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Running a Law Firm on Linux

decoded.legal

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Re: Running a Law Firm on Linux

#221

Post by jatone »

danielrhodes wrote: post #102
OJFord wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Git (VCS in general) seems like this absurd accidental secret of our profession. I use Fusion360 occasionally for hobby stuff, and its version 'control' is a joke, it's unfathomable to me how (especially since they're fellow engineers, technical people!) people can use and collaborate with it to build serious stuff. I think there's a lot of money to be made and a potential huge turning point in end user software for…

Attorneys don’t use Git, but they do use version control software. Examples are NetDocs, iManage, and even GDrive/Box/Dropbox (which are also document management systems). It largely depends on the firm. There are some differences between what they need and what software engineers need. Lawyers will sometimes use version control as layers in a release system, almost like development/staging/production (where producti…

> attorneys do not typically need to revert and once a document is executed, prior drafts aren’t really that important.

this isn't 100% true. lawyers very much care about changes in legal codes over time. its incredibly time consuming to do historical legal research given how legal code changes are recorded. strike paragraph 5, insert 'foo' in section 5.3.1. etc.

Re: Running a Law Firm on Linux

#222

Post by pseingatl »

stefan_ wrote: post #123
Shicholas wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if only lawyers used git, sigh. fighting word is almost like fighting the system itself - some courts require filing in .doc!

Is Word the biggest mistake of computing ever? I get it, in 1980 when you are trying to get adoption of your obscure machine, it helps to emulate what is de vogue in the real world. But now it's 2021, and there is zero reason anymore for anyone to "layout a letter" or similar nonsense like that. Computers are everywhere and the key to efficient processes, but we are stuck using them to make facsimiles of the World ci…

Ever tried to shoehorn ten or more footnotes into an email?

Re: Running a Law Firm on Linux

#223

Post by hitpointdrew »

pseingatl wrote: post #218
hitpointdrew wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also would think that Libre Office just wouldn’t cut it with all the track changes. It’s a bit of a shame that the industry is so cemented to Word, git is 1000 times superior than track changes IMO. But I understand that git has a bit of a technical hurdle that a lot of lawyers might struggle with.

Try Textmaker from Softmaker. 100% Word compatibility, $80, native Linux.

I am not a lawyer, and don’t work in law. I was just observing how that industry is cemented to Word. I personally hardly ever use word, and have no need for a Linux replacement for Word. My work is all plain text mostly in sublime or vim.

Re: Running a Law Firm on Linux

#224

Post by pseingatl »

Mikeb85 wrote: post #108
david422 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A long time ago I was using linux and created my resume in Libreoffice and sent it to various job postings as a Word doc. Never had any luck. Then years later I learned that what looked perfect (my resume) in Libreoffice looked pretty terrible when opened with official MS Word. I always wondered if that impacted my application. A guy that couldn't bother to format his resume appropriately.

I learned long ago to never send an editable format to anyone who's not going to edit it. Every device can open PDFs and see it exactly as it should be.

Of course, clients never know the facts as well as the lawyers. And lawyers never make mistakes for clients to edit. Yesterday I saw a document which claimed that a security agent had made available a $20 million dollar facility. The term they wanted--and would have corrected, was "Lender." There are a few programs that let you edit pdf's: Flexipdf is one of them. Otherwise, you get a paper copy with edits, or worse, an email with references to lines, which you can't correct because then the pagination changes.

Re: Running a Law Firm on Linux

#225

Post by pseingatl »

juniperplant wrote: post #77
david422 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A long time ago I was using linux and created my resume in Libreoffice and sent it to various job postings as a Word doc. Never had any luck. Then years later I learned that what looked perfect (my resume) in Libreoffice looked pretty terrible when opened with official MS Word. I always wondered if that impacted my application. A guy that couldn't bother to format his resume appropriately.

This is the case where I would have used PDF. Didn't employers accept that?

They use ATS. Think text.

Re: Running a Law Firm on Linux

#226

Post by luma »

rjzzleep wrote: post #205
luma wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have a system that is experiencing BSODs on the order of once a week, you have a _serious_ problem that is absolutely atypical of normal Windows behavior. Blaming the operating system hasn't brought you to a solution, perhaps the issue lies elsewhere.

I don't think you understand how enterprise managed windows machines work. They come full of very intrusive tooling and usually custom built windows images. Dell on the other hand - on of the largest suppliers of enterprise PCs - offers no warranties for any custom image Windows machines even if they use Dell official driver bundles. I once came into a Windows Enterprise shop with the same arrogance and thought I cou…

I don't directly deal with Windows desktops but am directly responsible for an estate which includes north of 40k Windows Server systems. As a result, I do have a pretty solid handle on managing Windows at scale (at least in the datacenter). We don't see a BSOD a week across that entire estate, let alone a single system.

BSODs are a sign that something is SERIOUSLY WRONG. Usually, failing hardware or sometimes shitty drivers. Almost never is it a sign of something fundamentally wrong with the operating system itself.

Re: Running a Law Firm on Linux

#227

Post by pseingatl »

wvenable wrote: post #176
upofadown wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Lawyers writing documents is much less like factory composing data than you seem to think. They very much treat it like writing and editing any other kind of written composition. Heck, a lot of lawyers actually dictate their work instead of typing themselves.

It actually reminds me of plumbing more than anything else, especially appellate briefs.

Unless and until you get the hang of dictating, your documents will be twice as long. And who is going to do this typing? Someone in Bangalore? Good luck with that.

Re: Running a Law Firm on Linux

#228

Post by pseingatl »

tiahura wrote: post #20

I disagree. Lawyer and Linux user since downloading Slackware 1.x from tsx11 many moons ago. 1. Libreoffice is still not comparable to Word 6 (circa 93). 2. Outlook - With several dozen lines of VBA, and a little customization, Outlook becomes a full blown case management system. 3. Acrobat Pro. 4. Fujitsu SnapScan - Scanner that every (smart) small firm uses. Not Twain. Linux drivers exist, but functionality isn’t t…

No need to wait: Textmaker by Softmaker is part of a 100% compatible, native-Linux suite.

Re: Running a Law Firm on Linux

#229

Post by bobdupneu »

ghastmaster wrote: post #78
bbqmaster999 wrote: post #14

Libreoffice subtly reformatting the documents sent to me by my divorce lawyer was not the most fun thing let me tell you.

At my small firm, we rarely(never?) send the actual word document to clients/businesses/lawyers/courts. The documents are always converted to PDF first.

I stopped sending word documents to our clients when one client silently changed a section of a document without telling me (he disabled tracking changes for that part of the document). The document was then rejected by the clerk because of that. As I was there I convinced the clerk to let me make manual amendments to the document with my good old pen and made it go through. I had to let the client know about the change to make sure he would accept it. I was surprised that he blamed me for the situation… Switched to pdf. Stopped the hypocrisy.

Re: Running a Law Firm on Linux

#230

Post by 908B64B197 »

Kessler83 wrote: post #165

I've used GNU/Linux in large, Windows/Mac dependent companies for 25 years. You need to convince the IT-department, and you need to survive the first week learning how to connect to whatever system is in place, but after that, it's free of incidents to the point of being boring. My advice for convincing the IT-department is to pick something that is known to be very secure and stable. I use Debian Stable. My advice f…

Why not use WSL?

You get all the benefits of a Windows machine (printing and whatever pre-installed software will just work) and a Linux environment.

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