Running a Law Firm on Linux

Post by abduhl » Fri, Nov 12, 2021, 4:10 PM UTC

Shadonototra wrote: post #71

tiahura wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Post by c0nsumer » Fri, Nov 12, 2021, 4:12 PM UTC

sgc wrote: post #49

b20000 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if you are editing a 500 page document you should use other software for writing, perhaps use latex, and put the document in git. but i get that there are lots of lawyers who don’t want to learn any new tools. for all the other stuff you mentioned you have solutions for linux that work and conferencing software has clients these days for linux. you can use diff or visual diff tools for comparisons.

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…

Post by webmobdev » Fri, Nov 12, 2021, 4:15 PM UTC

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.

Post by 0xdeadbeefbabe » Fri, Nov 12, 2021, 4:25 PM UTC

actually_a_dog wrote: post #61

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…

Interesting. I know back in the 80s, law firms were in love with WordPerfect for some reason. When did the switch occur from WP to Word, and why?

Post by fartcannon » Fri, Nov 12, 2021, 4:27 PM UTC

clircle wrote: post #55

fartcannon wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consider a future where Microsoft will eventually build co-pilot for office documents based on all the crap stored in office applications/onedrive.

Consider a present where lawyers just need to get their work done