5 ms·

I'm interning at a law firm, two days ago I spent 4+ hours searching through public announcements on a government website. Me and a my colleague searched throug

I'm interning at a law firm, two days ago I spent 4+ hours searching through public announcements on a government website. Me and a my colleague searched through the announcements of 500+ companies in the last 3 years. We ctrl+f'ed certain words, if they were present we noted the decision date, it was that simple. But the government website had a flashy UI with Ajax that required multiple clicks to get a list of announcements for a single year. If the government had provided an API, the same task could be accomplished in a matter of minutes. Likewise, most law offices have FileStore's or DMS's (Document Management System). These technologies are old and slow. If they used something like Algolia or Apache Lucene on a beefy server, the productivity would increase multiple-folds. Another thing I want to mention is automated translation software. Most contracts we write are in dual languages. People usually slightly modify terms from earlier contracts. If there were a software that could identify identical/similar blocks and find their translation, the productivity increase would be substantial. I wonder why these firms do not invest in IT. Being a corporate lawyer in 21st century is not that far away from being a coder. You primarily work with your computer, only instead of writing computer code, you write rules in natural languages. Programmers have IDEs, Lawyers still use MS Office products with lots of add-ons.

soulchild37 9y ago
I remember someone posted a comment regarding why Lawyer doesnt want to improve productivity before in HN. It's because lawyer usually charge client per hour, the more hour the lawyer spend on work the more he/she get paid, there's a negative incentive on reducing work hours this way.
- terminalcommand 9y ago
  Lawyers bill by the hour, that's right. However there is almost always a race against time. You can always do the work slower/write more hours. But you can't speed up the work, if you don't have the tools. In large offices, IMHO people get billed with their capacity to pay. It has not much to do with the hours lawyers put in. If the client has the money, lawyers put in more hours. Every piece of paper lawyers print gets billed to you. Every cab fare, every x and y, you imagine. On top of all this lawyers need to bill hours so they don't get fired. But I'd rather bill hours doing serious research than manual labor.
TeMPOraL 9y ago
> But the government website had a flashy UI with Ajax that required multiple clicks to get a list of announcements for a single year. That's, unfortunately, the counterproductive effect of current tech fads - UX designed around "engagement" (i.e. sucking money or attention out of people) and not around effectiveness. I believe it's important for responsible engineers to work to counter that thread.

soulchild37 9y ago

I remember someone posted a comment regarding why Lawyer doesnt want to improve productivity before in HN. It's because lawyer usually charge client per hour, the more hour the lawyer spend on work the more he/she get paid, there's a negative incentive on reducing work hours this way.

terminalcommand 9y ago
Lawyers bill by the hour, that's right. However there is almost always a race against time. You can always do the work slower/write more hours. But you can't speed up the work, if you don't have the tools. In large offices, IMHO people get billed with their capacity to pay. It has not much to do with the hours lawyers put in. If the client has the money, lawyers put in more hours. Every piece of paper lawyers print gets billed to you. Every cab fare, every x and y, you imagine. On top of all this lawyers need to bill hours so they don't get fired. But I'd rather bill hours doing serious research than manual labor.

TeMPOraL 9y ago

> But the government website had a flashy UI with Ajax that required multiple clicks to get a list of announcements for a single year. That's, unfortunately, the counterproductive effect of current tech fads - UX designed around "engagement" (i.e. sucking money or attention out of people) and not around effectiveness. I believe it's important for responsible engineers to work to counter that thread.