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Running a Law Firm on Linux

decoded.legal

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Re: Running a Law Firm on Linux

#111

Post by Mikeb85 »

syats wrote: post #86

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.

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.

Re: Running a Law Firm on Linux

#112

Post by beermonster »

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…

> 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?

Re: Running a Law Firm on Linux

#113

Post by upofadown »

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.

Re: Running a Law Firm on Linux

#114

Post by beermonster »

stackbutterflow wrote: post #106
massysett wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

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.

It does seem there are some cool lawyers out there!

Re: Running a Law Firm on Linux

#116

Post by warner25 »

rvba wrote: post #39
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.

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 Exce…

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.

Re: Running a Law Firm on Linux

#117

Post by traceroute66 »

upofadown wrote: post #113

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.

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.

Re: Running a Law Firm on Linux

#118

Post by andylynch »

upofadown wrote: post #113

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.

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.

Re: Running a Law Firm on Linux

#119

Post by pdabbadabba »

tiahura wrote: post #73
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Still privileged. Jurisdictions vary, but generally the question is wether the broader dissemination was intentional.

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.

Re: Running a Law Firm on Linux

#120

Post by mijoharas »

senkora wrote: post #72
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…

Note that Zoom has a native Linux client that works well.

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.

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