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Running a Law Firm on Linux

decoded.legal

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Re: Running a Law Firm on Linux

#151

Post by flurdy »

senkora wrote: post #126
mijoharas wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That’s fair. My experience is with Ubuntu, GNOME, and X Windows, which is probably the happy path for Linux support right now.

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.

Re: Running a Law Firm on Linux

#152

Post by throwawayapples »

ncphil wrote: post #124
stackbutterflow wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 g…

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.

Re: Running a Law Firm on Linux

#153

Post by titanomachy »

bobdupneu wrote: post #147

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…

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?

Re: Running a Law Firm on Linux

#154

Post by upofadown »

wvenable wrote: post #149
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.

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.

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.

Re: Running a Law Firm on Linux

#155

Post by throwawayapples »

titanomachy wrote: post #153
bobdupneu wrote: post #147

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…

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?

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)

Re: Running a Law Firm on Linux

#156

Post by seltzered_ »

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.

Re: Running a Law Firm on Linux

#157

Post by kspacewalk2 »

throwawayapples wrote: post #155
titanomachy wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

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)

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.

Re: Running a Law Firm on Linux

#158

Post by Ottolay »

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…

These days the online version of Office365 Word is pretty good. I would 100% pay for and use Office365 over LibreOffice on Linux.

Re: Running a Law Firm on Linux

#159

Post by throwawayapples »

submeta wrote: post #131

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.

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.

Re: Running a Law Firm on Linux

#160

Post by gbrown »

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…

There’s a desktop Zoom client. Also, the web office 365 Word works… okish.
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