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Running a Law Firm on Linux

decoded.legal

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Re: Running a Law Firm on Linux

#71

Post by Shadonototra »

tiahura wrote: post #52
Shadonototra wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People have no excuse nowadays.. MS Word? Setup QEMU and boot the VM whenever you need MS Word And look for alternatives You stuck with an OS that spy on your because you made yourself depending on their software -- I think there is a huge open market for open cloud based office suite Microsoft is stuck with their local software, we gotta be quick

I need Word all day. I need to copy and paste from excel and acrobat. I need merge from Outlook, etc. Most of what many many attorneys do involves Word. If everything you’re doing is in the VM, what’s the point?

> If everything you’re doing is in the VM, what’s the point?

If your goal is to run Linux as your host OS, then it solves the problem of not being able to do X with software Y

You can do everything else in Linux, including looking for alternatives

You can copy/paste files from host/guest, including sharing clipboard

Also using a VM helps you fixes in time your windows install, problems? bugs? shitty updates? destroy that VM image and swap with a copy of the install one, BOOM you are in power

Docker and QEMU stories are the proof that having choice frees and empowers everyone, enables countless of possibilities and options, who would have thought

Re: Running a Law Firm on Linux

#72

Post by senkora »

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.

Re: Running a Law Firm on Linux

#73

Post by tiahura »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #62
tiahura wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“What's going to be interesting is how attorney client privilege interacts with the third party doctrine” Not really. If I take a file to Kinkos to get copied, it’s still privileged. Contrary to the thinking of many technophiles, for almost every “How is the law going to deal with X technology?” there are useful analogies that were figured out decades ago.

> 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.

Re: Running a Law Firm on Linux

#74

Post by dr_hooo »

Shadonototra wrote: post #36
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…

People have no excuse nowadays.. MS Word? Setup QEMU and boot the VM whenever you need MS Word And look for alternatives You stuck with an OS that spy on your because you made yourself depending on their software -- I think there is a huge open market for open cloud based office suite Microsoft is stuck with their local software, we gotta be quick

Having QEMU with MS ready defies the entire purpose. Also not the typical easy to setup you want to unleash on a lawfirm.

And what may the alternatives be, keeping the requirements of GP in mind?

Sadly I don't think we are there yet....

Re: Running a Law Firm on Linux

#75

Post by ghastmaster »

tiahura wrote: post #52
Shadonototra wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People have no excuse nowadays.. MS Word? Setup QEMU and boot the VM whenever you need MS Word And look for alternatives You stuck with an OS that spy on your because you made yourself depending on their software -- I think there is a huge open market for open cloud based office suite Microsoft is stuck with their local software, we gotta be quick

I need Word all day. I need to copy and paste from excel and acrobat. I need merge from Outlook, etc. Most of what many many attorneys do involves Word. If everything you’re doing is in the VM, what’s the point?

> If everything you’re doing is in the VM, what’s the point?

Precisely. When I was new to Linux, trying to figure out how to do things, I was inundated with people telling me to just dual boot or run a VM. The whole point of switching was to be free of other systems.

Re: Running a Law Firm on Linux

#76

Post by Shadonototra »

afavour wrote: post #64
Shadonototra wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if your endgame goal is solely more money and have a slave like life where you can't make any choice, then i don't think any of that matter at all anyways but you can still save money by not being dependent on their bloated (now you need better hw) and more expensive offering (now you dependent on their bloated cloud infrastructure) but hey, that's just my opinion, we can still have choice, right, right?

> have a slave like life Everything is relative. It’s been a long time since I ran a Linux desktop (use it on the server plenty, though) and I could describe a “slave like life” where I had to endlessly fix driver issues, updates that broke functionality, etc etc. I expect my life would have been easier if I bought hardware specifically intended for Linux but then we’re back to “you can’t make a choice”. Linux saves…

Installing drivers is a problem solved long long ago

> updates that broke functionality

that's a windows thing, shall i mention the recent windows 10 updates (they still are unable to fix the mess they created) totally breaking printing functionality?

Also you miss the point, nobody said "get stuck with linux and use nothing else"

LibreOffice? i never mentioned that

I mentioned the use of QEMU to boot what ever OS if you need run dependency X, Y or Z

Re: Running a Law Firm on Linux

#77

Post by juniperplant »

david422 wrote: post #66
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.

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?

Re: Running a Law Firm on Linux

#78

Post by ghastmaster »

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.

Re: Running a Law Firm on Linux

#79

Post by Shadonototra »

dr_hooo wrote: post #74
Shadonototra wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People have no excuse nowadays.. MS Word? Setup QEMU and boot the VM whenever you need MS Word And look for alternatives You stuck with an OS that spy on your because you made yourself depending on their software -- I think there is a huge open market for open cloud based office suite Microsoft is stuck with their local software, we gotta be quick

Having QEMU with MS ready defies the entire purpose. Also not the typical easy to setup you want to unleash on a lawfirm. And what may the alternatives be, keeping the requirements of GP in mind? Sadly I don't think we are there yet....

> And look for alternatives

I said this ^

Using QEMU solves the problem of not being able to run dependency X, blocking you from having choice ;)

Re: Running a Law Firm on Linux

#80

Post by AnthonyMouse »

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.

Then the other side gets to argue that everybody knows or should have known that The Cloud works like that, and accuse you of doing it intentionally because you wanted the cost savings or convenience of the product with those terms.

Also, "jurisdictions vary" can be quite a relevant caveat for all the people in the jurisdictions that vary.

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