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Why would law firms want to exchange documents in a dense, opaque format like Microsoft Word anyway? Legal documents are mostly about the actual words, not all
by upofadown 5y ago
Why would law firms want to exchange documents in a dense, opaque format like Microsoft Word anyway? Legal documents are mostly about the actual words, not all the word processing stuff that Word is about. You would think that the legal world would of come up with their own application specific format by now.
- traceroute66 5y agoYou've never worked with a law firm have you (either as a client or internally). Two words: Tracked Changes Everyone knows how Word tracked changes works. Especially lawyers and their clients. Beyond the above. Formatting. Firms will have have substancial know-how in Word formatting. Sure the contract is about the words, but when you present it to the client, it is all nicely formatted in a standardised format.
- themadturk 5y agoIt’s not just clients and nice formatting. Courts can be very specific in what they will accept. If court rules say an appellate brief can be no more than 50 pages, it damn well not be presented with more than 50 pages, and lawyers will want to use every available word they can get into that 50 pages.
- andylynch 5y agoLawyers also have clients! Its sounds facetious even saying it but it’s also not that surprising to discover that an industry heavily reliant of word processing uses the market leading word processor.
- upofadown 5y agoBut that is my point. They don't do much of any word processing from the era of Microsoft Word. They just process some text. What does Word give them that, say, a Wiki would not do faster and easier? Emailing word processing files around strikes me as very last century.
- anotherman554 5y agoTrial lawyers need to format their legal documents to a specific set of guidelines and file them with the court. That isn't what a wiki is for.
- upofadown 5y agoWiki is marked up text. So it would be translated into a document guaranteed to meet those guidelines with no extra effort. That is exactly what a wiki is for.
- anotherman554 5y agoA template in Microsft Word already has the formatting without extra effort. Word is pretty cheap, especially for a successful law firm. Why would anyone switch?
- pseingatl 5y agoNot really. Most lawyers never use Styles. This means ToC's are a disaster. Autonumbering not required extra effort? Try to add an item to a parent list when there are no empty lines and you are in a sub-sublist. (i.e., you're at (i) and you need to add a 4 to your 1,2,3,4 and skip the intermediate a, b, c. Good luck.
- selfhoster11 5y agoA wiki is hard to mail around and archive offline.
- wvenable 5y agoThis a weird argument; It's like asking why graphic designers use Photoshop instead of coming up with their own image manipulation application. Word is literally the top-tier application for developing documents and lawyers are using it for exactly what it's designed for.
- upofadown 5y agoIf graphic designers were collaboratively editing images where change management was critical and every pixel had to be manually inserted to generate a very specific meaning I suspect that they would come up with their own format and associated applications.
- james_in_the_uk 5y agoProbably not, actually. Why? They are not developers, they're artists. They will learn and use the tools available to them. If even a fraction of the effort that developers put into improving their own tools actually went into improving others', then we wouldn't be stuck with such terrible software out here in the real world. But I understood why it is more rewarding and engaging to focus inwards.
- wvenable 5y agoLawyers writing documents is much less like factory composing data than you seem to think. They very much treat it like writing and editing any other kind of written composition. Heck, a lot of lawyers actually dictate their work instead of typing themselves.
- pseingatl 5y agoIt actually reminds me of plumbing more than anything else, especially appellate briefs. Unless and until you get the hang of dictating, your documents will be twice as long. And who is going to do this typing? Someone in Bangalore? Good luck with that.
- 5y ago
- rpmisms 5y agoHonestly, how bad would git be for handling that? I've worked on regulations for a governing body before using git, and it was fantastic for tracking proposed changes. You just submitted a PR.