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As a lawyer, I was both fascinated and horrified by the replay. Imagine a company routinely using EtherPad (really cool, BTW) to create documents -- in the pro
by dctoedt 18y ago
As a lawyer, I was both fascinated and horrified by the replay.
Imagine a company routinely using EtherPad (really cool, BTW) to create documents -- in the process saving thousands if not millions of interim drafts.
Now imagine the company getting into a lawsuit. Some subset of N documents -- and of all interim-draft snapshots of those N documents that are still in existence -- will have to be screened for possible disclosure to the other side. (There are tools for partially automating this, but lawyers and paralegals will still have to individually look at many documents / drafts.)
In PG's case, there were 2,886 such snapshot drafts for just one document.
Makes me shudder just to think about the legal expense.
- dctoedt 18y agoAnother goodie comes to mind: Imagine that in a lawsuit, PG were to have his deposition taken by the other side's lawyers. The lawyer representing PG or his company would almost certainly insist on prepping him beforehand by reviewing with him, page by page, each of the documents the other side might ask him about. (Failure to prep a witness for deposition can result in the other side's playing a video for the jury, consisting of damaging sound bites harvested from the witness's testimony.) The lawyer's prep of PG will likely include at least a glance at, and perhaps a discussion of, each of the EtherPad snapshot drafts for each of the documents in 'the PG collection.' Imagine what a time sink that could turn into.
- chiffonade 18y ago> Makes me shudder just to think about the legal expense. Good thing there are countless software engineers and mathematicians working on new ways of indexing and retrieving this kind of information in meaningful ways for fast, efficient, and low-cost electronic legal discovery systems. Makes me shudder at how un-creative lawyers are.
- jodrellblank 18y agoAs a human, I'm both fascinate and horrified by your reply. Why don't you go through very half thought he has to see what might be a legal problem - oh wait, you are talking about that...