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>The domination of Word over contract negotiations seems crazy from my engineer's point of view. Lawyer here: because your engineer's POV is wrong. I don't kno

>The domination of Word over contract negotiations seems crazy from my engineer's point of view. Lawyer here: because your engineer's POV is wrong. I don't know what else to say. It comes from a lack of knowledge of how lawyers actually work and therefore what we actually need for our work. It is not identical to what software engineers need or want for theirs. The drafting process is the area in transactional practice that least needs "disruption". The process is long-settled and fairly universal. Track changes are not "crazy confusing to parse", they're a simple and easy way to know who edited what and when. Version control? Basically meaningless for lawyers. The only version of the contract that matters is the most recent one, so we just need a way to track that. In actual practice we don't just revert back to some older version; that doesn't even make sense to someone who understands what we're doing. What really needs disruption, or at least improvement, are contract management platforms. I've worked with all the major ones and they're all pretty bad and clunky in their own way (IME Ironclad is the least-worst but still leaves much to be desired). If someone could develop a simple, intuitive system for extracting and recording certain agreement content and making that searchable (and transferable!), as well as storing and searching agreement documents generally, it would be amazing.

jcelerier 5y ago
> The only version of the contract that matters is the most recent one, so we just need a way to track that. In actual practice we don't just revert back to some older version; that doesn't even make sense to someone who understands what we're doing. so every lawyer on earth is able to use word 100% of the time without ever losing data, removing a sentence or closing a comment by mistake ?
- LiquidSky 5y ago
  A glib response to a glib question: frankly, yes. This is not an actual problem in real-world practice. Change tracking is easy and fairly universally understood. I see this idea from engineers that what lawyers do is try to slide in secret edits and a lawyer’s job is to be ever-vigilant for these secret attacks, but this is not how lawyers actually work. Only non-lawyers imagine this is some huge issue that lawyers grapple with and for which they cry out for a solution. Again, it really would behoove any would-be saviors of the legal profession to engage with actual practitioners and listen to what their actual problems are, not what you strongly feel they must be.
  - jcelerier 5y ago
    > A glib response to a glib question: frankly, yes. that's wild. My experience editing word documents is that you have to have a dozen backups to be sure not to loose something due to basic keyboard / mouse manipulation mistake. I wonder what is their secret.
    - LiquidSky 5y ago
      Try updating your version of Word, it sounds like you’re having some rather severe technical issues.
      - jcelerier 5y ago
        It's not a problem with word, it's a problem with anything that allows keyboard input. There's not a week where I don't see a mistakenly removed line for instance when checking a diff before commiting.
  - afarrell 5y ago
    I'm going to name the phenomenon you're arguing against "UX projection". As a software engineer, when I imagine myself doing a lawyer's job, I would want a tool like this. But that misses the point. Good UX requires first being attentive to the actual problems expressed by users. Otherwise we end up with the pretense of empathy: projection.
  - Aeolun 5y ago
    > Again, it really would behoove any would-be saviors of the legal profession to engage with actual practitioners and listen to what their actual problems are That may be a good idea, but not because they’ll tell you what their problems are. Asking people what their problem is leads to responses like ‘faster horses’ instead of ‘cars’, and this whole Word situation reeks strongly of that.
    - LiquidSky 5y ago
      That's funny, to me it reeks strongly of solutions in search of a problem.
dctoedt 5y ago
> The only version of the contract that matters is the most recent one, so we just need a way to track that. Another lawyer here: This is correct. (To uniquely identify the most recent version, it's extremely helpful to hard-code the date and time into the file name and in a running header. EXAMPLE: "ABC-XYZ-NDA-markup-2022-01-31-1510-CST.docx" (or use UTC if dealing with other countries' time zones).
- Aeolun 5y ago
  The moment you start doing this, git becomes the better solution, no? If multiple parties are mailing word documents back and forth (even with date in title), it becomes crazy.
  - dctoedt 5y ago
    > The moment you start doing this, git becomes the better solution, no? You think J. Random Lawyer is going to learn, and use, git? ROFLMAO — half the lawyers around don't even know how to use styles in Word, and they think the way to add spacing between paragraphs is to leave a blank line.
    - zie 5y ago
      +1, Many developers can barely use git.
  - LiquidSky 5y ago
    Nah, we do the same thing the parent does with file names. Works just fine.
NoboruWataya 5y ago
> Version control? Basically meaningless for lawyers. The only version of the contract that matters is the most recent one, so we just need a way to track that. I think you are talking about versioning executed contracts, in which case I kind of agree with you, though there are some corner cases where it would be helpful to track all the amendments/restatements to a contract over time. But I do think versioning of drafts is important in all but the most basic negotiations because parties expect redlines with each draft and different parties may expect different redlines (because not all parties are necessarily recipients of all drafts, eg, if there are some discrete points being negotiated amongst a sub-set of the parties). But as I have said in another comment, that kind of version control is already available to lawyers. And in general, I agree with you - the actual pain points for lawyers (and their clients) are not the ones that software developers tend to focus on when they talk about disrupting the legal sector. There are a lot of solutions in search of problems.
jontas 5y ago
If you ever want to chat about your ideas on contract management, hit me up. I'm an NYC based software engineer, email in profile.
FrobeniusTwist 5y ago
Another (transactional) lawyer here. While I generally agree with this, there are still circumstances in which something like a VC system would be useful. It's not uncommon for documents to go through a dozen or more (sometimes significantly more) iterations before being finalized. It would sometimes be useful to know in which version a particular fragment of language was inserted. But this can be worked out "manually", and indeed I think the real issue is that the value add of a VC system is probably small enough that it's just not worth any significant additional complexity. Having said that, I've long considered doing a lunchtime brownbag session on git, just to blow people's minds about what is possible. I do disagree about "Track Changes" though. That quickly becomes an incomprehensible mess. Better to avoid Track Changes (except in very small/simple agreements where you don't expect more than one or two turns, in which case it can be useful) and send a "clean" and redline version (based on the immediately preceding version) on each turn.
- marwis 5y ago
  SharePoint has version control for Word documents. It's better suited for that than Git. Also, mailbox full of back and forth emails with successive versions of document in attachments is also a version control system. It just needs better tooling.
bdowling 5y ago
> The only version of the contract that matters is the most recent one ... Replying to add that there is a simple reason for this: Virtually every written contract includes an "integration" or "whole agreement" clause that states that the current version is the final version of the contract and that it supersedes any prior oral or written agreements between the parties.

jcelerier 5y ago

> The only version of the contract that matters is the most recent one, so we just need a way to track that. In actual practice we don't just revert back to some older version; that doesn't even make sense to someone who understands what we're doing. so every lawyer on earth is able to use word 100% of the time without ever losing data, removing a sentence or closing a comment by mistake ?

LiquidSky 5y ago
A glib response to a glib question: frankly, yes. This is not an actual problem in real-world practice. Change tracking is easy and fairly universally understood. I see this idea from engineers that what lawyers do is try to slide in secret edits and a lawyer’s job is to be ever-vigilant for these secret attacks, but this is not how lawyers actually work. Only non-lawyers imagine this is some huge issue that lawyers grapple with and for which they cry out for a solution. Again, it really would behoove any would-be saviors of the legal profession to engage with actual practitioners and listen to what their actual problems are, not what you strongly feel they must be.
- jcelerier 5y ago
  > A glib response to a glib question: frankly, yes. that's wild. My experience editing word documents is that you have to have a dozen backups to be sure not to loose something due to basic keyboard / mouse manipulation mistake. I wonder what is their secret.
  - LiquidSky 5y ago
    Try updating your version of Word, it sounds like you’re having some rather severe technical issues.
    - jcelerier 5y ago
      It's not a problem with word, it's a problem with anything that allows keyboard input. There's not a week where I don't see a mistakenly removed line for instance when checking a diff before commiting.
- afarrell 5y ago
  I'm going to name the phenomenon you're arguing against "UX projection". As a software engineer, when I imagine myself doing a lawyer's job, I would want a tool like this. But that misses the point. Good UX requires first being attentive to the actual problems expressed by users. Otherwise we end up with the pretense of empathy: projection.
- Aeolun 5y ago
  > Again, it really would behoove any would-be saviors of the legal profession to engage with actual practitioners and listen to what their actual problems are That may be a good idea, but not because they’ll tell you what their problems are. Asking people what their problem is leads to responses like ‘faster horses’ instead of ‘cars’, and this whole Word situation reeks strongly of that.
  - LiquidSky 5y ago
    That's funny, to me it reeks strongly of solutions in search of a problem.

dctoedt 5y ago

> The only version of the contract that matters is the most recent one, so we just need a way to track that. Another lawyer here: This is correct. (To uniquely identify the most recent version, it's extremely helpful to hard-code the date and time into the file name and in a running header. EXAMPLE: "ABC-XYZ-NDA-markup-2022-01-31-1510-CST.docx" (or use UTC if dealing with other countries' time zones).

Aeolun 5y ago
The moment you start doing this, git becomes the better solution, no? If multiple parties are mailing word documents back and forth (even with date in title), it becomes crazy.
- dctoedt 5y ago
  > The moment you start doing this, git becomes the better solution, no? You think J. Random Lawyer is going to learn, and use, git? ROFLMAO — half the lawyers around don't even know how to use styles in Word, and they think the way to add spacing between paragraphs is to leave a blank line.
  - zie 5y ago
    +1, Many developers can barely use git.
- LiquidSky 5y ago
  Nah, we do the same thing the parent does with file names. Works just fine.

NoboruWataya 5y ago

> Version control? Basically meaningless for lawyers. The only version of the contract that matters is the most recent one, so we just need a way to track that. I think you are talking about versioning executed contracts, in which case I kind of agree with you, though there are some corner cases where it would be helpful to track all the amendments/restatements to a contract over time. But I do think versioning of drafts is important in all but the most basic negotiations because parties expect redlines with each draft and different parties may expect different redlines (because not all parties are necessarily recipients of all drafts, eg, if there are some discrete points being negotiated amongst a sub-set of the parties). But as I have said in another comment, that kind of version control is already available to lawyers. And in general, I agree with you - the actual pain points for lawyers (and their clients) are not the ones that software developers tend to focus on when they talk about disrupting the legal sector. There are a lot of solutions in search of problems.

jontas 5y ago

If you ever want to chat about your ideas on contract management, hit me up. I'm an NYC based software engineer, email in profile.

FrobeniusTwist 5y ago

Another (transactional) lawyer here. While I generally agree with this, there are still circumstances in which something like a VC system would be useful. It's not uncommon for documents to go through a dozen or more (sometimes significantly more) iterations before being finalized. It would sometimes be useful to know in which version a particular fragment of language was inserted. But this can be worked out "manually", and indeed I think the real issue is that the value add of a VC system is probably small enough that it's just not worth any significant additional complexity. Having said that, I've long considered doing a lunchtime brownbag session on git, just to blow people's minds about what is possible. I do disagree about "Track Changes" though. That quickly becomes an incomprehensible mess. Better to avoid Track Changes (except in very small/simple agreements where you don't expect more than one or two turns, in which case it can be useful) and send a "clean" and redline version (based on the immediately preceding version) on each turn.

marwis 5y ago
SharePoint has version control for Word documents. It's better suited for that than Git. Also, mailbox full of back and forth emails with successive versions of document in attachments is also a version control system. It just needs better tooling.

bdowling 5y ago

> The only version of the contract that matters is the most recent one ... Replying to add that there is a simple reason for this: Virtually every written contract includes an "integration" or "whole agreement" clause that states that the current version is the final version of the contract and that it supersedes any prior oral or written agreements between the parties.