manipulation application. Word is literally the top-tier
| application for developing documents and lawyers are using it
| for exactly what it's designed for.
| upofadown wrote:
| If graphic designers were collaboratively editing images
| where change management was critical and every pixel had to
| be manually inserted to generate a very specific meaning I
| suspect that they would come up with their own format and
| associated applications.
| wvenable wrote:
| Lawyers writing documents is much less like factory
| composing data than you seem to think. They very much treat
| it like writing and editing any other kind of written
| composition.
|
| Heck, a lot of lawyers actually _dictate_ their work
| instead of typing themselves.
| pseingatl wrote:
| It actually reminds me of plumbing more than anything
| else, especially appellate briefs.
|
| Unless and until you get the hang of dictating, your
| documents will be twice as long. And who is going to do
| this typing? Someone in Bangalore? Good luck with that.
| andylynch wrote:
| Lawyers also have clients! Its sounds facetious even saying it
| but it's also not that surprising to discover that an industry
| heavily reliant of word processing uses the market leading word
| processor.
| upofadown wrote:
| But that is my point. They don't do much of any word
| processing from the era of Microsoft Word. They just process
| some text. What does Word give them that, say, a Wiki would
| not do faster and easier?
|
| Emailing word processing files around strikes me as very last
| century.
| anotherman554 wrote:
| Trial lawyers need to format their legal documents to a
| specific set of guidelines and file them with the court.
| That isn't what a wiki is for.
| upofadown wrote:
| Wiki is marked up text. So it would be translated into a
| document guaranteed to meet those guidelines with no
| extra effort. That is exactly what a wiki is for.
| anotherman554 wrote:
| A template in Microsft Word already has the formatting
| without extra effort. Word is pretty cheap, especially
| for a successful law firm. Why would anyone switch?
| pseingatl wrote:
| Not really. Most lawyers never use Styles. This means
| ToC's are a disaster. Autonumbering not required extra
| effort? Try to add an item to a parent list when there
| are no empty lines and you are in a sub-sublist. (i.e.,
| you're at (i) and you need to add a 4 to your 1,2,3,4 and
| skip the intermediate a, b, c. Good luck.
| selfhoster11 wrote:
| A wiki is hard to mail around and archive offline.
| pushingice wrote:
| I think the biggest risk here is that one of the lawyers will
| murder you. And being lawyers, they will find a way not to be
| convicted for it.
| bobdupneu wrote:
| French/Iranian lawyer here. Moved to Linux 5 years ago (from OS
| X) because Apple kept changing my workflow and suppressing
| functionality.
|
| Libre office proved to be better than Mac Word (better support
| for Persian and so called complex languages) and than windows
| word (could open old word documents that word itself couldn't
| open any more!).
|
| Regarding ScanSnap, I replaced it with a Brother multifunctional
| printer that scans to an sftp folder which is watched by
| ocrmypdf. I get to one touch scan a document without logging in a
| computer. When I need the document it's there for me as an OCRed
| and cleaned PDF. Super convenient.
|
| Replaced Word with latex. Our contracts are generated with latex
| and smart: they check themselves up for coherency when the pdf is
| built.
|
| Overall no driver problem but you need to check before buying
| peripherals that they will be compatible with Linux.
|
| Updating the system is as easy as it could be. Installing
| software is a breeze with 'yay'. Arch Linux is _very_ well
| documented and when encountering a hurdle chances are that the
| solution is already in the wiki.
|
| On the server side, CentOS proved super stable and a welcomed
| improvement over OSX server which terribly lacked documentation.
| pseingatl wrote:
| You might try Mellel, which has baked-in right-left language
| support. (You'd probably have to buy it from France though). I
| haven't tested its collaboration feature, but if you want to
| switch from L-R to R-L, Mellel is your friend.
|
| Merci.
| titanomachy wrote:
| Running such a setup would seem to require a professional level
| of competence in systems administration. Do you find it
| challenging to maintain that alongside your legal expertise?
| bobdupneu wrote:
| It is an investment in time and knowledge. But you know that
| your investment will not be wiped out because it doesn't fit
| any more in Apple's or Microsoft's business plan. My workflow
| has become very stable since my switch to linux and
| opensource. Sure the software has quirks but you can always
| find workarounds. When I used Windows, I remember that I
| needed more clicks to do the same thing with every new
| version as Microsoft buried functionality in successive
| layers of UI. All in all I would say that I'm much more
| productive when working on a case, at the expense of spending
| some of my free time learning sysadmin, emacs, latex, etc.
| But it's fun and I love it. You definitely need to have a
| level of interest in tech to go all linux in your firm.
| throwawayapples wrote:
| Not a lawyer, but once you've acquired that knowledge, you
| have it forever. It's not like LaTeX changes very often
| (unlike, for example, Microsoft Word)
| kspacewalk2 wrote:
| Microsoft Word is also quite stable, certainly in terms of
| functionality and especially backwards compatibility. They
| know how much money they make just from the immense inertia
| of being in the lead for 30+ years, and they don't kill off
| that golden goose.
| throwawayapples wrote:
| Re-learning where a particular feature is hidden in the
| menus every few years has been an interesting experience.
|
| Microsoft is even implementing (yet another) new UI right
| now:
|
| https://www.theverge.com/2021/7/7/22565676/microsoft-new-
| off...
| pseingatl wrote:
| LaTeX is great for typesetting documents; easy to work with
| autonumbering, even nested and subnested lists. There's
| even a Koma-script package for legal documents (jura). But
| Word does a better job of redlining. And it is the
| standard, though there are a few offices that still use
| Wordperfect for the "Reveal Codes" feature. If your output
| is paper or a paper substitute like pdf, you can use any
| word processor. But if you need to collaborate, you need a
| 100% compatible Word processor. On Linux, it's Softmaker
| Gmbh's Textmaker. 100% compatible and a lot cheaper than
| Word. Odd that no one has mentioned it.
| tyingq wrote:
| I guess it depends on the firm and what they do, but MS Word,
| with "track changes" and exchanging red-lined passages of text in
| a contract seems really common. I don't see that working well
| across law firms, without using MS Word.
| blodkorv wrote:
| So what distro and DE are they using?
| ginko wrote:
| The screens in the photo say Debian.
| laumars wrote:
| The distro is mentioned several times throughout the article
| and even featured in the screenshots: Debian.
|
| I didn't spot the DE but I might have missed it because I
| largely skimmed the article.
| WaitWaitWha wrote:
| Excellent article.
|
| I would like to read a line or two explaining how this law-firm
| contributes to the F/LOSS community.
| fsflover wrote:
| By using FLOSS and spreading information about it?
| tiahura wrote:
| I disagree. Lawyer and Linux user since downloading Slackware 1.x
| from tsx11 many moons ago.
|
| 1. Libreoffice is still not comparable to Word 6 (circa 93).
|
| 2. Outlook - With several dozen lines of VBA, and a little
| customization, Outlook becomes a full blown case management
| system.
|
| 3. Acrobat Pro.
|
| 4. Fujitsu SnapScan - Scanner that every (smart) small firm uses.
| Not Twain. Linux drivers exist, but functionality isn't there.
|
| These are just some of the roadblocks. Maybe someday MS will
| release a Office for Linux.
| agumonkey wrote:
| Libre Office is really lacking and lagging compared to
| MSOffice. I wanted to patch some stuff that need love.
| teddyh wrote:
| ITYM "Fujitsu ScanSnap".
| antb123 wrote:
| Fujitsu automated scanner I got working pretty well.
|
| Agree with the rest.
|
| I mostly think Lawyers don't really care about technology
| (except good research tools) and billing tools.
| pseingatl wrote:
| No need to wait: Textmaker by Softmaker is part of a 100%
| compatible, native-Linux suite.
| fsflover wrote:
| > 1. Libreoffice is still not comparable to Word 6 (circa 93).
|
| And it can't be, because Microsoft does not allow that to
| happen.
| beermonster wrote:
| has anyone here used decoded.legal? They do appear from time to
| time in articles on theregister. Would be tempted to try their
| services at some point.
| n_decoded_legal wrote:
| Feel free to drop me a line and have a chat! Contact details
| are in the blog post.
| thanatos519 wrote:
| I'm curious as to what scanner /needs/ MacOS. I have yet to meet
| a scanner that VueScan doesn't support. I'm a mild free software
| zealot, VueScan is such a gem that I was more than happy to pay
| for it. (this comment not sponsored, really!)
| pseingatl wrote:
| If you're using Linux, you don't have to wait for Microsoft to
| put out Office for Linux. There is already a 100% compatible
| native Linux suite made by Softmaker in Germany and called
| Textmaker (the Word program) and Softmaker Office for the suite.
| (Not affiliated with the company, just a user).
| clircle wrote:
| Word, powerpoint, Teams... can't all these just run in the
| browser now? Why futz with Libreoffice?
| fartcannon wrote:
| Consider a future where Microsoft will eventually build co-
| pilot for office documents based on all the crap stored in
| office applications/onedrive.
| clircle wrote:
| Consider a present where lawyers just need to get their work
| done
| fartcannon wrote:
| Luckily both can be done without Microsoft, eh?
| selfhoster11 wrote:
| No, thank you. I prefer emulated Windows native apps over web
| apps, and that's despite virtualisation and seamless app
| delivery being a giant pain in the ass for as long as I can
| remember. Web apps have worse latency and feature sets even if
| they didn't have a worse resource consumption.
| juniperplant wrote:
| I think the online version of Microsoft Office is not as
| feature-complete as the offline one. That, and performance is
| surely worse on large documents.
| ciurca wrote:
| I was thinking about Windows/macOS being the standard choice for
| most folks. Nowadays, people that mainly use the browser for
| their work/life stuff could just use some Linux distro like
| Ubuntu. The standard choice for standard people should probably
| become an easy to use Linux distro.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Browser is the new X-Windows/telnet thin client, the OS is
| meaningless.
|
| Problem is that those kind of people will also buy a hardware
| XYZ at the shopping mall and the experience won't be like on
| Windows/macOS when they plug it at home.
| luke2m wrote:
| > The standard choice for standard people should probably
| become an easy to use Linux distro.
|
| More and more, it is becoming exactly that with Chrome OS.
| dddddaviddddd wrote:
| Android as well, to some extent.
| thomastjeffery wrote:
| That seems to be the goal of Chrome OS.
|
| Unfortunately, Chrome OS prioritizes simplicity over
| functionality, so most of the non-technical users I talk to
| complain that it's not enough to replace windows.
|
| Something like Ubuntu with a really good wine interface would
| be much more valuable to the average user.
| Mikeb85 wrote:
| > really good wine interface
|
| Do people even use wine for anything that's not gaming?
| Also nowadays Steam Proton takes care of that.
| rvba wrote:
| Do people use browsers for their work stuff?
|
| I thought most non programmers usually use: email, chat, some
| ERP, some CMS, spreadhseets, spreadsheets, spreadsheets, some
| word processing software and maybe some project management tool
| like Jira (it seems to starting to be adopted outside of IT).
|
| It seems that every company has some data in ERP and few
| various other databases, but then there are hundreds of various
| Excel spreadsheets and Word documents. I think there are decent
| Word replacements (but can they really work in a browser when
| the documents have more than dew pages?), but Im not convinced
| that Excel has anything good enough (I tried few). Google
| sheets probably is the best alternative due to its multi-user
| features, but I dont think it is a good daily driver: too laggy
| with big files, also problematic when one file collects data
| from other files.
|
| Maybe I am a bit skewed, but it seems most work is more Excel
| heavy: lists, lists, lists of everything.
|
| On a side note MS could make Excel so much better in few areas.
|
| Also "downloading something from ERP to Excel, reworking it and
| uploading back" is something that seems to happen in most
| companies that I know (as long as they have an ERP, or even
| financial software).
|
| There is a lot of money for some better Acess replacement
| though. Lots of companies need small databases, but it is hard
| to build them for non programmers. That's why "excel as a
| database"..
| warner25 wrote:
| Where I work (US Department of Defense), we depend on
| PowerPoint more than anything. We recently got O365 which
| includes the PowerPoint web application, but the web
| application is still very weak compared to the desktop
| application. Anything beyond editing some text on a slide, or
| creating a very simple (mostly text) slide, in the web
| application is just horrible if not impossible. This is
| really a shame, because the ability for multiple people to
| open a PowerPoint file in O365 and do simultaneous editing is
| an amazing leap forward. Version control has always been a
| problem for us as we endlessly email PowerPoint files back
| and forth, or store them on SharePoint or simple file
| servers.
|
| I've mostly used LibreOffice (and OpenOffice before that) on
| my personal machine at home, but I wouldn't dare depend on it
| to handle the complex PowerPoint files that we pass around at
| work.
|
| Edited to add: I guess we equally depend on fillable PDFs
| (often digitally signed with our smart cards). For that, I
| gave up on trying to find a good native solution in Linux
| after Adobe stopped making Acrobat Reader available in 2013.
| [deleted]
| michnaugh1 wrote:
| Another lawyer here. I've been successfully running Ubuntu for my
| practice for the past five years. Currently on 21.10. Crossover
| Office takes care of the Word problem but I mostly use
| LibreOffice. Word is useful for appellate briefs and Table of
| Authorities. For Crossover, I need to be in X11, not Wayland.
| Otherwise, it's entirely boring and seamless. Brother ADS-1700W
| scanner works with Document Scanner. Thunderbird 91 is great for
| encrypted email. It's really not an inconvenience to use Ubuntu
| in an office.
|
| Edit: Document Scanner not Scan.
| elchief wrote:
| IIRC, UNIX started at Bell Labs as a legal document processing
| system. However, this was just an excuse for Ritchie to work on a
| game he liked on Multics
| pjmlp wrote:
| That was the excuse to sponsor the port into PDP-11 hardware,
| UNIX started on a PDP-7.
| __turbobrew__ wrote:
| This is the correct answer according to Brian W Kernighan's
| book "UNIX: A History and a Memoir" page 41
| smhenderson wrote:
| Wasn't it Ken Thompson who did the game thing? I mean, I know
| they worked it all out together but I thought it was Ken who
| wanted to do the Space Travel game...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Travel_(video_game)
| jjice wrote:
| That's what I was thinking as well. There's also an interview
| somewhere on YouTube with Ken Thompson talking about this
| game and he goes off on a bit of a tangent talking about it.
| Really fun to hear him talk about it.
| smhenderson wrote:
| Yeah, seems they had a lot of fun with it and at the same
| time they were making history. It's a great story! I've
| always been quite fascinated by computer history, Unix
| history in particular.
| proxysna wrote:
| I remember reading something like that a few years back on
| Reddit. I always was a bit confused why would office tasks
| require a windows installation with office on it until i saw how
| unnecessarily tightly some tasks and tools are coupled with
| microsoft stack.
|
| Found the post i saw.
| https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/9cxwhy/i_am_a_lawyer...
| submeta wrote:
| Whenever I read an article like this (,,I am a CEO, I run my
| company on Emacs / Linux / Xyz") I am reminded of Peter Drucker's
| book ,,The Effective Executive". He distills five (?) behaviours,
| one of them: ,,Effective executives start out with the question,
| "What results are expected of me?" rather than with the work to
| be done, let alone with its techniques and tools."
|
| Use whatever works to get the job done.
| throwawayapples wrote:
| But that doesn't seem to be as useful or relevant advice in
| this case, because _all_ of these tools (or operating systems)
| can perform the baseline of the job (creating and sharing
| documents, etc.)
|
| One might have initially lower resistance than others, but
| another might have better long-term results and be more
| efficient.
|
| As an executive, why would you focus on making your factory be
| more efficient when your executive team's workflow was also
| inefficient?
|
| In a law firm, the workflow essentially _is_ the factory floor
| for the product being manufactured.
|
| It may be a difficult question to answer, but that doesn't mean
| that it shouldn't be asked.
| selfhoster11 wrote:
| For some value of "works". I would never entrust a document
| longer than 20 pages to Word for editing, because I've had bad
| experiences. I'd much sooner deal with LaTeX, even though it is
| missing an easy way to do many things.
| sandGorgon wrote:
| has anyone used Softmaker Office ?
| https://www.softmaker.com/en/softmaker-office
|
| it is far more Word compliant than Libreoffice. Compatibility
| with MS Office is its #1 goal. It costs 80$.
|
| I have found it to be far far more better than Libreoffice
| honestly. I have actually installed it in a backoffice (using
| Fedora) and nobody has ever had compatibility issues with MS
| Office till today (the other side does not even realise it)
| 8K832d7tNmiQ wrote:
| > Screensharing can be a bit iffy, but I don't need to do this
| often, thankfully. And, if I switch from Wayland to X11, even if
| just for that session, I expect it will work better.
|
| I don't know about other chromium browsers, but you can do it on
| wayland compositor by enabling "WebRTC PipeWire support" flag on
| edge chromium.
| fsflover wrote:
| > "Exclusively" on Linux?
|
| > I'm struggling with a couple of bits on my mobile device, but
| my goal is to move away from my iPhone once I've resolved them.
| I'm close.
|
| I wonder if they are going to switch to GNU/Linux phones.
| n_decoded_legal wrote:
| > I wonder if they are going to switch to GNU/Linux phones.
|
| I've updated the post with a response and a link to some of the
| investigation I've done so far but, honestly, probably not - I
| can't make it work for my needs.
| syats wrote:
| Silly but honest question: why hasn't google docs taken over the
| legal world?
|
| I find g suite's collaborative editing waaay better than sending
| around docx/xlsx files with dates in the filenames.. and don't
| even get me started with that office365 thing.
| gigel82 wrote:
| AFAIK, MS Office has had multi-user coauthoring for a while,
| even between their (free) online apps and the desktop apps. I
| know I've used it in Word for sure, not sure about Excel or
| PowerPoint. It's actually pretty good, though I still wish MS
| would launch a Linux native version of Office (the web Word is
| good enough for reading and making small changes but not really
| for daily driving).
| Mikeb85 wrote:
| I can understand not wanting sensitive documents in the cloud.
| It's also way too easy to share Google docs (good for
| collaboration, bad for confidentiality).
|
| I'm more surprised something like LibreOffice or Emacs Org-Mode
| hasn't taken over. You'd think lawyers would want to truly
| 'own' the software they use for sensitive documents and not
| rely on a company who may or may not have spyware in the
| software.
| Isthatablackgsd wrote:
| Google Docs do not have the 1:1 feature parity as Word and
| LibreOffice. Law Firms are particular with their documents and
| templates. It have to be consistent across word processors
| which Google Docs lack. Google Docs is a ultra-lite version of
| Word/LibreOffice.
|
| Workplace collaborative editing is superior, you are right. At
| the same time, it lacks a lot of thing in other way.
| pushingice wrote:
| My wife is a lawyer. The biggest issue is that they have
| proprietary document management systems for security. G-suite
| is just as big a risk as O365.
| pseingatl wrote:
| Google can and will cancel your account for a host of reasons
| and there is no recourse, no customer service and when that
| happens, you're out of luck. You don't have control over your
| documents and the Bar mandates that you do. Of course, you can
| back everything up, but then why use Google in the first place.
| webmobdev wrote:
| Perhaps because of confidentiality? Lawyers would best
| understand the pros and cons of Google's Terms and conditions,
| and are probably the only one who read it.
| 2Gkashmiri wrote:
| This is nice but I have suggestions and questions.
|
| Case management. I use "cliniccases" which does most of the work
| but it is geared towards law clinics and does not have "billing".
| That can be improved but that's something.
|
| What do you use for crm ? Is that self hosted too ?
|
| There are softwares like cryptpad that solves collaborative
| editing problem for those used to google docs.
|
| I use mailinabox for my emails and that has been quite great.
|
| Libreoffice all the way. It has improved immensely. The import
| export to docx is becoming better and better.
|
| I use a network shared drive to host all clients data, working
| papers and such. I have been thinking of " nextcloud" but I do
| not see the benefit.
| bogwog wrote:
| > I have been thinking of "nextcloud" but I do not see the
| benefit.
|
| Nextcloud does a lot and supports "apps" for things like Google
| Docs-style editors in the browser. You can even do encrypted
| messaging, voice, and video chat with it. More here:
| https://apps.nextcloud.com/
|
| If all you need is network storage, it's definitely overkill.
| PascLeRasc wrote:
| > A scanner still relies on macOS so, even though it's a
| virtualised macOS instance running atop Linux, it's still macOS.
|
| Many people believe this violates the macOS license. Do you have
| a different read on it?
| https://www.apple.com/legal/sla/docs/macOS1014.pdf
| david_allison wrote:
| > A scanner still relies on macOS so, even though it's a
| virtualised macOS instance running atop Linux (on an Mac Mini),
| it's still macOS.
|
| Note the parens. It's on Apple-branded hardware, so IANAL, but
| that's more likely to be kosher.
| named-user wrote:
| It does not. As long as you own the physical hardware you are
| okay to install on virtualized hardware.
| skuhn wrote:
| The scenario from the post is acceptable only because it is
| running on a Mac Mini running Linux. If it were running on
| any non-Apple hardware it would not be permissible -- even if
| he bought an Mac Mini and never used to attempt to "buy a
| seat", because the Apple license states:
|
| "The grants set forth in this License do not permit you to,
| and you agree not to, install, use or run the Apple Software
| on any non-Apple-branded computer, or to enable others to do
| so."
| ghastmaster wrote:
| I would love to do this at the small firm I work for. The biggest
| problem is the attorneys and staff not willing to learn new
| systems or methods. It is not a software capability or
| compatibility problem.
| jedimastert wrote:
| I remember working as a Systems Analyst for city government. It
| was always super hard to predict who would and wouldn't like
| change. for the most part it didn't matter what the change was,
| they either had an affinity for it or not.
|
| Our 70-odd year old archivist learned how to use the new OCR
| software and was ingesting tax documents faster than with the
| old system in under a week. The 30 year old finance guys would
| dig their heels in. The mayor always followed instructions, the
| city manager had no clue how computers actually worked but had
| no clue they had no clue. You just never know.
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