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Running a Law Firm on Linux

decoded.legal

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Re: Running a Law Firm on Linux

#51

Post by robertlagrant »

terminalcommand wrote: post #13

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 chan…

> 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.

Re: Running a Law Firm on Linux

#52

Post by tiahura »

Shadonototra wrote: post #36
terminalcommand wrote: post #13

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 chan…

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

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?

Re: Running a Law Firm on Linux

#53

Post by agumonkey »

tiahura wrote: post #20

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 t…

Libre Office is really lacking and lagging compared to MSOffice. I wanted to patch some stuff that need love.

Re: Running a Law Firm on Linux

#54

Post by thomastjeffery »

luke2m wrote: post #9
ciurca wrote: post #6

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.

> 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.

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.

Re: Running a Law Firm on Linux

#55

Post by clircle »

fartcannon wrote: post #23
clircle wrote: post #5

Word, powerpoint, Teams... can't all these just run in the browser now? Why futz with Libreoffice?

Consider a future where Microsoft will eventually build co-pilot for office documents based on all the crap stored in office applications/onedrive.

Consider a present where lawyers just need to get their work done

Re: Running a Law Firm on Linux

#56

Post by Shadonototra »

mavhc wrote: post #42
Shadonototra wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I thought the key was to make a load of cash and/or help people with their lawyery needs

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?

Re: Running a Law Firm on Linux

#57

Post by npongratz »

tubby12345 wrote: post #44
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 adopt…

>The early adopters have problems > LibreOffice Initial release: 25 January 2011; 10 years ago don't think it's getting solved mated

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

Re: Running a Law Firm on Linux

#59

Post by antb123 »

tiahura wrote: post #20

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 t…

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.

Re: Running a Law Firm on Linux

#60

Post by pjmlp »

mavhc wrote: post #33
pjmlp wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Isn't Data Science a large percentage of Python usage?

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.

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