16 ms·

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 docu

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 changes/comments. I even stumble upon bugs in MS Word while working on such documents. You also need a reliable compare tool to generate redlines. Video conferencing is also important. You may access zoom/teams through web but it won't be as convenient as the desktop client. For an independent lawyer / small-mid sized office, linux may work. But for large companies the tooling may not be there. For example is there an easy way to clean metadata off of documents in Libreoffice, are there any compare tools, drafting assistants etc.? And if you're doing any litigation, the e-signature systems (dongles) also need to work reliably.

beermonster 5y ago
> I am not certain how Libreoffice could handle a 500 page memo being worked by 50+ people including thousands of track changes/comments I don’t really use MS Word but could Office 365 be used for this, requiring just a browser?
traceroute66 5y ago
It should also be pointed out that the lawyer who runs decoded.legal is very much a tech savvie lawyer that enjoys playing with tech. Something which I am led to believe is not a character trait typically attributable to our learned friends.
b20000 5y ago
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.
- Buttersite 5y ago
  This is the most HN comment ever
- qsort 5y ago
  Come on, let's be realistic, what's the chance of that happening? The network effects are enormous, that's like saying "just don't use javascript lmao". Even in tech companies most of the non-technical staff works with MS Office.
  - b20000 5y ago
    javascript is so yesterdays
- pjmlp 5y ago
  That is like telling data scientists that they should use Python and SQL instead of Excel. Good in theory, in practice, everyone keeps doing like everyone else.
  - mavhc 5y ago
    Isn't Data Science a large percentage of Python usage?
    - pjmlp 5y ago
      Python took over Perl's role already in the early 2000s. Is the new BASIC in what schools are concerned. There are plenty of domains where it gets used. However I bet plenty more people are doing data analysis in Excel than Python.
  - b20000 5y ago
    I was and I am still involved with a data science project with daily intake of about 100GB. I contemplated learning and using python and in the end just used C++ with the GNU scientific library. I can easily handle these datasets. I'm not convinced that would have been possible with python.
- 5y ago
fartcannon 5y ago
I know a group of lawyers who still operate using type writers and dictaphones.
- agumonkey 5y ago
  War legend: peeps in big retail chain printed Excel sheets on A3 pages to edit them with a pencil to later patch the original one.
- pseingatl 5y ago
  There is something to be said about writing a considered response rather than a postcard-type reply to an email. The practice has (out of court, at least) and that has affected the quality of the work.
hef19898 5y ago
For my professional life it is Excel, for pretty much similar reasons.
julkali 5y ago
I wonder if it would be legal to offer Windows Machines as a Service. So that you connect via Remote Desktop and pay by usage ... might violate MS' TOS though.
- venti 5y ago
  Paperspace does offer that: https://workstream.paperspace.com/ https://workstream.paperspace.com/
- qsort 5y ago
  Isn't that a literal description of Azure?
  - mavhc 5y ago
    No, but AWS and Azure offer Windows clients you can RDP into.
- kcb 5y ago
  Amazon Workspaces, Azure Virtual Desktop, and probably many more
wonderwonder 5y ago
Pretty sure you can edit most office documents in google docs via the browser without issue. Only additional step would be uploading them to Google Drive.
- mavhc 5y ago
  Or if they're Word docs, in MS Web Office
  - Shadonototra 5y ago
    That's even worse, now you dependent on their "cloud" The key is to not be depending on their format, and be open and ABLE to move away from dependency X whenever you want
    - mavhc 5y ago
      I thought the key was to make a load of cash and/or help people with their lawyery needs
      - Shadonototra 5y ago
        if your endgame goal is solely more money and have a slave like life where you can't make any choice, then i don't think any of that matter at all anyways but you can still save money by not being dependent on their bloated (now you need better hw) and more expensive offering (now you dependent on their bloated cloud infrastructure) but hey, that's just my opinion, we can still have choice, right, right?
        afavour 5y ago
        > have a slave like life Everything is relative. It’s been a long time since I ran a Linux desktop (use it on the server plenty, though) and I could describe a “slave like life” where I had to endlessly fix driver issues, updates that broke functionality, etc etc. I expect my life would have been easier if I bought hardware specifically intended for Linux but then we’re back to “you can’t make a choice”. Linux saves money in the most straightforward sense: the software is free. But if it ends up being more work to maintain or to train people to use then it is costing you money still. Your time is worth money. IMO it’s healthier to see pretty much every tech decision we make as boxing ourselves in some way or another. Use Windows PCs, you’re boxed into Windows. Use Linux PCs and MS cloud products, you’re boxed into MS cloud. Use Linux through and through you’re boxed into dealing with subtle LibreOffice bugs when handling documents. Which box fits you most comfortably is a matter of opinion rather than fact.
AnthonyMouse 5y ago
Basically all of these things are teething problems. The early adopters have problems, the problems get solved, then they're solved for everybody. What's going to be interesting is how attorney client privilege interacts with the third party doctrine and proprietary systems increasingly moving your documents to The Cloud, often without telling you or making it obvious that it's happening. That could drive early adoption by law firms that don't want to be the first to get burned by that.
- tubby12345 5y ago
  >The early adopters have problems > LibreOffice Initial release: 25 January 2011; 10 years ago don't think it's getting solved mated
  - AnthonyMouse 5y ago
    Different populations have different problems. When was the first time it was adopted by a major law firm? Example: The OP cares about "redlines" because lawyers use that all the time and most others don't.
    - RNCTX 5y ago
      I worked for one of the online legal databases for several years. They had a Windows desktop app in addition to the website for accessing content. I managed to get the desktop app working in Linux after messing with Wine and permissions (it had some cache files written to a relative directory and what not) and after telling management about it they figured the potential market for such a thing would be small enough that they could just send any support requests about it directly to me for setup help, and likewise tell the sales reps to forward inquiries to me if Linux came up on a sale or demo install. In the decade I worked there I got exactly one call from a Linux admin at a law firm asking for the docs on using the desktop app.
  - npongratz 5y ago
    It gets even worse. LibreOffice forked from OpenOffice [0]: > OpenOffice.org Initial release May 2002; 19 years ago Which itself originated as StarOffice [1]: > StarOffice Initial release 1985; 36 years ago [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Openoffice.org https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Openoffice.org [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StarOffice https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StarOffice
Shadonototra 5y ago
People have no excuse nowadays.. MS Word? Setup QEMU and boot the VM whenever you need MS Word And look for alternatives You stuck with an OS that spy on your because you made yourself depending on their software -- I think there is a huge open market for open cloud based office suite Microsoft is stuck with their local software, we gotta be quick
- dr_hooo 5y ago
  Having QEMU with MS ready defies the entire purpose. Also not the typical easy to setup you want to unleash on a lawfirm. And what may the alternatives be, keeping the requirements of GP in mind? Sadly I don't think we are there yet....
  - Shadonototra 5y ago
    > And look for alternatives I said this ^ Using QEMU solves the problem of not being able to run dependency X, blocking you from having choice ;)
- tiahura 5y ago
  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?
  - smoldesu 5y ago
    > If everything you’re doing is in the VM, what’s the point? "Your honor, with all of the evidence we've leveled today, my client would like to motio- hold on, what's this? Wait, no I didn't tell you to install updates now! Cancel, cancel, does anyone here know how to stop a Windows update?"
    - tiahura 5y ago
      It happens all the time. In the middle of medical malpractice cases, divorce cases, murder cases - a virus update, an acrobat update, an email notification, etc. Everybody deals.
whateveracct 5y ago
> 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 This is addressed in the article actually! They said LibreOffice has served them perfectly well.
- ghaff 5y ago
  He says it has worked for him so far--with only minor issues. Personally, in that situation, if I really didn't want to use Windows for everything (and I've barely used Windows for the past 10 years), I'd probably get a Windows system for running Word and any other necessary Windows software and have my computer system of choice for everything else. In the grand scheme of things, computers are cheap these days. (Or as someone else commented, run Windows in a VM. Though I might consider even that to be potentially unpredictable as a platform that my entire business essentially depended on.)
  - n_decoded_legal 5y ago
    > He says it has worked for him so far--with only minor issues. I'd say the same about Word. Mostly fine, but some minor issues, usually linked with auto-numbering getting in a fluster, or deciding to turn all the numbering into black blocks. But I definitely prefer Word's flexibility for displaying tracked changes.
    - ghaff 5y ago
      I mostly use Google Docs these days and, in general, I'm a fan of how it's focused on the 90-95% use case. But every now and then I run into something it just can't do or that it does relatively poorly. (Revision tracking from multiple people in particular, complex section breaks of various kinds, doubtless other things.)
- pseingatl 5y ago
robertlagrant 5y ago
> 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 changes/comments. I even stumble upon bugs in MS Word while working on such documents. I stumble on bugs in Word Online with far, far fewer participants (e.g. 2). Confluence holds up very well.
actually_a_dog 5y ago
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?
- MerelyMortal 5y ago
  My dad was a lawyer. I think it's because WordPerfect worked in DOS.
- 0xdeadbeefbabe 5y ago
  Because of "Reveal Codes".
  - nobody9999 5y ago
    >Because of "Reveal Codes". I still miss WordPerfect for that reason. I don't know how many times I've had to reformat (or even completely redo) Word documents because the formatting got messed up. In WordPerfect, it would just be <alt>-<F3>, find the offending formatting code and fix it. Et Voila!
- teddyh 5y ago
  Short version, IIRC: Microsoft made MS-DOS, but their application software offerings for MS-DOS (Word, Works) were not compelling enough; other vendors had that market (WordPerfect, Lotus Symphony) pretty much sewn up. Then came Microsoft Windows. Other companies did not want to spend huge amounts of resources porting their applications to what was essentially a niche Microsoft add-on on top of MS-DOS. Microsoft, on the other hand, had every reason to bet big on their own product, and they invested massively in porting their own software to Windows. Then, when Windows became popular, all other application software vendors were way behind in producing reasonable graphical Windows versions of their software, except Microsoft, who gained a massive user base of the Windows versions of their programs, since they were much better in the Windows environment than everything else. Microsoft used this advantage to stay on top of the PC market for years, and arguably still do.
- dctoedt 5y ago
massysett 5y ago
I’m glad this is working for him, but it’s only been three months. The most important thing Word gets me is an excuse. If someone sends me a Word doc and I open it in Word and something is screwed up, I can say “oh, um, maybe something is wrong on your end.” If I’m using anything else—LibreOffice, Pages, Google Docs, anything—then there’s a possibility that it’s the software’s fault. I can’t be messing around with that in moments when it counts. Like it or not, Word is the standard, and anyone using software that is not the standard is carrying a burden. I’m an attorney and it’s my job to practice law, not be ideological about my tools. I keep a Thinkpad with Debian on my desk and use it to track my tasks in Taskwarrior, because it’s the best tool for the job. For document exchange, there is absolutely no substitute for a Windows PC with Microsoft Word. I say this as someone who hits Word bugs and loathes Word. But I’m a lawyer, not a professional Linux tinkerer.
- stackbutterflow 5y ago
  I'm curious to know how you and the parent comment came about to know about HN, what an IDE is, Debian. My friends working in non tech fields wouldn't even know that something other than Windows exists.
  - beermonster 5y ago
    It does seem there are some cool lawyers out there!
  - rococode 5y ago
    Keep in mind there are thousands of lawyers out there whose job is to write software patents or litigate for big tech companies. I'm sure there are plenty of lawyers not working in tech who know about tech stuff just out of curiosity, but the ones who are in tech definitely know much more than surface-level things.
  - ncphil 5y ago
    Retired lawyer (from the 80s and 90s). Second career as a sysadmin now with the lofty title "enterprise architect", which in my case is more like "a senior guy who can do all kinds of stuff". Back in the day DisplayWrite and WordPerfect were the standards, with Word coming up behind fast. I used XyWrite in my own tiny practice. That said, Word Online under a Microsoft 365 sub would get you most of where you need to go, but I have to admit that some are going to be more comfortable with the desktop version of Word for the reasons given above. In that case... KVM virtual machine running Windows! So long as the host has sufficient horsepower (4 or 8 cores, 32 GB RAM), that can actually be an added benefit: two computers for the price of one. On the scanner driver issue, I'm going to curb my natural urge to go into full on problem solving mode (an occupational hazard for both sysadmins and lawyers). Network scanners are a "hive of scum and villainy" if there ever was one. My own adventures with an HP MFP can be found in this gist: https://gist.github.com/plembo/1630c74806c1c97c2dcee03752865773 https://gist.github.com/plembo/1630c74806c1c97c2dcee03752865.... The TLDR is that HP supports SANE through their own proprietary api, which is probably not going to work with a different manufacturer's scanner (for example, Canon).
senkora 5y ago
Note that Zoom has a native Linux client that works well.
- mijoharas 5y ago
  I would strongly disagree with you on the "works well" part. (it is hell on earth on a wayland machine. It can't screenshare unless you're on gnome or something, and on sway it seems to have a 50% chance of crashing every time it opens a meeting.) On the other hand, the web version is coming along nicely. I may uninstall the desktop app since it's such a PITA.
  - senkora 5y ago
    That’s fair. My experience is with Ubuntu, GNOME, and X Windows, which is probably the happy path for Linux support right now.
    - flurdy 5y ago
      PopOS! Gnome & Wayland. Native Zoom works very well. Never crashes. And finally has virtual backgrounds. Only issue is Firefox windows are invisible when screen sharing, so I use Chromium for those sessions if I need to show a browser.
hpcjoe 5y ago
Not a lawyer. Zoom client on Linux works and is IMO more reliable (e.g. doesn't BSOD me) than windows, about the same reliability on Mac. Teams is unreliable on every platform (having used it for years on Linux, Mac, Win). Would recommend against it. Clearing documents metadata in Libreoffice, yes. It existed as far back as 7 years ago when I was running my own company, and my lawyers and I would be exchanging documents with potential investors. This said, I also (when needed) run windows 10 in a kvm window, with Office installed, when libreoffice, or office365 is simply inadequate. This is ... rare. I mostly boot the kvm to patch it these days. Haven't needed its capabilities in at least a year (then again, I am not a lawyer). Dongles (yubi-key, etc) all work great on Linux/Mac. YMMV though, if they aren't common systems. Again, you can run windows on a VM, and pass through that specific port (USB, etc.). It works, though sometimes the software is buggy so that it sends a reset, and you have to unplug/replug the dongle. This is from my Yubi-key experience on my windows kvm running on my linux laptop.
- benbristow 5y ago
  > Zoom client on Linux works and is IMO more reliable (e.g. doesn't BSOD me) The Windows client has never BSODed on me. Sounds like a problem at your end.
  - hpcjoe 5y ago
    I'm not the only one at my co that has experienced it BSODing. Windows generally BSODs on work machine at least once a week. Windows 10 patched monthly, locked down as hard as a machine can be under Windows. 30 plus years of Windows tech has taught me not to trust it with anything important.
    - luma 5y ago
      If you have a system that is experiencing BSODs on the order of once a week, you have a _serious_ problem that is absolutely atypical of normal Windows behavior. Blaming the operating system hasn't brought you to a solution, perhaps the issue lies elsewhere.
Shicholas 5y ago
if only lawyers used git, sigh. fighting word is almost like fighting the system itself - some courts require filing in .doc!
- stefan_ 5y ago
  Is Word the biggest mistake of computing ever? I get it, in 1980 when you are trying to get adoption of your obscure machine, it helps to emulate what is de vogue in the real world. But now it's 2021, and there is zero reason anymore for anyone to "layout a letter" or similar nonsense like that. Computers are everywhere and the key to efficient processes, but we are stuck using them to make facsimiles of the World circa 1980.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - Shicholas 5y ago
    I'm with you, but today most sr. attorneys & judges still print out all emails/documents to then redline. the legal field will need another 10-20 years before the foundation is present to even discuss removing Word.
  - pseingatl 5y ago
    Ever tried to shoehorn ten or more footnotes into an email?
- jimmygrapes 5y ago
  When it comes to git I blame the lack of simple visual interface. All the GUIs I have seen are either horribly designed and unintuitive (often because they just duplicate git's syntax), or are unnecessarily complex and could do with a basic/advanced split UI. For most document versioning and redlining needs, only the basic concepts are needed and correspond to common concepts: new document (init), save document (eh... commit? push?), save as (branch), open for editing (clone?), open for read-only (fetch?), and compare to other document (diff). Tracking and merging changes should be separate from those overall document actions, but are similarly congruent with git concepts. Again, the problem is presentation. I want to jump on the hate bandwagon for MS Word, but in all honesty as long as you stay clear of "the cloud" and deal with documents locally and/or via email, it does all of these things quite well visually. It's fairly intuitive in its track changes interface. Virtually all of the complaints about numbering and formatting and pagination are due to user error -- which admittedly is often because of UI obscurity. The main thing missing is better and more visible built-in version control, but MS had SharePoint already queued up for that purpose so it makes business sense to try vendor lock in and upsell on that. My only real pain points with Word are the severely limited reference manager, dismal attempts at a templating engine, and the crippled mail merge functionality. All of these can be scripted away or fixed with shady extensions, at the cost of IT freaking out about "dangerous macros". Word 365 on the other hand... burn it in the fires of the hells from which it spawned.
earthscienceman 5y ago
As a scientist I'm really tempted to ask: Why not latex and track changes? I already know the answer of course, but it's interesting how much of this type of thing is 'cultural' and institutional momentum.
- colejohnson66 5y ago
  TeX and any derivatives aren't WYSIWYG. People (non-tech and even some in tech) don't want to write code to generate their document. They want to pull up Word, type some stuff, click the table button or something, and go on their merry way. If there's an issue on page 45 of the printed document, they know exactly where that is in Word due to it being WYSIWYG. In TeX, it's not that simple. TeX is extremely powerful. I love it (although it does feel a bit "hacky"), but for the majority of people, it's overkill. Word's change tracker is good enough.
  - nybble41 5y ago
    LyX is available as a (almost) WYSIWYG editor for TeX. The developers actually describe it as WYSIWYM (What You See Is What You Mean) but the key point is that the user is not limited to writing raw TeX code. Fixed pagination is not guaranteed, even in Word. Especially when you consider features like change tracking. If you want fixed pages, export to PDF.
    - pseingatl 5y ago
      Or the change in paper size when you send a document that has been set up for letter paper and the person receiving it has A4 as the default, not to mention different styles and German quotation marks.
- hitpointdrew 5y ago
  If you are going that route, you might as well just use git instead of latex. Why add the complexity of latex if you can just use plain text and version control?
jseliger 5y ago
I do grant writing for nonprofits, public agencies, and some research-based businesses and have the same issue: Word and Excel are defaults. Funders expect them and other organizations use them. Proposals typically have complicated formatting patterns other needs.
kaffee 5y ago
What's the current best tool for generating redlines from two PDF/Word documents? Makes sense that this would be important (e.g., when comparing contract versions).
- pseingatl 5y ago
  It's not Word. Word also doesn't do a compare with pdf, which has to first be converted to Word. Add a few new paragraphs and the comparison fails.
Ottolay 5y ago
These days the online version of Office365 Word is pretty good. I would 100% pay for and use Office365 over LibreOffice on Linux.
gbrown 5y ago
There’s a desktop Zoom client. Also, the web office 365 Word works… okish.
brightball 5y ago
Office365 Word in browser?
radicaldreamer 5y ago
Is working on a Mac as difficult?
hitpointdrew 5y ago
I also would think that Libre Office just wouldn’t cut it with all the track changes. It’s a bit of a shame that the industry is so cemented to Word, git is 1000 times superior than track changes IMO. But I understand that git has a bit of a technical hurdle that a lot of lawyers might struggle with.
- pseingatl 5y ago
  Try Textmaker from Softmaker. 100% Word compatibility, $80, native Linux.
  - hitpointdrew 5y ago
    I am not a lawyer, and don’t work in law. I was just observing how that industry is cemented to Word. I personally hardly ever use word, and have no need for a Linux replacement for Word. My work is all plain text mostly in sublime or vim.
ar_lan 5y ago
What about something like Office 365? Wouldn't this handle this problem just fine?
stilisstuk 5y ago
Similar work profile, but: MS office is a huge pain to work with. 30 pages, 3 authors, comments, revi sions, deleted images, and it often crashs. And track changes doesn't work on tables (!) Mind: LibreOffice is properly worse, but that doesn't change that MS office is abyssmall.
ecf 5y ago
> 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 changes/comments. Other industries have figured out the problem of how to allow many people to work on text based documents. The fact that the Legal world still runs on antiquated software is because of the billable hour. Until that changes, law firms will resist any meaningful improvement to their workflow.

beermonster 5y ago

> I am not certain how Libreoffice could handle a 500 page memo being worked by 50+ people including thousands of track changes/comments I don’t really use MS Word but could Office 365 be used for this, requiring just a browser?

traceroute66 5y ago

It should also be pointed out that the lawyer who runs decoded.legal is very much a tech savvie lawyer that enjoys playing with tech. Something which I am led to believe is not a character trait typically attributable to our learned friends.

b20000 5y ago

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.

Buttersite 5y ago
This is the most HN comment ever
qsort 5y ago
Come on, let's be realistic, what's the chance of that happening? The network effects are enormous, that's like saying "just don't use javascript lmao". Even in tech companies most of the non-technical staff works with MS Office.
- b20000 5y ago
  javascript is so yesterdays
pjmlp 5y ago
That is like telling data scientists that they should use Python and SQL instead of Excel. Good in theory, in practice, everyone keeps doing like everyone else.
- mavhc 5y ago
  Isn't Data Science a large percentage of Python usage?
  - pjmlp 5y ago
    Python took over Perl's role already in the early 2000s. Is the new BASIC in what schools are concerned. There are plenty of domains where it gets used. However I bet plenty more people are doing data analysis in Excel than Python.
- b20000 5y ago
  I was and I am still involved with a data science project with daily intake of about 100GB. I contemplated learning and using python and in the end just used C++ with the GNU scientific library. I can easily handle these datasets. I'm not convinced that would have been possible with python.
5y ago

fartcannon 5y ago

I know a group of lawyers who still operate using type writers and dictaphones.

agumonkey 5y ago
War legend: peeps in big retail chain printed Excel sheets on A3 pages to edit them with a pencil to later patch the original one.
pseingatl 5y ago
There is something to be said about writing a considered response rather than a postcard-type reply to an email. The practice has (out of court, at least) and that has affected the quality of the work.

hef19898 5y ago

For my professional life it is Excel, for pretty much similar reasons.

julkali 5y ago

I wonder if it would be legal to offer Windows Machines as a Service. So that you connect via Remote Desktop and pay by usage ... might violate MS' TOS though.

venti 5y ago
Paperspace does offer that: https://workstream.paperspace.com/ https://workstream.paperspace.com/
qsort 5y ago
Isn't that a literal description of Azure?
- mavhc 5y ago
  No, but AWS and Azure offer Windows clients you can RDP into.
kcb 5y ago
Amazon Workspaces, Azure Virtual Desktop, and probably many more

wonderwonder 5y ago

Pretty sure you can edit most office documents in google docs via the browser without issue. Only additional step would be uploading them to Google Drive.

mavhc 5y ago
Or if they're Word docs, in MS Web Office
- Shadonototra 5y ago
  That's even worse, now you dependent on their "cloud" The key is to not be depending on their format, and be open and ABLE to move away from dependency X whenever you want
  - mavhc 5y ago
    I thought the key was to make a load of cash and/or help people with their lawyery needs
    - Shadonototra 5y ago
      if your endgame goal is solely more money and have a slave like life where you can't make any choice, then i don't think any of that matter at all anyways but you can still save money by not being dependent on their bloated (now you need better hw) and more expensive offering (now you dependent on their bloated cloud infrastructure) but hey, that's just my opinion, we can still have choice, right, right?
      - afavour 5y ago
        > have a slave like life Everything is relative. It’s been a long time since I ran a Linux desktop (use it on the server plenty, though) and I could describe a “slave like life” where I had to endlessly fix driver issues, updates that broke functionality, etc etc. I expect my life would have been easier if I bought hardware specifically intended for Linux but then we’re back to “you can’t make a choice”. Linux saves money in the most straightforward sense: the software is free. But if it ends up being more work to maintain or to train people to use then it is costing you money still. Your time is worth money. IMO it’s healthier to see pretty much every tech decision we make as boxing ourselves in some way or another. Use Windows PCs, you’re boxed into Windows. Use Linux PCs and MS cloud products, you’re boxed into MS cloud. Use Linux through and through you’re boxed into dealing with subtle LibreOffice bugs when handling documents. Which box fits you most comfortably is a matter of opinion rather than fact.

AnthonyMouse 5y ago

Basically all of these things are teething problems. The early adopters have problems, the problems get solved, then they're solved for everybody. What's going to be interesting is how attorney client privilege interacts with the third party doctrine and proprietary systems increasingly moving your documents to The Cloud, often without telling you or making it obvious that it's happening. That could drive early adoption by law firms that don't want to be the first to get burned by that.

tubby12345 5y ago
>The early adopters have problems > LibreOffice Initial release: 25 January 2011; 10 years ago don't think it's getting solved mated
- AnthonyMouse 5y ago
  Different populations have different problems. When was the first time it was adopted by a major law firm? Example: The OP cares about "redlines" because lawyers use that all the time and most others don't.
  - RNCTX 5y ago
    I worked for one of the online legal databases for several years. They had a Windows desktop app in addition to the website for accessing content. I managed to get the desktop app working in Linux after messing with Wine and permissions (it had some cache files written to a relative directory and what not) and after telling management about it they figured the potential market for such a thing would be small enough that they could just send any support requests about it directly to me for setup help, and likewise tell the sales reps to forward inquiries to me if Linux came up on a sale or demo install. In the decade I worked there I got exactly one call from a Linux admin at a law firm asking for the docs on using the desktop app.
- npongratz 5y ago
  It gets even worse. LibreOffice forked from OpenOffice [0]: > OpenOffice.org Initial release May 2002; 19 years ago Which itself originated as StarOffice [1]: > StarOffice Initial release 1985; 36 years ago [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Openoffice.org https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Openoffice.org [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StarOffice https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StarOffice

Shadonototra 5y ago

People have no excuse nowadays.. MS Word? Setup QEMU and boot the VM whenever you need MS Word And look for alternatives You stuck with an OS that spy on your because you made yourself depending on their software -- I think there is a huge open market for open cloud based office suite Microsoft is stuck with their local software, we gotta be quick

dr_hooo 5y ago
Having QEMU with MS ready defies the entire purpose. Also not the typical easy to setup you want to unleash on a lawfirm. And what may the alternatives be, keeping the requirements of GP in mind? Sadly I don't think we are there yet....
- Shadonototra 5y ago
  > And look for alternatives I said this ^ Using QEMU solves the problem of not being able to run dependency X, blocking you from having choice ;)
tiahura 5y ago
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?
- smoldesu 5y ago
  > If everything you’re doing is in the VM, what’s the point? "Your honor, with all of the evidence we've leveled today, my client would like to motio- hold on, what's this? Wait, no I didn't tell you to install updates now! Cancel, cancel, does anyone here know how to stop a Windows update?"
  - tiahura 5y ago
    It happens all the time. In the middle of medical malpractice cases, divorce cases, murder cases - a virus update, an acrobat update, an email notification, etc. Everybody deals.

whateveracct 5y ago

> 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 This is addressed in the article actually! They said LibreOffice has served them perfectly well.

ghaff 5y ago
He says it has worked for him so far--with only minor issues. Personally, in that situation, if I really didn't want to use Windows for everything (and I've barely used Windows for the past 10 years), I'd probably get a Windows system for running Word and any other necessary Windows software and have my computer system of choice for everything else. In the grand scheme of things, computers are cheap these days. (Or as someone else commented, run Windows in a VM. Though I might consider even that to be potentially unpredictable as a platform that my entire business essentially depended on.)
- n_decoded_legal 5y ago
  > He says it has worked for him so far--with only minor issues. I'd say the same about Word. Mostly fine, but some minor issues, usually linked with auto-numbering getting in a fluster, or deciding to turn all the numbering into black blocks. But I definitely prefer Word's flexibility for displaying tracked changes.
  - ghaff 5y ago
    I mostly use Google Docs these days and, in general, I'm a fan of how it's focused on the 90-95% use case. But every now and then I run into something it just can't do or that it does relatively poorly. (Revision tracking from multiple people in particular, complex section breaks of various kinds, doubtless other things.)
pseingatl 5y ago

robertlagrant 5y ago

> 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 changes/comments. I even stumble upon bugs in MS Word while working on such documents. I stumble on bugs in Word Online with far, far fewer participants (e.g. 2). Confluence holds up very well.

actually_a_dog 5y ago

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?

MerelyMortal 5y ago
My dad was a lawyer. I think it's because WordPerfect worked in DOS.
0xdeadbeefbabe 5y ago
Because of "Reveal Codes".
- nobody9999 5y ago
  >Because of "Reveal Codes". I still miss WordPerfect for that reason. I don't know how many times I've had to reformat (or even completely redo) Word documents because the formatting got messed up. In WordPerfect, it would just be <alt>-<F3>, find the offending formatting code and fix it. Et Voila!
teddyh 5y ago
Short version, IIRC: Microsoft made MS-DOS, but their application software offerings for MS-DOS (Word, Works) were not compelling enough; other vendors had that market (WordPerfect, Lotus Symphony) pretty much sewn up. Then came Microsoft Windows. Other companies did not want to spend huge amounts of resources porting their applications to what was essentially a niche Microsoft add-on on top of MS-DOS. Microsoft, on the other hand, had every reason to bet big on their own product, and they invested massively in porting their own software to Windows. Then, when Windows became popular, all other application software vendors were way behind in producing reasonable graphical Windows versions of their software, except Microsoft, who gained a massive user base of the Windows versions of their programs, since they were much better in the Windows environment than everything else. Microsoft used this advantage to stay on top of the PC market for years, and arguably still do.
dctoedt 5y ago

massysett 5y ago

I’m glad this is working for him, but it’s only been three months. The most important thing Word gets me is an excuse. If someone sends me a Word doc and I open it in Word and something is screwed up, I can say “oh, um, maybe something is wrong on your end.” If I’m using anything else—LibreOffice, Pages, Google Docs, anything—then there’s a possibility that it’s the software’s fault. I can’t be messing around with that in moments when it counts. Like it or not, Word is the standard, and anyone using software that is not the standard is carrying a burden. I’m an attorney and it’s my job to practice law, not be ideological about my tools. I keep a Thinkpad with Debian on my desk and use it to track my tasks in Taskwarrior, because it’s the best tool for the job. For document exchange, there is absolutely no substitute for a Windows PC with Microsoft Word. I say this as someone who hits Word bugs and loathes Word. But I’m a lawyer, not a professional Linux tinkerer.

stackbutterflow 5y ago
I'm curious to know how you and the parent comment came about to know about HN, what an IDE is, Debian. My friends working in non tech fields wouldn't even know that something other than Windows exists.
- beermonster 5y ago
  It does seem there are some cool lawyers out there!
- rococode 5y ago
  Keep in mind there are thousands of lawyers out there whose job is to write software patents or litigate for big tech companies. I'm sure there are plenty of lawyers not working in tech who know about tech stuff just out of curiosity, but the ones who are in tech definitely know much more than surface-level things.
- ncphil 5y ago
  Retired lawyer (from the 80s and 90s). Second career as a sysadmin now with the lofty title "enterprise architect", which in my case is more like "a senior guy who can do all kinds of stuff". Back in the day DisplayWrite and WordPerfect were the standards, with Word coming up behind fast. I used XyWrite in my own tiny practice. That said, Word Online under a Microsoft 365 sub would get you most of where you need to go, but I have to admit that some are going to be more comfortable with the desktop version of Word for the reasons given above. In that case... KVM virtual machine running Windows! So long as the host has sufficient horsepower (4 or 8 cores, 32 GB RAM), that can actually be an added benefit: two computers for the price of one. On the scanner driver issue, I'm going to curb my natural urge to go into full on problem solving mode (an occupational hazard for both sysadmins and lawyers). Network scanners are a "hive of scum and villainy" if there ever was one. My own adventures with an HP MFP can be found in this gist: https://gist.github.com/plembo/1630c74806c1c97c2dcee03752865773 https://gist.github.com/plembo/1630c74806c1c97c2dcee03752865.... The TLDR is that HP supports SANE through their own proprietary api, which is probably not going to work with a different manufacturer's scanner (for example, Canon).

senkora 5y ago

Note that Zoom has a native Linux client that works well.

mijoharas 5y ago
I would strongly disagree with you on the "works well" part. (it is hell on earth on a wayland machine. It can't screenshare unless you're on gnome or something, and on sway it seems to have a 50% chance of crashing every time it opens a meeting.) On the other hand, the web version is coming along nicely. I may uninstall the desktop app since it's such a PITA.
- senkora 5y ago
  That’s fair. My experience is with Ubuntu, GNOME, and X Windows, which is probably the happy path for Linux support right now.
  - flurdy 5y ago
    PopOS! Gnome & Wayland. Native Zoom works very well. Never crashes. And finally has virtual backgrounds. Only issue is Firefox windows are invisible when screen sharing, so I use Chromium for those sessions if I need to show a browser.

hpcjoe 5y ago

Not a lawyer. Zoom client on Linux works and is IMO more reliable (e.g. doesn't BSOD me) than windows, about the same reliability on Mac. Teams is unreliable on every platform (having used it for years on Linux, Mac, Win). Would recommend against it. Clearing documents metadata in Libreoffice, yes. It existed as far back as 7 years ago when I was running my own company, and my lawyers and I would be exchanging documents with potential investors. This said, I also (when needed) run windows 10 in a kvm window, with Office installed, when libreoffice, or office365 is simply inadequate. This is ... rare. I mostly boot the kvm to patch it these days. Haven't needed its capabilities in at least a year (then again, I am not a lawyer). Dongles (yubi-key, etc) all work great on Linux/Mac. YMMV though, if they aren't common systems. Again, you can run windows on a VM, and pass through that specific port (USB, etc.). It works, though sometimes the software is buggy so that it sends a reset, and you have to unplug/replug the dongle. This is from my Yubi-key experience on my windows kvm running on my linux laptop.

benbristow 5y ago
> Zoom client on Linux works and is IMO more reliable (e.g. doesn't BSOD me) The Windows client has never BSODed on me. Sounds like a problem at your end.
- hpcjoe 5y ago
  I'm not the only one at my co that has experienced it BSODing. Windows generally BSODs on work machine at least once a week. Windows 10 patched monthly, locked down as hard as a machine can be under Windows. 30 plus years of Windows tech has taught me not to trust it with anything important.
  - luma 5y ago
    If you have a system that is experiencing BSODs on the order of once a week, you have a _serious_ problem that is absolutely atypical of normal Windows behavior. Blaming the operating system hasn't brought you to a solution, perhaps the issue lies elsewhere.

Shicholas 5y ago

if only lawyers used git, sigh. fighting word is almost like fighting the system itself - some courts require filing in .doc!

stefan_ 5y ago
Is Word the biggest mistake of computing ever? I get it, in 1980 when you are trying to get adoption of your obscure machine, it helps to emulate what is de vogue in the real world. But now it's 2021, and there is zero reason anymore for anyone to "layout a letter" or similar nonsense like that. Computers are everywhere and the key to efficient processes, but we are stuck using them to make facsimiles of the World circa 1980.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- Shicholas 5y ago
  I'm with you, but today most sr. attorneys & judges still print out all emails/documents to then redline. the legal field will need another 10-20 years before the foundation is present to even discuss removing Word.
- pseingatl 5y ago
  Ever tried to shoehorn ten or more footnotes into an email?
jimmygrapes 5y ago
When it comes to git I blame the lack of simple visual interface. All the GUIs I have seen are either horribly designed and unintuitive (often because they just duplicate git's syntax), or are unnecessarily complex and could do with a basic/advanced split UI. For most document versioning and redlining needs, only the basic concepts are needed and correspond to common concepts: new document (init), save document (eh... commit? push?), save as (branch), open for editing (clone?), open for read-only (fetch?), and compare to other document (diff). Tracking and merging changes should be separate from those overall document actions, but are similarly congruent with git concepts. Again, the problem is presentation. I want to jump on the hate bandwagon for MS Word, but in all honesty as long as you stay clear of "the cloud" and deal with documents locally and/or via email, it does all of these things quite well visually. It's fairly intuitive in its track changes interface. Virtually all of the complaints about numbering and formatting and pagination are due to user error -- which admittedly is often because of UI obscurity. The main thing missing is better and more visible built-in version control, but MS had SharePoint already queued up for that purpose so it makes business sense to try vendor lock in and upsell on that. My only real pain points with Word are the severely limited reference manager, dismal attempts at a templating engine, and the crippled mail merge functionality. All of these can be scripted away or fixed with shady extensions, at the cost of IT freaking out about "dangerous macros". Word 365 on the other hand... burn it in the fires of the hells from which it spawned.

earthscienceman 5y ago

As a scientist I'm really tempted to ask: Why not latex and track changes? I already know the answer of course, but it's interesting how much of this type of thing is 'cultural' and institutional momentum.

colejohnson66 5y ago
TeX and any derivatives aren't WYSIWYG. People (non-tech and even some in tech) don't want to write code to generate their document. They want to pull up Word, type some stuff, click the table button or something, and go on their merry way. If there's an issue on page 45 of the printed document, they know exactly where that is in Word due to it being WYSIWYG. In TeX, it's not that simple. TeX is extremely powerful. I love it (although it does feel a bit "hacky"), but for the majority of people, it's overkill. Word's change tracker is good enough.
- nybble41 5y ago
  LyX is available as a (almost) WYSIWYG editor for TeX. The developers actually describe it as WYSIWYM (What You See Is What You Mean) but the key point is that the user is not limited to writing raw TeX code. Fixed pagination is not guaranteed, even in Word. Especially when you consider features like change tracking. If you want fixed pages, export to PDF.
  - pseingatl 5y ago
    Or the change in paper size when you send a document that has been set up for letter paper and the person receiving it has A4 as the default, not to mention different styles and German quotation marks.
hitpointdrew 5y ago
If you are going that route, you might as well just use git instead of latex. Why add the complexity of latex if you can just use plain text and version control?

jseliger 5y ago

I do grant writing for nonprofits, public agencies, and some research-based businesses and have the same issue: Word and Excel are defaults. Funders expect them and other organizations use them. Proposals typically have complicated formatting patterns other needs.

kaffee 5y ago

What's the current best tool for generating redlines from two PDF/Word documents? Makes sense that this would be important (e.g., when comparing contract versions).

pseingatl 5y ago
It's not Word. Word also doesn't do a compare with pdf, which has to first be converted to Word. Add a few new paragraphs and the comparison fails.

Ottolay 5y ago

These days the online version of Office365 Word is pretty good. I would 100% pay for and use Office365 over LibreOffice on Linux.

gbrown 5y ago

There’s a desktop Zoom client. Also, the web office 365 Word works… okish.

brightball 5y ago

Office365 Word in browser?

radicaldreamer 5y ago

Is working on a Mac as difficult?

hitpointdrew 5y ago

I also would think that Libre Office just wouldn’t cut it with all the track changes. It’s a bit of a shame that the industry is so cemented to Word, git is 1000 times superior than track changes IMO. But I understand that git has a bit of a technical hurdle that a lot of lawyers might struggle with.

pseingatl 5y ago
Try Textmaker from Softmaker. 100% Word compatibility, $80, native Linux.
- hitpointdrew 5y ago
  I am not a lawyer, and don’t work in law. I was just observing how that industry is cemented to Word. I personally hardly ever use word, and have no need for a Linux replacement for Word. My work is all plain text mostly in sublime or vim.

ar_lan 5y ago

What about something like Office 365? Wouldn't this handle this problem just fine?

stilisstuk 5y ago

Similar work profile, but: MS office is a huge pain to work with. 30 pages, 3 authors, comments, revi sions, deleted images, and it often crashs. And track changes doesn't work on tables (!) Mind: LibreOffice is properly worse, but that doesn't change that MS office is abyssmall.

ecf 5y ago

> 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 changes/comments. Other industries have figured out the problem of how to allow many people to work on text based documents. The fact that the Legal world still runs on antiquated software is because of the billable hour. Until that changes, law firms will resist any meaningful improvement to their workflow.