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The typical lawyer knows more about computers and programming, than a typical programmer knows about the law. I think this is the case for most fields with res

The typical lawyer knows more about computers and programming, than a typical programmer knows about the law. I think this is the case for most fields with respect to programming.

scrozart 3y ago
What, exactly, are you basing this assumption on?
torstenvl 3y ago
I am not so sure. Many of my day job colleagues struggle to use Excel, let alone code anything. By contrast there seem to be a lot of programmers who have a basic understanding of the law, at least as it applies to them.
fragmede 3y ago
What type of law and what type of programming? Everyone has to be aware of computers these days, but that doesn't make them know anything about programming. Meanwhile, in between traffic laws, financial laws (taxes, particularly), employment law, invention patent laws, maybe real estate/permitting laws, a programmer and any person in society needs to have some knowledge of the law to exist more than a lawyer needs to know about programming.
- gamblor956 3y ago
  Generally, what the average programmer "knows" about the law is the equivalent to what the average lawyer "knows" about programming: the superficial, easy stuff that you can pick up without any actual training or effort.
  - trashtester 3y ago
    Virtually every grown-up will interact with the law multiple times per day, especially traffic laws. Half the population has not written a single computer program in their life.
    - gamblor956 3y ago
      Virtually every grown-up will use a computer multiple times per day, even all day. That is the same level of interaction as your example.
      - trashtester 3y ago
        I didn't argue about "using a computer", only about "programming". I agree that "using a computer" is an experience most people will have a similar exposure to as they have to legal matters. "Programming" is more analogous to writing litigation documents or contracts, where formal errors tend to have very bad consequences.
1propionyl 3y ago
I'm not sure about that. But I would say: The typical programmer thinks they know far more about the law, than a typical lawyer thinks they know about programming.
trashtester 3y ago
That doesn't match my experience. But more importantly, there are areas of the law that require fairly comprehensive understanding of computer systems, both on the development, infrastructure and applications such as data science to properly understand. (Not understanding the tech makes it impossible to fully understand the law). For instance, if an average lawyer tasked with ensuring that a company is in compliance with GDPR, and come across terminology such as "Data Protection by Design & Default" with further references to "Pseudonymization" and "Anonymization", will they even know how to start a review of the present situation in an organization for these topics? My experience is that there is often a significant gap between where the understanding of the legal team ends and where the development and data science teams take responsibility that isn't covered by anyone. The main problem is that legal coverage of data protection topics (such as [1]) often do not prescribe very specific specifications for how to be compliant. Instead, it requires people to use good judgement. Someone with a background in law will be used to this, but will usually not understand the technology well enough to have developed the kind of intuition needed to do so. And when they sit down with a team of typical engineers, communication can get really difficult. The engineers tend to want very specific instructions on what to do, and many will not react well if confronted with the relatively loose (for an engineer) legal language. Some will just ignore the parts they don't understand, while others will go to the other extreme and propose draconian measures that will at best be extremely costly. The latter group tends to be ignored by management. In the end, many compliance initiatives end up with a lot of forms that serve as little more than window dressing, but where the hard bits that nobody really understand end up ignored. To really achieve compliance, an organization will need people who are (in the same person) able to read legal texts with a lawyer's ability to interpret combined with the ability think like a black hat hacker trying to penetrate, a paranoid operations person terrified of data loss or a shady data scientist that keeps taking all sorts of shortcuts. Few organizations have such lawyers available. [1] https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/uk-gdpr-guidance-and-resources/accountability-and-governance/guide-to-accountability-and-governance/accountability-and-governance/data-protection-by-design-and-default/ https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/uk-gdpr-guidance-and-re...

The typical lawyer knows more about computers and programming, than a typical programmer knows about the law. I think this is the case for most fields with respect to programming.

scrozart 3y ago

What, exactly, are you basing this assumption on?

torstenvl 3y ago

I am not so sure. Many of my day job colleagues struggle to use Excel, let alone code anything. By contrast there seem to be a lot of programmers who have a basic understanding of the law, at least as it applies to them.

fragmede 3y ago

What type of law and what type of programming? Everyone has to be aware of computers these days, but that doesn't make them know anything about programming. Meanwhile, in between traffic laws, financial laws (taxes, particularly), employment law, invention patent laws, maybe real estate/permitting laws, a programmer and any person in society needs to have some knowledge of the law to exist more than a lawyer needs to know about programming.

gamblor956 3y ago
Generally, what the average programmer "knows" about the law is the equivalent to what the average lawyer "knows" about programming: the superficial, easy stuff that you can pick up without any actual training or effort.
- trashtester 3y ago
  Virtually every grown-up will interact with the law multiple times per day, especially traffic laws. Half the population has not written a single computer program in their life.
  - gamblor956 3y ago
    Virtually every grown-up will use a computer multiple times per day, even all day. That is the same level of interaction as your example.
    - trashtester 3y ago
      I didn't argue about "using a computer", only about "programming". I agree that "using a computer" is an experience most people will have a similar exposure to as they have to legal matters. "Programming" is more analogous to writing litigation documents or contracts, where formal errors tend to have very bad consequences.

1propionyl 3y ago

I'm not sure about that. But I would say: The typical programmer thinks they know far more about the law, than a typical lawyer thinks they know about programming.

trashtester 3y ago

That doesn't match my experience. But more importantly, there are areas of the law that require fairly comprehensive understanding of computer systems, both on the development, infrastructure and applications such as data science to properly understand. (Not understanding the tech makes it impossible to fully understand the law). For instance, if an average lawyer tasked with ensuring that a company is in compliance with GDPR, and come across terminology such as "Data Protection by Design & Default" with further references to "Pseudonymization" and "Anonymization", will they even know how to start a review of the present situation in an organization for these topics? My experience is that there is often a significant gap between where the understanding of the legal team ends and where the development and data science teams take responsibility that isn't covered by anyone. The main problem is that legal coverage of data protection topics (such as [1]) often do not prescribe very specific specifications for how to be compliant. Instead, it requires people to use good judgement. Someone with a background in law will be used to this, but will usually not understand the technology well enough to have developed the kind of intuition needed to do so. And when they sit down with a team of typical engineers, communication can get really difficult. The engineers tend to want very specific instructions on what to do, and many will not react well if confronted with the relatively loose (for an engineer) legal language. Some will just ignore the parts they don't understand, while others will go to the other extreme and propose draconian measures that will at best be extremely costly. The latter group tends to be ignored by management. In the end, many compliance initiatives end up with a lot of forms that serve as little more than window dressing, but where the hard bits that nobody really understand end up ignored. To really achieve compliance, an organization will need people who are (in the same person) able to read legal texts with a lawyer's ability to interpret combined with the ability think like a black hat hacker trying to penetrate, a paranoid operations person terrified of data loss or a shady data scientist that keeps taking all sorts of shortcuts. Few organizations have such lawyers available. [1] https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/uk-gdpr-guidance-and-resources/accountability-and-governance/guide-to-accountability-and-governance/accountability-and-governance/data-protection-by-design-and-default/ https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/uk-gdpr-guidance-and-re...