Coding for Lawyers • Hacker News Board

Re: Coding for Lawyers

#31

Post by rjtavares » Mon, Sep 15, 2014, 5:04 PM UTC

jroes wrote: post #27

I like the idea of niching down for a use case, but I've never met a lawyer I thought had the time or energy to devote to learning programming. I'm also having trouble understanding how a lawyer might use their programming skill to improve their daily lives. It seems to me that other folks on a lawyer's staff would be more likely to be interested in this subject and use it to the firm's benefit.

Programming is like cooking. You don't have to know it, but it comes in handy and you can impress your friends with it. Just don't thing you can open a restaurant just because you make a great risotto.

Re: Coding for Lawyers

#32

Post by VanL » Mon, Sep 15, 2014, 5:09 PM UTC

jroes wrote: post #27

I like the idea of niching down for a use case, but I've never met a lawyer I thought had the time or energy to devote to learning programming. I'm also having trouble understanding how a lawyer might use their programming skill to improve their daily lives. It seems to me that other folks on a lawyer's staff would be more likely to be interested in this subject and use it to the firm's benefit.

There are lots of things you can use code for as a lawyer, if you just think about it as "automating stuff." I wrote custom code all the time when I was at the law firm (and still do, but I'm in a more technical role now).

It was fun to take something where hordes of associates were being used as slightly smarter computers and automate it - there were several times when people were amazed that I turned out a properly formatted in-depth diligence report about multi-hundred-patent portfolios within a couple of days.

In my spare time, I built a natural language processing + graph analysis tool to help look for patent prior art. I spoke about it at PyCon - see " rel="nofollow">http://pyvideo.org/video/425/pycon-2011--how-to-kill-a-paten....

Right now I use an internal Github instance to manage CCLAs at Rackspace, and its just a matter of time until I automate some more stuff here.

Re: Coding for Lawyers

#33

Post by pinkyand » Mon, Sep 15, 2014, 5:19 PM UTC

That's a good idea , but it could be greatly improved by offering lawyers(which are surely time strapped) , a tool like RegexMagic[1] , which really simplifies the learning needed and lets one easily understand complex regex's.

[1]http://www.regexbuddy.com/

Re: Coding for Lawyers

#34

Post by mountainair » Mon, Sep 15, 2014, 5:28 PM UTC

jroes wrote: post #27

I like the idea of niching down for a use case, but I've never met a lawyer I thought had the time or energy to devote to learning programming. I'm also having trouble understanding how a lawyer might use their programming skill to improve their daily lives. It seems to me that other folks on a lawyer's staff would be more likely to be interested in this subject and use it to the firm's benefit.

Lawyers don't necessarily need to code to improve their own lives - but they MUST learn to code to improve their relationships with their clients.

If there is any aspect of programming involved in any contract or lawsuit (which is becoming the norm), the lawyer absolutely must have at least a vague grasp of the tech to be effective. Too many lawyers and judges are just utterly perplexed, and it leads to bad law that makes things more difficult for everyone down the road.

Even the most basic understanding of programming would be so so helpful, if only because it makes the world of computers slightly less alien to your average legal practitioner.

Re: Coding for Lawyers

#35

Post by tkiley » Mon, Sep 15, 2014, 5:49 PM UTC

I'm intrigued by the parallels between software engineering (scripting, really) and legal work.

In a sense, a legal agreement seems like a cross-platform piece of software that is "executed" in the minds of the signing parties, their business associates, and occasionally the court system. Given that context, I'm a little surprised that lawyers and engineers tend to communicate and think so differently.

Re: Coding for Lawyers

#36

Post by jorgeleo » Mon, Sep 15, 2014, 5:49 PM UTC

Mithaldu wrote: post #4

jorgeleo wrote: post #3

Lets start teaching what code is by ... chapter 1 Regex???? If the author is reading this: WHY? out of all the horrors, why?

That question is answered in foot note one of chapter 1: http://codingforlawyers.com/chapters/ch1/ Maybe try reading a thing before breaking out the multi-punctuation and caps? ;)

LOL!

He lost me at REGEX in the title... it gives me an allergic rash

Re: Coding for Lawyers

#37

Post by adelevie » Mon, Sep 15, 2014, 6:05 PM UTC

barkingcat wrote: post #7

Mithaldu wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That question is answered in foot note one of chapter 1: http://codingforlawyers.com/chapters/ch1/ Maybe try reading a thing before breaking out the multi-punctuation and caps? ;)

I would actually vote version control as chapter 1 of Coding for Lawyers. Also not "coding" per se, but immensely important - anything to get past "importantdocument.version.13.3.barkingcat.doc" hell.

I sent a pull request with a chapter on diffs[1]. They're important in their own right, but also as a good precursor to the inevitable git/github/version control chapter[2].

[1] (https://github.com/vzvenyach/codingforlawyers/pull/10) [2] https://github.com/vzvenyach/codingforlawyers/issues/5

Re: Coding for Lawyers

#38

Post by adultSwim » Mon, Sep 15, 2014, 6:42 PM UTC

Typo:

[0-9]{1,2} U\.S\.\C. § \d+(\w+)?( \([0-9]{4}\))? Should probably be:

[0-9]{1,2} U\.S\.C\. § \d+(\w+)?( \([0-9]{4}\))?

\C. -> C\.

Great work! The line between computer user and computer programmer needs to be blurred. Many people who use computers would benefit from knowing a little programming. Just look at how useful Excel is.

Re: Coding for Lawyers

#39

Post by xyclos » Mon, Sep 15, 2014, 7:02 PM UTC

one of my cs profs was also a lawyer who does consulting for startups in addition to teaching coding. he used the same example to teach us regex.

Re: Coding for Lawyers

#40

Post by the_watcher » Mon, Sep 15, 2014, 7:56 PM UTC

igurari wrote: post #25

hobs wrote: post #22

This guys is a laywer, with a mechanical engineering degree, and does coding on the side. He was also the guy who wrote the SCOTUS opinion tracking software that was all over HN a few months ago. Seems like a cool guy, and unlike some posters I think regex are definitely something to start people off on. Many people who are non-technical but have used a computer understand the concept of a wildcard operator, you just…

Most lawyers understand the concept of a regex, so I'd agree that its a good place to start. Law students are taught how to search for caselaw using Terms and Connectors, which is a simplified form of regex: http://lscontent.westlaw.com/images/content/WLNT&CSearching.... So they already have a lot of familiarity with the topic, and this just makes it easy for them to understand that coding is not so foreign as they m…

Having been to law school in the last 3 years (would have taken the bar 2 months ago had I finished), you are overestimating how many law students actually learn how to perform Westlaw/Lexis searches like that. You only really need to use them in a few select classes, and no one really attends anything more than the mandatory trainings (which cover things like how to log in).