8 ms·

On Building Git for Lawyers

164 points by jpbryan 2y ago

sbpayne 2y ago
It's curious to me how many people think "just convert it to a different filetype" will solve the problem. Do you think there are other professions/industries that would benefit from this?
- hadsed 2y ago
  JUST CONVERT THE PDF INTO A STRUCTURED SCHEMA AND THEN LAWYERS CAN BECOME PROGRAMMERS LIKE GOD INTENDED
- jpbryan 2y ago
  I think a lot of people unfamiliar with docx think of it as effectively the same thing as any other rich text format. Because of that, they assume converting it to other formats is trivial, not realizing that other formats support a small subset of the functionality docx does. Definitely. Finance professionals, academic researchers, legislators, among many other professionals, encounter similar version control issues. We are currently focused on law because of our domain expertise and because the problem is particularly pronounced in the law.
  - zelos 2y ago
    I can see something like this being useful in other law related areas. My wife's court office has hacked together some horrendous workflow for tracking offenders as they progress through the system using OneNote and Word, but it suffers from all the synchronization issues and conflicts you'd expect.
- noirscape 2y ago
  The main reason people think that is because most of the MS Office suite's document formats are things that no programmer wants to touch if they can help it and usually when you're parsing them to something else, you can drop all the weirdness. Nobody loses sleep because the xlsx file you're using as an input for a script doesn't parse the excel graph that someone else put into it properly. They're all incredibly capable formats (from a user perspective anyway), with the caveat that they're utter hell to work with in terms of a programming perspective. It's easier to just toss it into a black box parser/serializer and hope that all the text you need in/out comes out properly on the other side. Actually generating docx or xlsx files (that aren't trivial) that look exactly like another input file (so you have to account for every notable difference in formatting) is a ton of work; most people who have touched webdev will probably at some point have had to format their emails for Outlooks half-assed ancient HTML parser and even there, you at least control what it's going to look like.
- thedman9052 2y ago
  This would be great in engineering for specifications and such. We have product lifecycle management software to track document revisions and handle approvals but it doesn't integrate with .docx files, it just stores them. You have to download files manually and diff them in Word or Beyond Compare for redlines.
shortrounddev2 2y ago
Some of those screen recordings show me just how poor some peoples' typing skills are. I now understand why my coworkers just want to jump on zoom calls all the time instead of just telling me what their friggin problem is over slack
- sitkack 2y ago
  Which could have been an email, and they can take as long as they need or want. I would get flooded with GenZ video call requests because of various similar factors.
mushufasa 2y ago
I remember a post on here a few years ago about someone who had tried doing this and failed. I don't remember the details but you may be able to find it if you search well. My recollection of his takeaway was that lawyers actually didn't want a lot of the things git offered. For example, they always wanted to be using the latest version -- the abstraction of multiple branches where multiple people independently worked on things then merged them back together wasn't quite how most lawyers worked. And the other big thing was a network problem: a lawyer has to us microsoft office's version control because the opposing team is going to use it, so even if you use some better editor software it still has to be sent as a word file showing the tracked changes to the other side.
- jpbryan 2y ago
  > the abstraction of multiple branches where multiple people independently worked on things then merged them back together wasn't quite how most lawyers worked This depends a lot on the practice. Transactional lawyers working in M&A and real estate encounter the issue of parallel drafts all the time. Personal injury lawyers tend to work in isolation and don't need all of git's functionality. Pretty much every lawyer redlines in some capacity, however, and benefit from visualizing a linear version history. >And the other big thing was a network problem: a lawyer has to us microsoft office's version control because the opposing team is going to use it, so even if you use some better editor software it still has to be sent as a word file showing the tracked changes to the other side. Yes, this is absolutely correct. This is one of the main things that keeps docx entrenched as the standard in legal collaboration. It would be an enormous faux-pas to send another lawyer a contract in an application that they're unfamiliar with. Backwards compatibility with their existing workflows is essential.
  - 9dev 2y ago
    I don’t see how the network lock-in problem couldn’t be solved by automatically generating a DOCX version, however. As long as you can seamlessly import and export the standard—or shall we say, legacy?—format, you could work with a version control app without the other side even noticing.
themerone 2y ago
It was hard enough to get lawyers to migrate from Word Perfect to Word.
- massysett 2y ago
  I wish it was even harder, a Word document is a jumble of hidden formatting instructions that is impossible to troubleshoot.
- KPGv2 2y ago
  Oh god, I'm getting flashbacks to my first internship, where just about the only thing I liked about WP was that there was a key chord for inserting a section symbol, while Word didn't have that. I think some older lawyers told me they thought the only reason they still were on WP was because of that.
julianeon 2y ago
I'm interested in an adjacent question, because I do it myself: Why don't more people use Git and Markdown for their todo lists and/or GTD systems? The Git client is ideal for displaying lists and editing a little text file you git push could not be more simple.
- cathalc 2y ago
  After years of trialling a variety of notebook setups, I eventually fell back to vscode & git. I've even given up on Markdown (nothing wrong with it, I just realised I never actually view my own notes in parsed Markdown so I stopped bothering). All I need is a file structure that I understand, and an editor for typing and searching :) Git is great for (i) persistence, (ii) availability and (iii) the merge flow encourages me to review/clean changes before merging them to main.
- mixermachine 2y ago
  Simple for a developer sure. Just have a look at what entrylevel developers do (no hate, everybody starts somewhere). This group of people is willing and ready to learn but you still often hear "just checkout the project again" when a problem is encountered. Most people just use an app and are fine with that functionality. My partner and I use a Google Keep list that is shared between our accounts. Live editing included and it does everything just fine. There are more elaborate app solutions out there that do more and solve most of the problems.
- KPGv2 2y ago
  Seems like overkill, especially considering I exclusively use todo lists on my phone, where I can download a free app and never have to think about rebasing and diffing.
mtlynch 2y ago
Earlier this year, I worked on 60 pages of M&A contract documents with lawyers, and I found the change tracking in Word miserable. It's so difficult to see only the delta quickly, it's slow to go back through the history, and it's hard to discuss a change within the tool itself. It felt crazy that there wasn't better tooling for this, but I also appreciate the difficulty of trying to get lawyers out of the MS Word workflow that they know. Good luck to the team! I hope you're successful.
- rwmj 2y ago
  I was tech editor on a book that used MS Word versioning. (One chapter per .docx because Word couldn't scale to anything longer). As you say, it was absolutely miserable.
- ulbu 2y ago
  it’s ridiculous that a document formatting app/format is used for creation and storage of documents. especially for official ones that follow strict formatting protocol. all data that satisfies the protocol is just a record! just pop a json into a template-engine and you’re go. i’m so sad about the shithead influence of microsoft on our society.
- LiquidSky 2y ago
  Attorney here. Word tracking works just fine for my work and the work of pretty much every attorney I've ever interacted with. Meanwhile, as another comment in this thread noted: >Git is a tool built around the needs of software developers. Because git is too complicated and branching, though in principle, would make sense in some situations, is actually pretty difficult to manage (especially for binary documents). Every alternative I've seen proposed, especially by non-lawyers, has been far too complicated for our needs and attempts to tackle problems that really aren't actual problems in real everyday practice. It often seems like developers in this space speculate on theoretical problems they feel lawyers must face and create solutions a programmer would appreciate for those.
  - mtlynch 2y ago
    Have you used change-tracking software that worked well in other domains? To me, saying that change tracking in Word is fine when you've never seen anything better is kind of like someone 60 years ago saying, "A typewriter is fine, and everyone I know agrees. All these software people are trying to solve theoretical problems with word processing software." You might not agree with particular solutions you've seen for improving change tracking for legal documents, but I'm surprised you don't see room for improvement in change tracking. From my experience as a client who had to participate in the process, I saw lots of issues: First, it's super slow. A large document with lots of tables and lists takes 20+ seconds to load. Searching is also much slower than it should be. There's a ton of noise. When I was reviewing documents, 80% of the changes that showed up as redline changes weren't real changes but were just formatting updates (e.g., page renumberings, section renumberings). It made it hard to find the real change vs. just formatting changes. The changes are all in separate files rather than having a single tool that can show you each version in a single place. The Word doc supports inline commenting, so it's helpful for each side to be able to discuss it internally within the doc itself, but then that creates the risk that you'll accidentally share a version with the opposing side that includes private notes. As far as I know, Word doesn't have any way of making this safe by default. Rather, it's on the attorney to remember to scrub private information each time before sharing it with the other side.
haccount 2y ago
[flagged]
frozenlettuce 2y ago
The Brazilian constitution uses a <strike> element to mark parts of the text that were overwritten, alongside a link to the amendment https://www.planalto.gov.br/ccivil_03/constituicao/constituicao.htm https://www.planalto.gov.br/ccivil_03/constituicao/constitui...
- alganet 2y ago
  In HTML, they should be using <del> instead, which denotes a portion of the text that was removed. If something is inserted, then <ins> should be used. <strike> is deprecated. This kind of notation is similar but not the same as redlining. Whoever reads the law actually wants `git history` in this case. The diff is not a means to an end (a fully edited document), having the diff explicit is the end goal.
  - recursive 2y ago
    Maybe it's written in HTML 3.2.
macspoofing 2y ago
>Why don't lawyers and other non-coders use git? Git is a tool built around the needs of software developers. Because git is too complicated and branching, though in principle, would make sense in some situations, is actually pretty difficult to manage (especially for binary documents). Also, they do use version history built into tools like Sharepoint/Office, or the document itself.
- zelos 2y ago
  How many developers use git? I'd bet there's a huge number of developers out there at non-tech companies who get by with numbered folders and emailing zip archives around.
  - rwmj 2y ago
    Oh god, reminds me of the time I was working in consulting and dealing with web developers at small marketing companies. They never used version control. You'd often get them to fix one thing, fix a second thing, and find the first thing had been reverted back to its original broken state.
- ZeroCool2u 2y ago
  To be fair, looking at a word doc with tracked changes enabled that has gone through a few rounds with more than a couple people in my Legal dept makes me feel like my brain is melting.
- kwertyoowiyop 2y ago
  More specifically it’s built around the needs of Linux software developers.
SchwKatze 2y ago
I was thinking about that last month. But in addition to git, I would propose a formal verification system based on the contract statements, to ensure that any addition would not broke the logic and correctness of the contract. Working like a CI system.
- sitkack 2y ago
  Then why not write the contracts in prolog?
  - corinroyal 2y ago
    Right? Or a domain specific language for law: https://github.com/CatalaLang/catala https://github.com/CatalaLang/catala I get that dislodging docx is an impossible job, but since docx is a terrible format for anything, it needs to be done for all the reasons the author mentions. The codes that run society should not be locked up in bad proprietary formats.
    - KPGv2 2y ago
      > The codes that run society This discussion is about contracts, not legal codes. I agree with your statement, but decades now of people on Slashdot being unable to differentiate copyright and patent has made me this way, where anyone potentially mixing up legal concepts has me triggered and jumping down their throat.
      - sitkack 2y ago
        Contracts do run society, along with legal codes that are written in much the same manner, by the same body of experts.
        light_cone 2y ago
        Moreover, the law literally says that contracts are considered as laws but only applicable to co-contractants (at least in France it's written like that). So it's the same thing, just with a different scope and precedence on the hierarchy of norms.
stcroixx 2y ago
You would have to improve the interface substantially. I've been a developer for over 25 years, have used Linux as a daily driver for as long, and I can't stand using it. Only software developers would tolerate it.
- alganet 2y ago
  What are you talking about? The dude made a full complete UX tailored for lawyers that has nothing to do with git for developers.
whoomp12342 2y ago
google docs has a very nice version control
- jzb 2y ago
  Google docs IME is great for collaboration until the number of reviewers exceeds, say, 5 people and/or there's a need for extended conversation on parts of the text. For simple editing? Fantastic. Loved it. For a debate over, say, product requirements or licensing... not so great.
- rwmj 2y ago
  This must be a different google docs from the one I have to use. It sort of works if there's one primary writer and editor, and everyone is contributing small suggestions through that person, but it definitely doesn't work if there are two people modifying the same section of text.
- jpbryan 2y ago
  Google Docs is a step in the right direction but has several limitations. 1. Lawyers don't want everyone holding the pen at the same time. Specialists want to make their changes and have them reviewed in isolation from other's changes. Think of a redline like a pull request. You don't want other people's changes in your work when it's getting reviewed. 2. Google Docs breaks down when even a single person drafts outside of it. See the section of my essay about why lawyers will never stop using Word. Even if you managed to get an entire firm using Google Docs, it still wouldn't work because they need to exchange drafts with external parties.
  - whoomp12342 2y ago
    so lock it down so people can only "suggest edits" and then you have a middle person approving or commenting on the suggestion
KPGv2 2y ago
Git? Old and busted. Why don't you do JJ for lawyers instead? (And you could call it JurisJiction)
- ericjmorey 2y ago
  jj has become my new favorite
- krunck 2y ago
  In case anyone was wondering: https://github.com/martinvonz/jj https://github.com/martinvonz/jj
hugocbp 2y ago
As an ex-lawyer for over 10 years, this was a huge issue for me, specially when the other party is adversarial (e.g. another lawyer for the other part that is not exactly forthcoming with the changes). Back in the day, to solve that (before I became a software developer and knew about git), I basically re-implemented "git in Microsoft Word version control". On bigger contracts with dozens and even hundreds of pages, with more than 2 parties involved, we could have 3-4 parallel changes to the same documents at once. And a lot of times some of the parties didn't want to advertise their changes. What I did was construct a table in Excel with each "version" of each clause, and where they were present omitted. It was a lot of work to maintain, but back then I didn't know any better, but worked. By saving the versions of the files we sent for revision (think of the main branch), I could receive the version from other parties (kind of like feature branches), turn on Word changes, paste the complete content of the original, and we could visualize the difference. It's been more than 10 years since I stopped dealing with contracts, but I imagine a lot of lawyers, specially older folks, are still either doing very convoluted processes to track changes like me or not even bothering most of the times. The article is spot on on the issues (even brought back some memories). This is something I'd use for sure in my previous life.
- nullhole 2y ago
  > By saving the versions of the files we sent for revision (think of the main branch), I could receive the version from other parties (kind of like feature branches), turn on Word changes, paste the complete content of the original, and we could visualize the difference. IANAL, but this was a key step for me as well. If you maintain copies of the versions sent out (and modified copies sent back), you can always get a clean diff of the copy sent out versus the copy sent back, or of an earlier version versus a subsequent revision. The compare/combine tools in Word aren't great, but they are functional. Kind of like a local maximum, I suppose.
  - hugocbp 2y ago
    Exactly. The part where I used Excel was because Word didn't really scale for more than 2-3 sets of changes like that. So my "copying current version changes" to Excel was kind of like git merging to the main branch. People from outside the craft usually get super confused and frustrated by how many hours those contracts could take ("it is just a Word document!"), but that used to be a huge reason why.
renewiltord 2y ago
Juro was this. I used it for redlining a few times but it didn’t work because the other guy has to be onboarded onto the system. Unscrupulous opponents will turn off Track Changes in MS Word to catch you off guard.
- kevin-oconnell 2y ago
  That's a great point. That's why we built it to work and add value even if the other guy has not been onboarded onto the system. This made the engineering lift way bigger, because the system needs to be able to accept and process whatever the other guy sent you. This makes it an open-ended problem, and we needed to be able to handle any possible edge case that the other guy's docs could introduce. Juro and others make the other guy onboard because that limits the scope of the engineering problem. You can only create what the platform lets you create, so you know in advance what the system needs to handle. This approach makes it easier to build. But the problem is that it is really hard to get the other guy to onboard. As a result, your MVP is not really an MVP. Our approach required way, way more engineering work up front. But it put us in a position where getting the other guy to onboard is a "nice to have", not a requirement.
vhodges 2y ago
I built something like this about 13 or so years ago. a startup called contractual.ly - they got acquired by Coupa after I left. I used the papertrail gem to track changes to the contract object and provided diffs and commenting and then allowing collection of digital signatures (Docusign was pretty new at the time so we rolled our own) The founder has cofounded another one in the same space https://recitalapp.com/ https://recitalapp.com/
- abrarski 2y ago
  This is close, but I think our demo www.ben-ki.com/ is closer to what the tweet and title seem to be indicating from a UX / value perspective https://www.loom.com/share/a4c5f5bf035c43938b342361154b6753?sid=b25e353c-7c5b-4387-a1f5-1b7787478908 https://www.loom.com/share/a4c5f5bf035c43938b342361154b6753?...
James_K 2y ago
Stuff like this really make me wish people knew about computers. They could see endless gains from switching to something like LaTeX with Git version control. Sure, it would take a bit of time to train people on, but the productivity gains would be massive. The strangest thing is that everyone used to use computers that way. It seems that the creation of GUIs and WYSIWYG has greatly worsened the experience a lot of people have with a computer. I think the issue is that people select their tools based off what is easiest to learn, so there is a kind of local minima reached where most software today is very easy to operate but hugely inefficient for anyone who has to use it frequently.
- jjmarr 2y ago
  The issue is "people who view themselves as good with computers" self-select into jobs in the technology industry. This means we don't have any ambassadors for technological process improvements in the average business.
  - jayd16 2y ago
    You mean the sales department?
- duped 2y ago
  More "endless pains" then "endless gains" in all honesty. The point of software is to abstract complexity, not present it to users (or worse, create it). LaTex is just ugly and surprising. People want to write and see what they've written, not type and then render. It's a backwards development workflow from the instant feedback of wysiwyg (which is why wysiwyg was so revolutionary, and became the de facto standard for the task).
  - myworkinisgood 2y ago
    If Word was implemented with standard XML backend instead of OOXML, then today, we could have easily developed tools to show good, reliable diffs without having to resort to tricks.
  - 2y ago
1-more 2y ago
Reporting back from my biglaw pal I sent this to: > Big flaw in the product: 60 year old partner who still makes hand edits and has the Secretary scan the pages and send them out of order to the associate > Second big flaw in the product: specialists edits get rejected because they don’t know the deal points and are just swooping in I took issue with this as step 4 seems to involve an M&A lawyer accepting/rejecting specialist edits piecemeal, to which he responded "Right, but that doesn’t actually save that much time. It’s the same work that an M&A associate is already doing" > Third big flaw in the product: big law firms are the least innovative organizations on earth > Fourth big flaw in the product: having junior associates do menial tasks at $800-950/hr is a feature, not a bug, of law firm business model. So you are solving for something that the target customer doesn’t necessarily want solved. and there it is :/
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- jpbryan 2y ago
  > 60 year old partner who still makes hand edits and has the Secretary scan the pages and send them out of order to the associate We've designed our product to be backwards compatible with existing workflows. It does not require every team member to use the product to add value. Partners who prefer their way of doing things can continue to do so allowing associates to add their drafts to Version Story to create redlines and consolidate changes. >specialists edits get rejected because they don’t know the deal points and are just swooping in The possibility of incorrectly rejecting specialists edits exists with or without Version Story. Our product makes it easier to understand what's changed so lawyers can exercise their judgement about these decisions. > Third big flaw in the product: big law firms are the least innovative organizations on earth I think this assumption is worth challenging. Millennials are becoming partners at law firms and are spearheading initiatives to update their tech stacks. This is reflected in legal tech budget growth trends (https://www.legalcurrent.com/tech-spending-remains-especially-hot-reactions-to-the-thomson-reuters-q1-2024-law-firm-financial-index/ https://www.legalcurrent.com/tech-spending-remains-especiall...). > Fourth big flaw in the product: having junior associates do menial tasks at $800-950/hr is a feature, not a bug, of law firm business model. So you are solving for something that the target customer doesn’t necessarily want solved. Making mistakes is not a feature (https://newsletterhunt.com/emails/40489 https://newsletterhunt.com/emails/40489). In the example I outline in the essay, the lawyer made three separate mistakes when manually merging documents.
ndr 2y ago
This is one of the longest standing conversation with my lawyer partner. The best interaction is on Google Docs which is somewhat ok, definitely better than sending some docx back and forth. The main friction seems to be that very few things beat email attachments, no auth to fight with. Wish these folks the best.
apozem 2y ago
This person is 100% correct that git will never see adoption outside the tech industry. My partner worked as a veterinarian for several years, and it was fascinating to see how vets use computers. These were brilliant people - I knew three who did literal brain surgery. But they just had zero patience for computers. They did not want to troubleshoot, figure out how something worked or dive deeper. Ever. They didn't care! They were busy saving the lives of people's pets. It was a good reminder there are many smart people who do not know computers work and do not care to. A good startup acknowledges this reality.
- kevin-oconnell 2y ago
  A lot comes down to timing. More and more law firm partners these days are digital natives who grew up using computers. They're accustomed to using really good software, and they expect the same in their workplace.
  - apozem 2y ago
    I definitely got that impression reading the reviews of the OP's product. An associate comparing it to "a polished Apple product" shows the younger generation is used to decent software and would appreciate it at work. (To other commenters, this is not an invitation to dunk on Apple. Please keep discussion on track)
- deprecative 2y ago
  I find this excuse depressing. We live in the age of computers. If you don't know how to use one you shouldn't be employed where they're necessary. Rather than making a dumbed down workforce we should be building people's skills up. Git for normies already exists even MS Word has document versioning. If they cannot be bothered to use the software and technology they need to then they should be unemployed.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - NotGMan 2y ago
jefecoon 2y ago
Few misc thoughts here: - Lawyers want this all to work in Word.docx - Many [ / most? ] law firms have a large, overly-complicated "doc database." These have Word plugins, and they're usually required to 'check-in' each version they prepare prior to sending out. This seems like a very natural point of attack for a dramatically superior git-esque solution. - Most lawyers / firms have a massive distrust of cloud-hosted tools. I've heard "well, Google can read everything in Google Docs!" more times than I can count. Maybe the public is better educated now, but... maybe don't count on that. - Toolset for bundling up *ALL* edits compiled by one side, having these "merged" and some sort of formal "approved to send" step would be huge. - Please continue to track which person made every edit, when, and ideally, if said edit was "merged" and "approved to send" to counter-party. - Over-invest in super easy UX & eye-candy: you're trying to overcome engrained use of a tool that's about as ubiquitous as the air we breath -- you're going to have to deliver 10x value, and ease-of-use will be critical for adoption. The current demo, and dragging links between boxes.... well, imho, perhaps not quite there yet. - Finally, I've worked inside MSFT publishing docs & books, worked on hundreds of contracts in biz-dev & corp-dev & investment banking, and please let met state very clearly the need for this product is overwhelming. Please please please build this, and wish you all the luck in the world. PS: Contractual.ly was pretty great. Wish it had caught more traction. Happy hunting!
- tomwheeler 2y ago
  > Lawyers want this all to work in Word.docx You've got some bleeding edge lawyers if they're using Microsoft Word. The legal industry is one of the main reasons that WordPerfect continues to exist.
  - egypturnash 2y ago
    The entire publishing industry operates on Word too. https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2013/10/why-microsoft-word-must-die.html https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2013/10/why-mic...
ZeroCool2u 2y ago
A while ago I remember reading about this new VCS project Jujutsu (jj) that claimed to be both simpler and more powerful than git. A bold claim! Didn't really think much of it at the time beyond well this is interesting. But later, about 9 months ago, Chris Krycho published this lovely blog post[1] about jj and a thread about it was quite popular on HN. Again, really interesting, but not something I was going to dig into. Finally, I come across this post today and it occurs to me that designing a project like this for lawyers is probably pretty challenging with git as the backend and I'm sure Jordan could use whatever the state of the art in VCS is. I hope they take a look at jj and consider it as an alternative backend. It seems there's an entire team of engineers working on jj at Google now full time. Steve Klabnik wrote a beautiful book style tutorial[2] about getting started with it. Hopefully it inspires someone else to take a look! [1]: https://v5.chriskrycho.com/essays/jj-init/ https://v5.chriskrycho.com/essays/jj-init/ [2]: https://steveklabnik.github.io/jujutsu-tutorial/introduction/introduction.html https://steveklabnik.github.io/jujutsu-tutorial/introduction...
- kevin-oconnell 2y ago
  If using git as the backend were an option, this problem would be hundreds of times easier to solve. Legal documents have a lot of complex formatting and include elements like tables, images, and footnotes. The diff function needs to handle all this, so it needs to be custom built from the ground up.
  - pitaj 2y ago
    If git is used as just a backend, all of those elements could feasibly be extracted into a textual representation, which git can diff and merge and such, but those diffs and merges are presented to the user graphically in a style they recognize.
infogulch 2y ago
What is the chance we could get this to be used when drafting laws?
- jpbryan 2y ago
  That's the goal!
skeptrune 2y ago
Aren't their existing commonly used file sharing solutions for law which should implement a version of this? I would imagine it makes more sense as a feature there than it would in a whole new app.
- kevin-oconnell 2y ago
  It really depends on the firm and their existing approach to file storage. In legal, they call this a Document Management System (DMS). Some firms have a loose process, so they use this as a standalone app. Other law firms have 20+ years of files in their DMS, so they use this as an integrated feature. The DMS providers have a great business and their product is stickier than glue. Fortunately, they are very startup friendly and have built out a whole app store ecosystem so other companies can layer on new capabilities that deepen the value of the DMS and make it even stickier.
dandigangi 2y ago
Worked at DocuSign. Even with all the fancy software and tools we had the real world use cases for non-digital tasks was always at odds with it. We built around it but at some point it leaves the digital space with a real person with a real red marker. And maybe a fax machine.
NoboruWataya 2y ago
I have thought about this a fair bit. A few thoughts, for what they are worth. - It may be that, as in the example, you have an associate who is mindlessly merging others' changes into the master document. But the hope is that the associate is also thinking critically about the changes as they are merging them, picking up on things like "this probably won't work, I should flag it for discussion", "if we change this clause we'll also need to make consequent changes to that other clause", or even just typos and syntax errors. - In addition, the hope is that the associate is learning while merging the changes. They are gaining familiarity with this type of contract and the kind of points that tend to be discussed/negotiated. - If you don't have many specialist teams that you need to work with, you can just ask them to put their changes in a new version (ie, do it synchronously). - That said, there are definitely arguments for replacing this internal workflow with a fancy new collaboration-focused platform. I can't see it replacing the legacy workflow when actually negotiating deal documents. When I trialled similar software in the past, the way it was presented to me was that we would need to get our clients, counterparties and their lawyers, etc to access the document through our instance of the platform. Which just seems like a non-runner to me. - It is well known that lawyers are very slow to adopt new technologies. However, I can say from experience that a lot of the software that is peddled to lawyers is awful. Like, stuff seems designed to work well and look great in a demo, but as soon as you start using it in the real world you run into all sorts of edge cases where things don't work properly, you get obscure error messages (that are often just stacktraces), etc. Of course I'm not saying the software in the article is like that but a lot of lawyers have been bitten by botched software transitions and are reluctant to move from what they know as a result.
syntaxing 2y ago
Even engineers outside of software doesn’t use Git.
quietgolfer 2y ago
I'd also like a similar solution for non-lawyers reviewing legal docs. I review dozens of legal docs each year. My cofounder reviews even more. We switched to Bonterms last year to adopt some SAAS standard templates. However, there are still a bunch of edits and iterations on the templates per customer. I want an easy solution that makes it easy to work through the changes.
- jpbryan 2y ago
  Let me know if you'd like to try Version Story! I'm happy to add you to our whitelist.
OutOfHere 2y ago
"git for x" is overrated. Git can compare binary diffs like Word files by using custom diff drivers and external text conversion tools. Git allows you to configure a process where these files are converted into a readable format for diffing. Define a custom diff driver. Create or edit a `.gitattributes` file in your repository and associate Word files with a specific diff driver, for example: `*.docx diff=word`. Then, configure Git to use an external text conversion tool for this driver. This is done by running a command like `git config --global diff.word.textconv "your-conversion-command"`, where `your-conversion-command` is a tool or script capable of extracting text from Word files. `pandoc` can extract text from Word documents, and you can configure it by running `git config --global diff.word.textconv "pandoc --to=plain"`. Another option is `docx2txt`, which can be set up with a command like `git config --global diff.word.textconv "docx2txt.pl -"`. Running `git diff` on Word files will pass them through the configured conversion tool and display the differences in their text content. This approach is ideal for comparing the textual content of Word files but doesn’t account for formatting or binary-level differences. If you need a detailed binary comparison, you can integrate an external diff tool with Git by using `git difftool`.
- eternityforest 2y ago
  I really think Git should just add builtin support for binaries, and diffing for SQLite and .zip. it's not like it would be all that much code. It doesn't really solve the problem of these formats not working well with collaboration and sync tools, but it would probably be good enough for some use cases.
- _boffin_ 2y ago
  you can also just have whatever tool extract docx or doc from its archive and then do the diff on that directory as it's just xml files.
  - OutOfHere 2y ago
    Yes, but it makes sense to do it via git, considering that git is the solution for revision control.
voisin 2y ago
Can we get Git for construction? I am tired of site instructions and change orders that don’t get merged and propagated and changes being difficult to identify (reliant on bubbles that architects regularly forget to ad).
- tatersolid 2y ago
  Seconded. As the client on a recent commercial build, the “project management” software they used to manage docs and change orders was so bad it wasted hundreds of hours. Everybody agreed including all of he subcontractors but I was told “everything else in this space is actually much worse”.
abrarski 2y ago
We've been building this for about five months. Reach out for inquiry! https://x.com/anish_sundar/status/1858073652463644917 https://x.com/anish_sundar/status/1858073652463644917
- abrarski 2y ago
  https://www.loom.com/share/a4c5f5bf035c43938b342361154b6753?sid=b25e353c-7c5b-4387-a1f5-1b7787478908 https://www.loom.com/share/a4c5f5bf035c43938b342361154b6753?...

164 points by jpbryan 2y ago

It's curious to me how many people think "just convert it to a different filetype" will solve the problem. Do you think there are other professions/industries that would benefit from this?

hadsed 2y ago
JUST CONVERT THE PDF INTO A STRUCTURED SCHEMA AND THEN LAWYERS CAN BECOME PROGRAMMERS LIKE GOD INTENDED
jpbryan 2y ago
I think a lot of people unfamiliar with docx think of it as effectively the same thing as any other rich text format. Because of that, they assume converting it to other formats is trivial, not realizing that other formats support a small subset of the functionality docx does. Definitely. Finance professionals, academic researchers, legislators, among many other professionals, encounter similar version control issues. We are currently focused on law because of our domain expertise and because the problem is particularly pronounced in the law.
- zelos 2y ago
  I can see something like this being useful in other law related areas. My wife's court office has hacked together some horrendous workflow for tracking offenders as they progress through the system using OneNote and Word, but it suffers from all the synchronization issues and conflicts you'd expect.
noirscape 2y ago
The main reason people think that is because most of the MS Office suite's document formats are things that no programmer wants to touch if they can help it and usually when you're parsing them to something else, you can drop all the weirdness. Nobody loses sleep because the xlsx file you're using as an input for a script doesn't parse the excel graph that someone else put into it properly. They're all incredibly capable formats (from a user perspective anyway), with the caveat that they're utter hell to work with in terms of a programming perspective. It's easier to just toss it into a black box parser/serializer and hope that all the text you need in/out comes out properly on the other side. Actually generating docx or xlsx files (that aren't trivial) that look exactly like another input file (so you have to account for every notable difference in formatting) is a ton of work; most people who have touched webdev will probably at some point have had to format their emails for Outlooks half-assed ancient HTML parser and even there, you at least control what it's going to look like.
thedman9052 2y ago
This would be great in engineering for specifications and such. We have product lifecycle management software to track document revisions and handle approvals but it doesn't integrate with .docx files, it just stores them. You have to download files manually and diff them in Word or Beyond Compare for redlines.

shortrounddev2 2y ago

Some of those screen recordings show me just how poor some peoples' typing skills are. I now understand why my coworkers just want to jump on zoom calls all the time instead of just telling me what their friggin problem is over slack

sitkack 2y ago
Which could have been an email, and they can take as long as they need or want. I would get flooded with GenZ video call requests because of various similar factors.

mushufasa 2y ago

I remember a post on here a few years ago about someone who had tried doing this and failed. I don't remember the details but you may be able to find it if you search well. My recollection of his takeaway was that lawyers actually didn't want a lot of the things git offered. For example, they always wanted to be using the latest version -- the abstraction of multiple branches where multiple people independently worked on things then merged them back together wasn't quite how most lawyers worked. And the other big thing was a network problem: a lawyer has to us microsoft office's version control because the opposing team is going to use it, so even if you use some better editor software it still has to be sent as a word file showing the tracked changes to the other side.

jpbryan 2y ago
> the abstraction of multiple branches where multiple people independently worked on things then merged them back together wasn't quite how most lawyers worked This depends a lot on the practice. Transactional lawyers working in M&A and real estate encounter the issue of parallel drafts all the time. Personal injury lawyers tend to work in isolation and don't need all of git's functionality. Pretty much every lawyer redlines in some capacity, however, and benefit from visualizing a linear version history. >And the other big thing was a network problem: a lawyer has to us microsoft office's version control because the opposing team is going to use it, so even if you use some better editor software it still has to be sent as a word file showing the tracked changes to the other side. Yes, this is absolutely correct. This is one of the main things that keeps docx entrenched as the standard in legal collaboration. It would be an enormous faux-pas to send another lawyer a contract in an application that they're unfamiliar with. Backwards compatibility with their existing workflows is essential.
- 9dev 2y ago
  I don’t see how the network lock-in problem couldn’t be solved by automatically generating a DOCX version, however. As long as you can seamlessly import and export the standard—or shall we say, legacy?—format, you could work with a version control app without the other side even noticing.

themerone 2y ago

It was hard enough to get lawyers to migrate from Word Perfect to Word.

massysett 2y ago
I wish it was even harder, a Word document is a jumble of hidden formatting instructions that is impossible to troubleshoot.
KPGv2 2y ago
Oh god, I'm getting flashbacks to my first internship, where just about the only thing I liked about WP was that there was a key chord for inserting a section symbol, while Word didn't have that. I think some older lawyers told me they thought the only reason they still were on WP was because of that.

julianeon 2y ago

I'm interested in an adjacent question, because I do it myself: Why don't more people use Git and Markdown for their todo lists and/or GTD systems? The Git client is ideal for displaying lists and editing a little text file you git push could not be more simple.

cathalc 2y ago
After years of trialling a variety of notebook setups, I eventually fell back to vscode & git. I've even given up on Markdown (nothing wrong with it, I just realised I never actually view my own notes in parsed Markdown so I stopped bothering). All I need is a file structure that I understand, and an editor for typing and searching :) Git is great for (i) persistence, (ii) availability and (iii) the merge flow encourages me to review/clean changes before merging them to main.
mixermachine 2y ago
Simple for a developer sure. Just have a look at what entrylevel developers do (no hate, everybody starts somewhere). This group of people is willing and ready to learn but you still often hear "just checkout the project again" when a problem is encountered. Most people just use an app and are fine with that functionality. My partner and I use a Google Keep list that is shared between our accounts. Live editing included and it does everything just fine. There are more elaborate app solutions out there that do more and solve most of the problems.
KPGv2 2y ago
Seems like overkill, especially considering I exclusively use todo lists on my phone, where I can download a free app and never have to think about rebasing and diffing.

mtlynch 2y ago

Earlier this year, I worked on 60 pages of M&A contract documents with lawyers, and I found the change tracking in Word miserable. It's so difficult to see only the delta quickly, it's slow to go back through the history, and it's hard to discuss a change within the tool itself. It felt crazy that there wasn't better tooling for this, but I also appreciate the difficulty of trying to get lawyers out of the MS Word workflow that they know. Good luck to the team! I hope you're successful.

rwmj 2y ago
I was tech editor on a book that used MS Word versioning. (One chapter per .docx because Word couldn't scale to anything longer). As you say, it was absolutely miserable.
ulbu 2y ago
it’s ridiculous that a document formatting app/format is used for creation and storage of documents. especially for official ones that follow strict formatting protocol. all data that satisfies the protocol is just a record! just pop a json into a template-engine and you’re go. i’m so sad about the shithead influence of microsoft on our society.
LiquidSky 2y ago
Attorney here. Word tracking works just fine for my work and the work of pretty much every attorney I've ever interacted with. Meanwhile, as another comment in this thread noted: >Git is a tool built around the needs of software developers. Because git is too complicated and branching, though in principle, would make sense in some situations, is actually pretty difficult to manage (especially for binary documents). Every alternative I've seen proposed, especially by non-lawyers, has been far too complicated for our needs and attempts to tackle problems that really aren't actual problems in real everyday practice. It often seems like developers in this space speculate on theoretical problems they feel lawyers must face and create solutions a programmer would appreciate for those.
- mtlynch 2y ago
  Have you used change-tracking software that worked well in other domains? To me, saying that change tracking in Word is fine when you've never seen anything better is kind of like someone 60 years ago saying, "A typewriter is fine, and everyone I know agrees. All these software people are trying to solve theoretical problems with word processing software." You might not agree with particular solutions you've seen for improving change tracking for legal documents, but I'm surprised you don't see room for improvement in change tracking. From my experience as a client who had to participate in the process, I saw lots of issues: First, it's super slow. A large document with lots of tables and lists takes 20+ seconds to load. Searching is also much slower than it should be. There's a ton of noise. When I was reviewing documents, 80% of the changes that showed up as redline changes weren't real changes but were just formatting updates (e.g., page renumberings, section renumberings). It made it hard to find the real change vs. just formatting changes. The changes are all in separate files rather than having a single tool that can show you each version in a single place. The Word doc supports inline commenting, so it's helpful for each side to be able to discuss it internally within the doc itself, but then that creates the risk that you'll accidentally share a version with the opposing side that includes private notes. As far as I know, Word doesn't have any way of making this safe by default. Rather, it's on the attorney to remember to scrub private information each time before sharing it with the other side.

haccount 2y ago

[flagged]

frozenlettuce 2y ago

The Brazilian constitution uses a <strike> element to mark parts of the text that were overwritten, alongside a link to the amendment https://www.planalto.gov.br/ccivil_03/constituicao/constituicao.htm https://www.planalto.gov.br/ccivil_03/constituicao/constitui...

alganet 2y ago
In HTML, they should be using <del> instead, which denotes a portion of the text that was removed. If something is inserted, then <ins> should be used. <strike> is deprecated. This kind of notation is similar but not the same as redlining. Whoever reads the law actually wants `git history` in this case. The diff is not a means to an end (a fully edited document), having the diff explicit is the end goal.
- recursive 2y ago
  Maybe it's written in HTML 3.2.

macspoofing 2y ago

>Why don't lawyers and other non-coders use git? Git is a tool built around the needs of software developers. Because git is too complicated and branching, though in principle, would make sense in some situations, is actually pretty difficult to manage (especially for binary documents). Also, they do use version history built into tools like Sharepoint/Office, or the document itself.

zelos 2y ago
How many developers use git? I'd bet there's a huge number of developers out there at non-tech companies who get by with numbered folders and emailing zip archives around.
- rwmj 2y ago
  Oh god, reminds me of the time I was working in consulting and dealing with web developers at small marketing companies. They never used version control. You'd often get them to fix one thing, fix a second thing, and find the first thing had been reverted back to its original broken state.
ZeroCool2u 2y ago
To be fair, looking at a word doc with tracked changes enabled that has gone through a few rounds with more than a couple people in my Legal dept makes me feel like my brain is melting.
kwertyoowiyop 2y ago
More specifically it’s built around the needs of Linux software developers.

SchwKatze 2y ago

I was thinking about that last month. But in addition to git, I would propose a formal verification system based on the contract statements, to ensure that any addition would not broke the logic and correctness of the contract. Working like a CI system.

sitkack 2y ago
Then why not write the contracts in prolog?
- corinroyal 2y ago
  Right? Or a domain specific language for law: https://github.com/CatalaLang/catala https://github.com/CatalaLang/catala I get that dislodging docx is an impossible job, but since docx is a terrible format for anything, it needs to be done for all the reasons the author mentions. The codes that run society should not be locked up in bad proprietary formats.
  - KPGv2 2y ago
    > The codes that run society This discussion is about contracts, not legal codes. I agree with your statement, but decades now of people on Slashdot being unable to differentiate copyright and patent has made me this way, where anyone potentially mixing up legal concepts has me triggered and jumping down their throat.
    - sitkack 2y ago
      Contracts do run society, along with legal codes that are written in much the same manner, by the same body of experts.
      - light_cone 2y ago
        Moreover, the law literally says that contracts are considered as laws but only applicable to co-contractants (at least in France it's written like that). So it's the same thing, just with a different scope and precedence on the hierarchy of norms.

stcroixx 2y ago

You would have to improve the interface substantially. I've been a developer for over 25 years, have used Linux as a daily driver for as long, and I can't stand using it. Only software developers would tolerate it.

alganet 2y ago
What are you talking about? The dude made a full complete UX tailored for lawyers that has nothing to do with git for developers.

whoomp12342 2y ago

google docs has a very nice version control

jzb 2y ago
Google docs IME is great for collaboration until the number of reviewers exceeds, say, 5 people and/or there's a need for extended conversation on parts of the text. For simple editing? Fantastic. Loved it. For a debate over, say, product requirements or licensing... not so great.
rwmj 2y ago
This must be a different google docs from the one I have to use. It sort of works if there's one primary writer and editor, and everyone is contributing small suggestions through that person, but it definitely doesn't work if there are two people modifying the same section of text.
jpbryan 2y ago
Google Docs is a step in the right direction but has several limitations. 1. Lawyers don't want everyone holding the pen at the same time. Specialists want to make their changes and have them reviewed in isolation from other's changes. Think of a redline like a pull request. You don't want other people's changes in your work when it's getting reviewed. 2. Google Docs breaks down when even a single person drafts outside of it. See the section of my essay about why lawyers will never stop using Word. Even if you managed to get an entire firm using Google Docs, it still wouldn't work because they need to exchange drafts with external parties.
- whoomp12342 2y ago
  so lock it down so people can only "suggest edits" and then you have a middle person approving or commenting on the suggestion

KPGv2 2y ago

Git? Old and busted. Why don't you do JJ for lawyers instead? (And you could call it JurisJiction)

ericjmorey 2y ago
jj has become my new favorite
krunck 2y ago
In case anyone was wondering: https://github.com/martinvonz/jj https://github.com/martinvonz/jj

hugocbp 2y ago

As an ex-lawyer for over 10 years, this was a huge issue for me, specially when the other party is adversarial (e.g. another lawyer for the other part that is not exactly forthcoming with the changes). Back in the day, to solve that (before I became a software developer and knew about git), I basically re-implemented "git in Microsoft Word version control". On bigger contracts with dozens and even hundreds of pages, with more than 2 parties involved, we could have 3-4 parallel changes to the same documents at once. And a lot of times some of the parties didn't want to advertise their changes. What I did was construct a table in Excel with each "version" of each clause, and where they were present omitted. It was a lot of work to maintain, but back then I didn't know any better, but worked. By saving the versions of the files we sent for revision (think of the main branch), I could receive the version from other parties (kind of like feature branches), turn on Word changes, paste the complete content of the original, and we could visualize the difference. It's been more than 10 years since I stopped dealing with contracts, but I imagine a lot of lawyers, specially older folks, are still either doing very convoluted processes to track changes like me or not even bothering most of the times. The article is spot on on the issues (even brought back some memories). This is something I'd use for sure in my previous life.

nullhole 2y ago
> By saving the versions of the files we sent for revision (think of the main branch), I could receive the version from other parties (kind of like feature branches), turn on Word changes, paste the complete content of the original, and we could visualize the difference. IANAL, but this was a key step for me as well. If you maintain copies of the versions sent out (and modified copies sent back), you can always get a clean diff of the copy sent out versus the copy sent back, or of an earlier version versus a subsequent revision. The compare/combine tools in Word aren't great, but they are functional. Kind of like a local maximum, I suppose.
- hugocbp 2y ago
  Exactly. The part where I used Excel was because Word didn't really scale for more than 2-3 sets of changes like that. So my "copying current version changes" to Excel was kind of like git merging to the main branch. People from outside the craft usually get super confused and frustrated by how many hours those contracts could take ("it is just a Word document!"), but that used to be a huge reason why.

renewiltord 2y ago

Juro was this. I used it for redlining a few times but it didn’t work because the other guy has to be onboarded onto the system. Unscrupulous opponents will turn off Track Changes in MS Word to catch you off guard.

kevin-oconnell 2y ago
That's a great point. That's why we built it to work and add value even if the other guy has not been onboarded onto the system. This made the engineering lift way bigger, because the system needs to be able to accept and process whatever the other guy sent you. This makes it an open-ended problem, and we needed to be able to handle any possible edge case that the other guy's docs could introduce. Juro and others make the other guy onboard because that limits the scope of the engineering problem. You can only create what the platform lets you create, so you know in advance what the system needs to handle. This approach makes it easier to build. But the problem is that it is really hard to get the other guy to onboard. As a result, your MVP is not really an MVP. Our approach required way, way more engineering work up front. But it put us in a position where getting the other guy to onboard is a "nice to have", not a requirement.

vhodges 2y ago

I built something like this about 13 or so years ago. a startup called contractual.ly - they got acquired by Coupa after I left. I used the papertrail gem to track changes to the contract object and provided diffs and commenting and then allowing collection of digital signatures (Docusign was pretty new at the time so we rolled our own) The founder has cofounded another one in the same space https://recitalapp.com/ https://recitalapp.com/

abrarski 2y ago
This is close, but I think our demo www.ben-ki.com/ is closer to what the tweet and title seem to be indicating from a UX / value perspective https://www.loom.com/share/a4c5f5bf035c43938b342361154b6753?sid=b25e353c-7c5b-4387-a1f5-1b7787478908 https://www.loom.com/share/a4c5f5bf035c43938b342361154b6753?...

James_K 2y ago

Stuff like this really make me wish people knew about computers. They could see endless gains from switching to something like LaTeX with Git version control. Sure, it would take a bit of time to train people on, but the productivity gains would be massive. The strangest thing is that everyone used to use computers that way. It seems that the creation of GUIs and WYSIWYG has greatly worsened the experience a lot of people have with a computer. I think the issue is that people select their tools based off what is easiest to learn, so there is a kind of local minima reached where most software today is very easy to operate but hugely inefficient for anyone who has to use it frequently.

jjmarr 2y ago
The issue is "people who view themselves as good with computers" self-select into jobs in the technology industry. This means we don't have any ambassadors for technological process improvements in the average business.
- jayd16 2y ago
  You mean the sales department?
duped 2y ago
More "endless pains" then "endless gains" in all honesty. The point of software is to abstract complexity, not present it to users (or worse, create it). LaTex is just ugly and surprising. People want to write and see what they've written, not type and then render. It's a backwards development workflow from the instant feedback of wysiwyg (which is why wysiwyg was so revolutionary, and became the de facto standard for the task).
- myworkinisgood 2y ago
  If Word was implemented with standard XML backend instead of OOXML, then today, we could have easily developed tools to show good, reliable diffs without having to resort to tricks.
- 2y ago

1-more 2y ago

Reporting back from my biglaw pal I sent this to: > Big flaw in the product: 60 year old partner who still makes hand edits and has the Secretary scan the pages and send them out of order to the associate > Second big flaw in the product: specialists edits get rejected because they don’t know the deal points and are just swooping in I took issue with this as step 4 seems to involve an M&A lawyer accepting/rejecting specialist edits piecemeal, to which he responded "Right, but that doesn’t actually save that much time. It’s the same work that an M&A associate is already doing" > Third big flaw in the product: big law firms are the least innovative organizations on earth > Fourth big flaw in the product: having junior associates do menial tasks at $800-950/hr is a feature, not a bug, of law firm business model. So you are solving for something that the target customer doesn’t necessarily want solved. and there it is :/

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
jpbryan 2y ago
> 60 year old partner who still makes hand edits and has the Secretary scan the pages and send them out of order to the associate We've designed our product to be backwards compatible with existing workflows. It does not require every team member to use the product to add value. Partners who prefer their way of doing things can continue to do so allowing associates to add their drafts to Version Story to create redlines and consolidate changes. >specialists edits get rejected because they don’t know the deal points and are just swooping in The possibility of incorrectly rejecting specialists edits exists with or without Version Story. Our product makes it easier to understand what's changed so lawyers can exercise their judgement about these decisions. > Third big flaw in the product: big law firms are the least innovative organizations on earth I think this assumption is worth challenging. Millennials are becoming partners at law firms and are spearheading initiatives to update their tech stacks. This is reflected in legal tech budget growth trends (https://www.legalcurrent.com/tech-spending-remains-especially-hot-reactions-to-the-thomson-reuters-q1-2024-law-firm-financial-index/ https://www.legalcurrent.com/tech-spending-remains-especiall...). > Fourth big flaw in the product: having junior associates do menial tasks at $800-950/hr is a feature, not a bug, of law firm business model. So you are solving for something that the target customer doesn’t necessarily want solved. Making mistakes is not a feature (https://newsletterhunt.com/emails/40489 https://newsletterhunt.com/emails/40489). In the example I outline in the essay, the lawyer made three separate mistakes when manually merging documents.

ndr 2y ago

This is one of the longest standing conversation with my lawyer partner. The best interaction is on Google Docs which is somewhat ok, definitely better than sending some docx back and forth. The main friction seems to be that very few things beat email attachments, no auth to fight with. Wish these folks the best.

apozem 2y ago

This person is 100% correct that git will never see adoption outside the tech industry. My partner worked as a veterinarian for several years, and it was fascinating to see how vets use computers. These were brilliant people - I knew three who did literal brain surgery. But they just had zero patience for computers. They did not want to troubleshoot, figure out how something worked or dive deeper. Ever. They didn't care! They were busy saving the lives of people's pets. It was a good reminder there are many smart people who do not know computers work and do not care to. A good startup acknowledges this reality.

kevin-oconnell 2y ago
A lot comes down to timing. More and more law firm partners these days are digital natives who grew up using computers. They're accustomed to using really good software, and they expect the same in their workplace.
- apozem 2y ago
  I definitely got that impression reading the reviews of the OP's product. An associate comparing it to "a polished Apple product" shows the younger generation is used to decent software and would appreciate it at work. (To other commenters, this is not an invitation to dunk on Apple. Please keep discussion on track)
deprecative 2y ago
I find this excuse depressing. We live in the age of computers. If you don't know how to use one you shouldn't be employed where they're necessary. Rather than making a dumbed down workforce we should be building people's skills up. Git for normies already exists even MS Word has document versioning. If they cannot be bothered to use the software and technology they need to then they should be unemployed.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- NotGMan 2y ago

jefecoon 2y ago

Few misc thoughts here: - Lawyers want this all to work in Word.docx - Many [ / most? ] law firms have a large, overly-complicated "doc database." These have Word plugins, and they're usually required to 'check-in' each version they prepare prior to sending out. This seems like a very natural point of attack for a dramatically superior git-esque solution. - Most lawyers / firms have a massive distrust of cloud-hosted tools. I've heard "well, Google can read everything in Google Docs!" more times than I can count. Maybe the public is better educated now, but... maybe don't count on that. - Toolset for bundling up *ALL* edits compiled by one side, having these "merged" and some sort of formal "approved to send" step would be huge. - Please continue to track which person made every edit, when, and ideally, if said edit was "merged" and "approved to send" to counter-party. - Over-invest in super easy UX & eye-candy: you're trying to overcome engrained use of a tool that's about as ubiquitous as the air we breath -- you're going to have to deliver 10x value, and ease-of-use will be critical for adoption. The current demo, and dragging links between boxes.... well, imho, perhaps not quite there yet. - Finally, I've worked inside MSFT publishing docs & books, worked on hundreds of contracts in biz-dev & corp-dev & investment banking, and please let met state very clearly the need for this product is overwhelming. Please please please build this, and wish you all the luck in the world. PS: Contractual.ly was pretty great. Wish it had caught more traction. Happy hunting!

tomwheeler 2y ago
> Lawyers want this all to work in Word.docx You've got some bleeding edge lawyers if they're using Microsoft Word. The legal industry is one of the main reasons that WordPerfect continues to exist.
- egypturnash 2y ago
  The entire publishing industry operates on Word too. https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2013/10/why-microsoft-word-must-die.html https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2013/10/why-mic...

ZeroCool2u 2y ago

A while ago I remember reading about this new VCS project Jujutsu (jj) that claimed to be both simpler and more powerful than git. A bold claim! Didn't really think much of it at the time beyond well this is interesting. But later, about 9 months ago, Chris Krycho published this lovely blog post[1] about jj and a thread about it was quite popular on HN. Again, really interesting, but not something I was going to dig into. Finally, I come across this post today and it occurs to me that designing a project like this for lawyers is probably pretty challenging with git as the backend and I'm sure Jordan could use whatever the state of the art in VCS is. I hope they take a look at jj and consider it as an alternative backend. It seems there's an entire team of engineers working on jj at Google now full time. Steve Klabnik wrote a beautiful book style tutorial[2] about getting started with it. Hopefully it inspires someone else to take a look! [1]: https://v5.chriskrycho.com/essays/jj-init/ https://v5.chriskrycho.com/essays/jj-init/ [2]: https://steveklabnik.github.io/jujutsu-tutorial/introduction/introduction.html https://steveklabnik.github.io/jujutsu-tutorial/introduction...

kevin-oconnell 2y ago
If using git as the backend were an option, this problem would be hundreds of times easier to solve. Legal documents have a lot of complex formatting and include elements like tables, images, and footnotes. The diff function needs to handle all this, so it needs to be custom built from the ground up.
- pitaj 2y ago
  If git is used as just a backend, all of those elements could feasibly be extracted into a textual representation, which git can diff and merge and such, but those diffs and merges are presented to the user graphically in a style they recognize.

infogulch 2y ago

What is the chance we could get this to be used when drafting laws?

jpbryan 2y ago
That's the goal!

skeptrune 2y ago

Aren't their existing commonly used file sharing solutions for law which should implement a version of this? I would imagine it makes more sense as a feature there than it would in a whole new app.

kevin-oconnell 2y ago
It really depends on the firm and their existing approach to file storage. In legal, they call this a Document Management System (DMS). Some firms have a loose process, so they use this as a standalone app. Other law firms have 20+ years of files in their DMS, so they use this as an integrated feature. The DMS providers have a great business and their product is stickier than glue. Fortunately, they are very startup friendly and have built out a whole app store ecosystem so other companies can layer on new capabilities that deepen the value of the DMS and make it even stickier.

dandigangi 2y ago

Worked at DocuSign. Even with all the fancy software and tools we had the real world use cases for non-digital tasks was always at odds with it. We built around it but at some point it leaves the digital space with a real person with a real red marker. And maybe a fax machine.

NoboruWataya 2y ago

I have thought about this a fair bit. A few thoughts, for what they are worth. - It may be that, as in the example, you have an associate who is mindlessly merging others' changes into the master document. But the hope is that the associate is also thinking critically about the changes as they are merging them, picking up on things like "this probably won't work, I should flag it for discussion", "if we change this clause we'll also need to make consequent changes to that other clause", or even just typos and syntax errors. - In addition, the hope is that the associate is learning while merging the changes. They are gaining familiarity with this type of contract and the kind of points that tend to be discussed/negotiated. - If you don't have many specialist teams that you need to work with, you can just ask them to put their changes in a new version (ie, do it synchronously). - That said, there are definitely arguments for replacing this internal workflow with a fancy new collaboration-focused platform. I can't see it replacing the legacy workflow when actually negotiating deal documents. When I trialled similar software in the past, the way it was presented to me was that we would need to get our clients, counterparties and their lawyers, etc to access the document through our instance of the platform. Which just seems like a non-runner to me. - It is well known that lawyers are very slow to adopt new technologies. However, I can say from experience that a lot of the software that is peddled to lawyers is awful. Like, stuff seems designed to work well and look great in a demo, but as soon as you start using it in the real world you run into all sorts of edge cases where things don't work properly, you get obscure error messages (that are often just stacktraces), etc. Of course I'm not saying the software in the article is like that but a lot of lawyers have been bitten by botched software transitions and are reluctant to move from what they know as a result.

syntaxing 2y ago

Even engineers outside of software doesn’t use Git.

quietgolfer 2y ago

I'd also like a similar solution for non-lawyers reviewing legal docs. I review dozens of legal docs each year. My cofounder reviews even more. We switched to Bonterms last year to adopt some SAAS standard templates. However, there are still a bunch of edits and iterations on the templates per customer. I want an easy solution that makes it easy to work through the changes.

jpbryan 2y ago
Let me know if you'd like to try Version Story! I'm happy to add you to our whitelist.

OutOfHere 2y ago

"git for x" is overrated. Git can compare binary diffs like Word files by using custom diff drivers and external text conversion tools. Git allows you to configure a process where these files are converted into a readable format for diffing. Define a custom diff driver. Create or edit a `.gitattributes` file in your repository and associate Word files with a specific diff driver, for example: `*.docx diff=word`. Then, configure Git to use an external text conversion tool for this driver. This is done by running a command like `git config --global diff.word.textconv "your-conversion-command"`, where `your-conversion-command` is a tool or script capable of extracting text from Word files. `pandoc` can extract text from Word documents, and you can configure it by running `git config --global diff.word.textconv "pandoc --to=plain"`. Another option is `docx2txt`, which can be set up with a command like `git config --global diff.word.textconv "docx2txt.pl -"`. Running `git diff` on Word files will pass them through the configured conversion tool and display the differences in their text content. This approach is ideal for comparing the textual content of Word files but doesn’t account for formatting or binary-level differences. If you need a detailed binary comparison, you can integrate an external diff tool with Git by using `git difftool`.

eternityforest 2y ago
I really think Git should just add builtin support for binaries, and diffing for SQLite and .zip. it's not like it would be all that much code. It doesn't really solve the problem of these formats not working well with collaboration and sync tools, but it would probably be good enough for some use cases.
_boffin_ 2y ago
you can also just have whatever tool extract docx or doc from its archive and then do the diff on that directory as it's just xml files.
- OutOfHere 2y ago
  Yes, but it makes sense to do it via git, considering that git is the solution for revision control.

voisin 2y ago

Can we get Git for construction? I am tired of site instructions and change orders that don’t get merged and propagated and changes being difficult to identify (reliant on bubbles that architects regularly forget to ad).

tatersolid 2y ago
Seconded. As the client on a recent commercial build, the “project management” software they used to manage docs and change orders was so bad it wasted hundreds of hours. Everybody agreed including all of he subcontractors but I was told “everything else in this space is actually much worse”.

abrarski 2y ago

We've been building this for about five months. Reach out for inquiry! https://x.com/anish_sundar/status/1858073652463644917 https://x.com/anish_sundar/status/1858073652463644917

abrarski 2y ago
https://www.loom.com/share/a4c5f5bf035c43938b342361154b6753?sid=b25e353c-7c5b-4387-a1f5-1b7787478908 https://www.loom.com/share/a4c5f5bf035c43938b342361154b6753?...