6 ms·

Even if lawyers don't learn to code, I think they'd find source control to be a significant boon.

twothamendment 7y ago
I wish our laws were in source control, even the bills that don't pass. I'd love to see who added the pork, who watered it down, etc. With a 2,000 page bill, it would make it easier to keep up with the changes, even if you don't yet know what is in every page at the start.
- petetnt 7y ago
  This article was pretty neat (How I Changed The Law With A GitHub pull request) https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/11/how-i-changed-the-law-with-a-github-pull-request/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/11/how-i-changed-th...
- Wowfunhappy 7y ago
  The amendments and such are generally public, right? Presumably someone could put that into Git. It would be an interesting project. Particularly if you could also wrap up the git in an interface that's accessible to non-programmers.
  - CobrastanJorji 7y ago
    Is there a regularly updated copy of the U.S. Code available for download? Or a feed of individual passed bills? This seems tractable but I'm somewhat worried that the "free" version is bound volumes in the Library of Congress and the digital version belongs to some quasi-private agency out there that might sue me for attempting to republish the laws.
    - pnw_hazor 7y ago
      All US Federal statutes and agency rules are online. The amendment and rule making process is transparent. As far as the US goes, the Federal Register is a good place to start to see things as they happen. https://www.federalregister.gov/ https://www.federalregister.gov/
- Udik 7y ago
  Laws (at least in Italy, probably in other countries with similar systems) are actually commits to a source control system- in the sense that they contain both new content and modifications to previous content (additions, changes and deletions). What I think is missing is a concept of document: commits (laws) just accumulate on top of each other without producing named, organized documents (files, in proper source control systems) with clear responsibilities, that can be easily referred to from other documents, and of which the latest version is the only one that counts.
  - rayiner 7y ago
    Same in the US. Most bills are structured as diffs to the United States Code.
  - maxerickson 7y ago
    US jurisdictions mostly produce the organized documents you speak of. For instance, the codified laws here: https://www.loc.gov/law/help/statutes.php https://www.loc.gov/law/help/statutes.php
    - Udik 7y ago
      This (from a quick reading, I might have misunderstood) seems to be a system for categorising laws, but not exactly what I was talking about: when you look for something, you're still referring to individual laws, by law number or popular name. Instead, when you want to read a computer program, you don't look at individual commits to the code base, you look at its files. Commits are more or less irrelevant, what counts is the most recent version of a set of documents, and each commit might create, modify or delete more than one document. It seems only a change in perspective, the end result is the same; but reasoning in terms of documents with well-organised names and responsibilities, describing processes and data and designed for reusability, is much easier and more compact.
      - james_in_the_uk 7y ago
        This is one aspect of how LexisNexis and Westlaw make their money. Copies of legal instruments in their up-to-date 'as amended' form are often behind a paywall.
- torstenvl 7y ago
  On the executive agency side, it's not uncommon to produce a "redline" version that's kind of like a manual, carefully drafted "Track Changes" version of a document. I produced one for the U.S. Marine Corps for the Temporary Early Retirement Authority.
- gowld 7y ago
  https://www.google.com/search?q=git+for+laws https://www.google.com/search?q=git+for+laws has lots of intersting proposals and attempts
- WorldMaker 7y ago
  Something I find interesting is that Robert's Rules of Order encapsulate a simple, early version of source control. Amendment processes are early pull requests, built to peer review diffs to the most recent previous document. If done properly, the minutes for a meeting should represent almost a full commit log, including discarded branches. In College, I did spend some time wondering if a good Robert's Rules meeting running software might be a generally useful project, after being in a few society meetings where branches got long and twisty (amendment to an amendment to a proposal type things). Never did build anything more than a prototype though.
  - howard941 7y ago
    Tangentially, when counseling clubs and other non-profits clients seem to reach for Robert's Rules. Robert's Rules is very well marketed but IMO are just awful, clubs tear themselves apart following them, and invariably one or two members expertly wields procedural R'sRs to the detriment of minority opinions and good neighborliness and the club founders. Seek out Thomas Jefferson's Manual for those clubs you'd like to see thrive. It promotes fraternity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jefferson%27s_Manual https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jefferson%27s_Manual
davnicwil 7y ago
Very true, actually thinking about it contracts and laws are perhaps the perfect usecase for source control - plaintext, can track who changed what and when, etc. I guess the main blocker for this would probably be the formatting used to produce the documents. It would have to be a human readable markup language of some kind. Does anyone know what the standards are for, for instance, contract generation, in the legal industry? Are markup languages etc used or is it mostly just MS Word -> pdf?
- tannhauser23 7y ago
  When I was practicing law couple years ago people were just sending around Word documents with redlines for changes. I'm sure there are companies that make version-controlled, share-editing tools for contract markups but I don't think they really caught on.
  - rayiner 7y ago
    They’re used universally at larger firms. Net Documents, FileSite, etc.
    - james_in_the_uk 7y ago
      Shudder. A world of difference between these tools and source control.
      - rayiner 7y ago
        Apples and oranges. Source control is better in some respects, such as tracking related changes in groups of files, or automatically merging changes by multiple authors into the same document. This is rarely useful in legal work, where there might be at most a couple of documents (and typically just one) touched to implement a logical change. Moreover, because of the need to maintain a consistent "voice" throughout the document, it's rarely useful (at least on the litigation side of the fence), to automatically merge multiple changes to the same document at the same time. On the flip side, DMS have far better tools for file preview, search, tagging, etc., and better integration with Microsoft Word and Outlook. These features are very important to lawyers.
rayiner 7y ago
We use source control (document management systems).
pnw_hazor 7y ago
Document management software usually provides versioning. Unfortunately, since most law offices rely on Word, et al., just using git isn't to helpful.
james_in_the_uk 7y ago
And syntax highlighting. Coders really only solve their own problems well. Everyone else gets "built to the spec".
golemiprague 7y ago
And learn some markup language rather than Word, this will make their documents text based and they will be able to use all the benefits around text based documents. The problem is that they use Word and moving from Word to text based system is more cultural than technological change and not easy to do.

I wish our laws were in source control, even the bills that don't pass. I'd love to see who added the pork, who watered it down, etc. With a 2,000 page bill, it would make it easier to keep up with the changes, even if you don't yet know what is in every page at the start.

petetnt 7y ago
This article was pretty neat (How I Changed The Law With A GitHub pull request) https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/11/how-i-changed-the-law-with-a-github-pull-request/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/11/how-i-changed-th...
Wowfunhappy 7y ago
The amendments and such are generally public, right? Presumably someone could put that into Git. It would be an interesting project. Particularly if you could also wrap up the git in an interface that's accessible to non-programmers.
- CobrastanJorji 7y ago
  Is there a regularly updated copy of the U.S. Code available for download? Or a feed of individual passed bills? This seems tractable but I'm somewhat worried that the "free" version is bound volumes in the Library of Congress and the digital version belongs to some quasi-private agency out there that might sue me for attempting to republish the laws.
  - pnw_hazor 7y ago
    All US Federal statutes and agency rules are online. The amendment and rule making process is transparent. As far as the US goes, the Federal Register is a good place to start to see things as they happen. https://www.federalregister.gov/ https://www.federalregister.gov/
Udik 7y ago
Laws (at least in Italy, probably in other countries with similar systems) are actually commits to a source control system- in the sense that they contain both new content and modifications to previous content (additions, changes and deletions). What I think is missing is a concept of document: commits (laws) just accumulate on top of each other without producing named, organized documents (files, in proper source control systems) with clear responsibilities, that can be easily referred to from other documents, and of which the latest version is the only one that counts.
- rayiner 7y ago
  Same in the US. Most bills are structured as diffs to the United States Code.
- maxerickson 7y ago
  US jurisdictions mostly produce the organized documents you speak of. For instance, the codified laws here: https://www.loc.gov/law/help/statutes.php https://www.loc.gov/law/help/statutes.php
  - Udik 7y ago
    This (from a quick reading, I might have misunderstood) seems to be a system for categorising laws, but not exactly what I was talking about: when you look for something, you're still referring to individual laws, by law number or popular name. Instead, when you want to read a computer program, you don't look at individual commits to the code base, you look at its files. Commits are more or less irrelevant, what counts is the most recent version of a set of documents, and each commit might create, modify or delete more than one document. It seems only a change in perspective, the end result is the same; but reasoning in terms of documents with well-organised names and responsibilities, describing processes and data and designed for reusability, is much easier and more compact.
    - james_in_the_uk 7y ago
      This is one aspect of how LexisNexis and Westlaw make their money. Copies of legal instruments in their up-to-date 'as amended' form are often behind a paywall.
torstenvl 7y ago
On the executive agency side, it's not uncommon to produce a "redline" version that's kind of like a manual, carefully drafted "Track Changes" version of a document. I produced one for the U.S. Marine Corps for the Temporary Early Retirement Authority.
gowld 7y ago
https://www.google.com/search?q=git+for+laws https://www.google.com/search?q=git+for+laws has lots of intersting proposals and attempts
WorldMaker 7y ago
Something I find interesting is that Robert's Rules of Order encapsulate a simple, early version of source control. Amendment processes are early pull requests, built to peer review diffs to the most recent previous document. If done properly, the minutes for a meeting should represent almost a full commit log, including discarded branches. In College, I did spend some time wondering if a good Robert's Rules meeting running software might be a generally useful project, after being in a few society meetings where branches got long and twisty (amendment to an amendment to a proposal type things). Never did build anything more than a prototype though.
- howard941 7y ago
  Tangentially, when counseling clubs and other non-profits clients seem to reach for Robert's Rules. Robert's Rules is very well marketed but IMO are just awful, clubs tear themselves apart following them, and invariably one or two members expertly wields procedural R'sRs to the detriment of minority opinions and good neighborliness and the club founders. Seek out Thomas Jefferson's Manual for those clubs you'd like to see thrive. It promotes fraternity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jefferson%27s_Manual https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jefferson%27s_Manual

davnicwil 7y ago

Very true, actually thinking about it contracts and laws are perhaps the perfect usecase for source control - plaintext, can track who changed what and when, etc. I guess the main blocker for this would probably be the formatting used to produce the documents. It would have to be a human readable markup language of some kind. Does anyone know what the standards are for, for instance, contract generation, in the legal industry? Are markup languages etc used or is it mostly just MS Word -> pdf?

tannhauser23 7y ago
When I was practicing law couple years ago people were just sending around Word documents with redlines for changes. I'm sure there are companies that make version-controlled, share-editing tools for contract markups but I don't think they really caught on.
- rayiner 7y ago
  They’re used universally at larger firms. Net Documents, FileSite, etc.
  - james_in_the_uk 7y ago
    Shudder. A world of difference between these tools and source control.
    - rayiner 7y ago
      Apples and oranges. Source control is better in some respects, such as tracking related changes in groups of files, or automatically merging changes by multiple authors into the same document. This is rarely useful in legal work, where there might be at most a couple of documents (and typically just one) touched to implement a logical change. Moreover, because of the need to maintain a consistent "voice" throughout the document, it's rarely useful (at least on the litigation side of the fence), to automatically merge multiple changes to the same document at the same time. On the flip side, DMS have far better tools for file preview, search, tagging, etc., and better integration with Microsoft Word and Outlook. These features are very important to lawyers.

rayiner 7y ago

We use source control (document management systems).

pnw_hazor 7y ago

Document management software usually provides versioning. Unfortunately, since most law offices rely on Word, et al., just using git isn't to helpful.

james_in_the_uk 7y ago

And syntax highlighting. Coders really only solve their own problems well. Everyone else gets "built to the spec".

golemiprague 7y ago

And learn some markup language rather than Word, this will make their documents text based and they will be able to use all the benefits around text based documents. The problem is that they use Word and moving from Word to text based system is more cultural than technological change and not easy to do.