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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 vers

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.
    - james_in_the_uk 7y ago
      I think there's space for a middle ground. Word and Outlook are defacto business tools for sharing legal documentation but oftentimes they are blunt instruments. I see mistakes or delays due to poor tooling all the time. E.g. the wrong versions are emailed, or each party's attorney makes their changes into a different copy of the document, the document becomes corrupted and needs to be copy-typed (I've never gotten to the bottom of what corrupts a document, other than to note it seems to be related to heavy commenting and track changes), or even just unproductive time needing to make simple updates across tens of files. A github equivalent for lawyers would be fantastic. In fact I think it could be a killer app for the legal industry if it were possible to convince a quorum of big firms to move to it. Think: issue logging per substantive issue; pull requests for changes linked to each issue; full history of each lawyer's changes etc. Roll in some IDE for contact drafting with syntax highlighting, hinting, automated refractoring etc. All these technologies would be just as useful for lawyers as they are for developers.
      - mkyujung 7y ago
        For what it’s worth, I agree. I’m a junior lawyer at a big corporate law firm in NZ and it’s incredible that we don’t have anything resembling Github or meaningful source control. If a small team of developers were to build a simple web app the way lawyers draft legal documents, it would look like this: 1. Developer 1 writes up the initial JS, CSS, and HTML files and emails them as an attachment to Developer 2. 2. Developer 2 prints out the files, edits them via hand markups, sends the printouts to his secretary to mark up electronically, and then emails the files to Developer 3. 3. Developer 3 repeats step 2 but emails the files back to Developer 1. 4. During this whole process, while one developer is working on the app, the other developers are waiting idly - even if they could be working on a separate part of the app with no risk of conflict. This is a simplified explanation and lawyers will have some degree of version control internally through software like i-manage, but I find it hard to believe this process couldn't be improved significantly. I’ve been seriously considering starting a company in this space.
        rayiner 7y ago
        The premise that the other team members could be working in the documents at the same time is false. I’m a litigator, so that’s a bit different, but there’s almost never a situation where I want other people editing the document while I’m doing so, even if the technology permitted the changes to be integrated seamlessly.
        solveit 7y ago
        Is this inherent to the way law works, or did practices develop this way to route around the messiness of simultaneous changes without git?
        rayiner 7y ago
        It’s inherent to the way writing prose works. Documents are sequential, not modular. You can’t have 10 people all working on a novel at the same time. Maybe there are a few logical sections you can split up, but even then everything needs to be in the same voice so someone needs to massage the pieces during integration. Automatic merging provides little benefit over copying and pasting a couple of individual sections together. There are also very few documents being written. (The ratio of documents read to documents written is probably 100:1 between cases, discovery documents, etc.) You’re never editing dozens of files at the same time. Maybe 3-4, and often just one.
maccard 7y ago
Word has Track Changes built in already,

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.
  - james_in_the_uk 7y ago
    I think there's space for a middle ground. Word and Outlook are defacto business tools for sharing legal documentation but oftentimes they are blunt instruments. I see mistakes or delays due to poor tooling all the time. E.g. the wrong versions are emailed, or each party's attorney makes their changes into a different copy of the document, the document becomes corrupted and needs to be copy-typed (I've never gotten to the bottom of what corrupts a document, other than to note it seems to be related to heavy commenting and track changes), or even just unproductive time needing to make simple updates across tens of files. A github equivalent for lawyers would be fantastic. In fact I think it could be a killer app for the legal industry if it were possible to convince a quorum of big firms to move to it. Think: issue logging per substantive issue; pull requests for changes linked to each issue; full history of each lawyer's changes etc. Roll in some IDE for contact drafting with syntax highlighting, hinting, automated refractoring etc. All these technologies would be just as useful for lawyers as they are for developers.
    - mkyujung 7y ago
      For what it’s worth, I agree. I’m a junior lawyer at a big corporate law firm in NZ and it’s incredible that we don’t have anything resembling Github or meaningful source control. If a small team of developers were to build a simple web app the way lawyers draft legal documents, it would look like this: 1. Developer 1 writes up the initial JS, CSS, and HTML files and emails them as an attachment to Developer 2. 2. Developer 2 prints out the files, edits them via hand markups, sends the printouts to his secretary to mark up electronically, and then emails the files to Developer 3. 3. Developer 3 repeats step 2 but emails the files back to Developer 1. 4. During this whole process, while one developer is working on the app, the other developers are waiting idly - even if they could be working on a separate part of the app with no risk of conflict. This is a simplified explanation and lawyers will have some degree of version control internally through software like i-manage, but I find it hard to believe this process couldn't be improved significantly. I’ve been seriously considering starting a company in this space.
      - rayiner 7y ago
        The premise that the other team members could be working in the documents at the same time is false. I’m a litigator, so that’s a bit different, but there’s almost never a situation where I want other people editing the document while I’m doing so, even if the technology permitted the changes to be integrated seamlessly.
        solveit 7y ago
        Is this inherent to the way law works, or did practices develop this way to route around the messiness of simultaneous changes without git?
        rayiner 7y ago
        It’s inherent to the way writing prose works. Documents are sequential, not modular. You can’t have 10 people all working on a novel at the same time. Maybe there are a few logical sections you can split up, but even then everything needs to be in the same voice so someone needs to massage the pieces during integration. Automatic merging provides little benefit over copying and pasting a couple of individual sections together. There are also very few documents being written. (The ratio of documents read to documents written is probably 100:1 between cases, discovery documents, etc.) You’re never editing dozens of files at the same time. Maybe 3-4, and often just one.

maccard 7y ago

Word has Track Changes built in already,