Coding for Lawyers • Hacker News Board

Re: Coding for Lawyers

#41

Post by the_watcher » Mon, Sep 15, 2014, 7:58 PM UTC

pinkyand wrote: post #33

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/

I don't think the point is to offer them a tool, the point is to offer them the option of some coding education designed specifically for their background. Agreed that the tool you mentioned is probably more useful to more lawyers, I just think this is targeting a segment looking to go beyond a tool that does the work for them

Re: Coding for Lawyers

#42

Post by the_watcher » Mon, Sep 15, 2014, 8:05 PM UTC

I haven't gone through this yet, but I have a liberal arts degree and did a year of law school before dropping out to work on the internet. I'm competent in HTML/CSS, basically competent with Rails (have built very rudimentary web apps), but working full time in online marketing.

If this is actually an intro to coding for lawyers, it's an intro to programming for those with no technical background whatsoever. Which is really cool (not that those don't exist, but specifically designing this for a career path full of liberal arts types, not just for those with no experience, is interesting). I like that they start with regex and HTML/markdown, since, while they are not what anyone would call software development, they are a simple, quickly useful example of the basic concept of coding - expressing human instructions in a language designed to be understood by a machine. They also are some of the more quickly usable "coding" concepts, HTML & Markdown in the obvious cases, but regex familiarity makes Google Analytics much more powerful.

Looking forward to working through it and seeing what it's like. I sent it on to a few law school friends who had been somewhat interested in tech skills too.

Re: Coding for Lawyers

#43

Post by the_watcher » Mon, Sep 15, 2014, 8:12 PM UTC

jackweirdy wrote: post #30

adamc wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a pretty loose analogy. Law doesn't execute. I guess you could think of it as source, but the execution engine is a lot more, um, variable.

Not to mention society changes law, and when society doesn't like law, they can ditch it and make a new one

That's an extremely optimistic view of how easy it is to ditch laws.

Re: Coding for Lawyers

#44

Post by MWil » Tue, Sep 16, 2014, 12:58 AM UTC

the_watcher wrote: post #40

igurari wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

our mandatory legal research class covered wildcard searches and "w/" x number of words/characters

Re: Coding for Lawyers

#45

Post by HeyLaughingBoy » Tue, Sep 16, 2014, 1:31 AM UTC

mountainair wrote: post #34

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…

I doubt that.

I'm negotiating a contract with a software subcontractor and I had to involve our legal department. The lawyer I'm dealing with quite clearly understands software (speaks knowledgeably about OSS, although I don't remember if he's actually a programmer), but I can't think of a single case where programming knowledge would have been useful. Instead, I'm the outsider, because everything that comes up for discussion is an issue of Contract Law and nothing specific to Software.

Re: Coding for Lawyers

#46

Post by the_watcher » Tue, Sep 16, 2014, 1:41 AM UTC

MWil wrote: post #44

the_watcher wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

our mandatory legal research class covered wildcard searches and "w/" x number of words/characters

I guess mine covered wildcards and some search operators, now that I look back. Nothing that remotely prepared me for learning regex though.

Re: Coding for Lawyers

#47

Post by squar1sm » Wed, Sep 24, 2014, 5:52 PM UTC

tkiley wrote: post #35

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.

Nice insight. I liked that.