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Running a Law Firm on Linux

decoded.legal

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Re: Running a Law Firm on Linux

#191

Post by n_decoded_legal »

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.

> I'm curious to know how you and the parent comment came about to know about HN, what an IDE is, Debian.

I started using Linux while I was at university, reading law. But I spent as much time with computer science and computer engineering friends as I did with other law students - in fact, probably a lot more - and spent plenty of time tinkering with servers and networks. And that’s stood me in good stead for tinkering with legal stuff to do with networks, servers, and related things.

Re: Running a Law Firm on Linux

#192

Post by gigel82 »

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.

AFAIK, MS Office has had multi-user coauthoring for a while, even between their (free) online apps and the desktop apps. I know I've used it in Word for sure, not sure about Excel or PowerPoint. It's actually pretty good, though I still wish MS would launch a Linux native version of Office (the web Word is good enough for reading and making small changes but not really for daily driving).

Re: Running a Law Firm on Linux

#193

Post by [deleted] »

hpcjoe wrote: post #107
benbristow wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Zoom client on Linux works and is IMO more reliable (e.g. doesn't BSOD me) The Windows client has never BSODed on me. Sounds like a problem at your end.

I'm not the only one at my co that has experienced it BSODing. Windows generally BSODs on work machine at least once a week. Windows 10 patched monthly, locked down as hard as a machine can be under Windows. 30 plus years of Windows tech has taught me not to trust it with anything important.

[deleted]

Re: Running a Law Firm on Linux

#194

Post by ghaff »

n_decoded_legal wrote: post #186
ghaff wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He says it has worked for him so far--with only minor issues. Personally, in that situation, if I really didn't want to use Windows for everything (and I've barely used Windows for the past 10 years), I'd probably get a Windows system for running Word and any other necessary Windows software and have my computer system of choice for everything else. In the grand scheme of things, computers are cheap these days. (Or a…

> He says it has worked for him so far--with only minor issues. I'd say the same about Word. Mostly fine, but some minor issues, usually linked with auto-numbering getting in a fluster, or deciding to turn all the numbering into black blocks. But I definitely prefer Word's flexibility for displaying tracked changes.

I mostly use Google Docs these days and, in general, I'm a fan of how it's focused on the 90-95% use case. But every now and then I run into something it just can't do or that it does relatively poorly. (Revision tracking from multiple people in particular, complex section breaks of various kinds, doubtless other things.)

Re: Running a Law Firm on Linux

#195

Post by pdabbadabba »

tiahura wrote: post #150
pdabbadabba wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What’s your practice area? Most big law firms outsourced photocopying 15 years ago. Not to mention outsourced doc review and ediscovery hosting. See generally FRE 502(b).

I'm a regulatory lawyer working in telecom and commercial space policy, though I'm not sure it's my practice area that's primarily driving my thinking here. (Though it may also be true that, since I am not primarily a litigator, I have different confidentiality concerns in mind that some other lawyers. My firm and I do take these issues very very very seriously--perhaps in ways that would be impractical for a different firm in a different area of practice.)

Although I'm certainly aware of the proliferation of outsourced doc review and e-discovery, I would hope that the firms using these services are reviewing their agreements with these providers to make absolutely sure that they do not include language like GP posited: that they may "keep a copy of it and sell the contents to third parties or use it for advertising." Whatever the implications may be for attorney-client privilege, this also creates a risk of actual disclosure to hostile third parties, which would be a huge issue if you were working on anything commercially sensitive.

I'd also note that, depending on one's practice, you might also find yourself adverse to national governments. That creates a whole new risk profile with respect to could-hosted document management services, etc.

Re: Running a Law Firm on Linux

#196

Post by pseingatl »

Styles? Not exactly. Unless the people you're sharing the document with have the same defined styles, your "normal" won't look like theirs, nor will their "body" look like yours, never mind headings, where H1 can look like H2 which looks nothing like what you've got.

Re: Running a Law Firm on Linux

#197

Post by throwawayapples »

kspacewalk2 wrote: post #157
throwawayapples wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-learning where a particular feature is hidden in the menus every few years has been an interesting experience.

Microsoft is even implementing (yet another) new UI right now:

https://www.theverge.com/2021/7/7/22565676/microsoft-new-off...

Re: Running a Law Firm on Linux

#198

Post by pseingatl »

kaffee wrote: post #144
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…

What's the current best tool for generating redlines from two PDF/Word documents? Makes sense that this would be important (e.g., when comparing contract versions).

It's not Word. Word also doesn't do a compare with pdf, which has to first be converted to Word. Add a few new paragraphs and the comparison fails.

Re: Running a Law Firm on Linux

#199

Post by pseingatl »

c0nsumer wrote: post #93
sgc wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have written several 500 page documents in libreoffice both as sole author and as one of two or three primary contributors. It works quite well because it is easy to define styles and virtually never apply direct formatting. There would no doubt need to be a plugin to force this behavior in a large group. Multiple Indices and Tables of Contents were also well supported. More advanced tooling can still be used since…

> It works quite well because it is easy to define styles and virtually never apply direct formatting. This is one of the biggest mistakes people make in using Microsoft Office. It has an outstanding style/formatting system in, yet people will still manually mark up headers and whatnot, and then get frustrated when piled-up syntax changes have unexpected results. Define the styles and apply the styles and it works GR…

Styles? Not exactly. Unless the people you're sharing the document with have the same defined styles, your "normal" won't look like theirs, nor will their "body" look like yours, never mind headings, where H1 can look like H2 which looks nothing like what you've got.

Re: Running a Law Firm on Linux

#200

Post by pseingatl »

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)

LaTeX is great for typesetting documents; easy to work with autonumbering, even nested and subnested lists. There's even a Koma-script package for legal documents (jura). But Word does a better job of redlining. And it is the standard, though there are a few offices that still use Wordperfect for the "Reveal Codes" feature. If your output is paper or a paper substitute like pdf, you can use any word processor. But if you need to collaborate, you need a 100% compatible Word processor. On Linux, it's Softmaker Gmbh's Textmaker. 100% compatible and a lot cheaper than Word. Odd that no one has mentioned it.
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