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i’d argue that it’s not “designed to fit our workflow” so much as designed around a subpar, but flexible tool that everyone was using. that don’t make it good;

i’d argue that it’s not “designed to fit our workflow” so much as designed around a subpar, but flexible tool that everyone was using. that don’t make it good; that just makes it ingrained

mikeryan 7y ago
Track changes in Word works pretty well for turns of a contract. What features do you think are provided by "version control" that aren't handled by Track Changes for contracts?
- sjy 7y ago
  The ability to keep track of many, potentially thousands of individual changes and assign labels to significant versions. Track Changes is basically like Git if every file write triggered an automatic commit with no commit message and anyone could rewrite history at any time. SharePoint major versions are better but they’re not free, standard, portable or popular.
  - gamblor956 7y ago
    If you have a legal agreement with many thousands of changes at any point, someone is getting fired for royally fucking up... Legal agreements are basically a war over each party's choice of standardized language followed by battles over customized terms.
    - sjy 7y ago
      That may be accurate for commercial contracts but lawyers write lots of other documents too, some of which are subject to thousands of edits. Think about judicial opinions, advices, written arguments, continuously updated legal commentary services, public reports, or indeed statutes. These documents are often carefully drafted over months and complex manual protocols get set up to manage it, due to the limitations of Track Changes and the lack of familiarity with the tools used by software engineers.
gamblor956 7y ago
Track Changes tracks changes. By multiple authors. And allows comments outside of the substantive content of the document. It works across multiple versions of itself, and is even compatible with competing software. And best of all, it requires no additional software to learn or maintain. That makes it superior for legal documents to all version tracking systems that I'm aware of that are used in the programming field.
- jaredchung 7y ago
  Well yes, if you constrain the solution set to satisfy "requires no additional software to learn" then you'll end up with the status quo solution. One thing I've always been concerned about when negotiating a legal agreement is how I verify that the tracked changes actually track every change. Because Word lets the user decide which changes to track, I'm always reading the untracked sections as well to confirm that no other changes were sneakily introduced. That's something that git addresses well. Does Word have a solution there? If not, does that ever concern you?
  - citizenkeen 7y ago
    As a former attorney, I'd just do a diff. Save a copy, reject all changes, then do a diff and compare side by side. As a current software engineer, Word is definitely sufficient (and understood, which sf good) for two small adversarial teams. Key words being small (two huge firms negotiating a huge deal should not be using Word) and adversarial: I think a lot of times when tech-people suggest lawyers could do a better job they forget the other side isn't trying to be helpful.
    - sjy 7y ago
      Two huge firms negotiating a huge deal probably are in fact using Word, right?
      - eitally 7y ago
        Things like that probably have multiple outside counsel involved, and various versions of Word. :)
osrec 7y ago
I agree. Most legal docs could probably be better captured in markdown or asciidoc rather than MS Word (and all the bloat it brings with it).

i’d argue that it’s not “designed to fit our workflow” so much as designed around a subpar, but flexible tool that everyone was using. that don’t make it good; that just makes it ingrained

mikeryan 7y ago

Track changes in Word works pretty well for turns of a contract. What features do you think are provided by "version control" that aren't handled by Track Changes for contracts?

sjy 7y ago
The ability to keep track of many, potentially thousands of individual changes and assign labels to significant versions. Track Changes is basically like Git if every file write triggered an automatic commit with no commit message and anyone could rewrite history at any time. SharePoint major versions are better but they’re not free, standard, portable or popular.
- gamblor956 7y ago
  If you have a legal agreement with many thousands of changes at any point, someone is getting fired for royally fucking up... Legal agreements are basically a war over each party's choice of standardized language followed by battles over customized terms.
  - sjy 7y ago
    That may be accurate for commercial contracts but lawyers write lots of other documents too, some of which are subject to thousands of edits. Think about judicial opinions, advices, written arguments, continuously updated legal commentary services, public reports, or indeed statutes. These documents are often carefully drafted over months and complex manual protocols get set up to manage it, due to the limitations of Track Changes and the lack of familiarity with the tools used by software engineers.

gamblor956 7y ago

Track Changes tracks changes. By multiple authors. And allows comments outside of the substantive content of the document. It works across multiple versions of itself, and is even compatible with competing software. And best of all, it requires no additional software to learn or maintain. That makes it superior for legal documents to all version tracking systems that I'm aware of that are used in the programming field.

jaredchung 7y ago
Well yes, if you constrain the solution set to satisfy "requires no additional software to learn" then you'll end up with the status quo solution. One thing I've always been concerned about when negotiating a legal agreement is how I verify that the tracked changes actually track every change. Because Word lets the user decide which changes to track, I'm always reading the untracked sections as well to confirm that no other changes were sneakily introduced. That's something that git addresses well. Does Word have a solution there? If not, does that ever concern you?
- citizenkeen 7y ago
  As a former attorney, I'd just do a diff. Save a copy, reject all changes, then do a diff and compare side by side. As a current software engineer, Word is definitely sufficient (and understood, which sf good) for two small adversarial teams. Key words being small (two huge firms negotiating a huge deal should not be using Word) and adversarial: I think a lot of times when tech-people suggest lawyers could do a better job they forget the other side isn't trying to be helpful.
  - sjy 7y ago
    Two huge firms negotiating a huge deal probably are in fact using Word, right?
    - eitally 7y ago
      Things like that probably have multiple outside counsel involved, and various versions of Word. :)

osrec 7y ago

I agree. Most legal docs could probably be better captured in markdown or asciidoc rather than MS Word (and all the bloat it brings with it).