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Open Source For Lawyers?
An anonymous reader writes "Law Technology News is reporting that FOSS for large law firms and corporate counsel is starting to gain traction. There's a project called FreeEed, for the electronic discovery step in lawsuits, and there's software for the document page numbering process known as Bates stamping — affectionately called 'Bates Master' by the programmers. Are big law firms ready to accept open-source code?"
am I the only one?
Are [INSERT ANY DOMAIN HERE] ready to accept open-source code?"
Just what lawyers need, free software because they don't bill enough to pay for software and the jobs it supplies.
Typical lawyers, want to charge you $$$ (250+ an hour) and yet spend NOTHING on the backend. They do not know the value of other people's time while over-valuing their own.
Doubt large law firms will move towards it, the same way other types of large companies tend to be resistant to FOSS. If your client has $100 million riding on a case, do you really want to use something new and unproven without a robust support system?
Perhaps ask the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) what they are using.
Uh, Linux geek since 1999.
Lawyers have one of the biggest and oldest free culture ecosystems. They reuse existing arguments made by other lawyers and judges, and if necessary, modify them to fit their case.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
For years, the legal profession was a major user of WordPerfect, because, regardless of newer versions, documents, such as depositions, could be read with the latest version. I personally loaded documents from the Amiga version (WP4 on a big endian CPU) to the Linux version (WP 8 on a little endian CPU). Seems to me that a similar case (yeah, I know) could be made for using Libre Office. It's native document format is open, so, even if it completely goes away, creating a reader and/or translator would be possible.
Just imagine how the lawyers will respond when some patent troll or monopolistic company tries to sue their favorite software out of existence.
The "Bates Master" program mentioned in the original post can be found here: http://www.batesmaster.com/ Their tag line? "Open Source - Because the best experience is the one you control."
Much of the legal profession is simply copying and pasting from books and CDs of boilerplate contracts / wills / leases / etc. They then charge $200/hr as if they typed it up themselves. Quite frankly, prior to software, a good place where Open Source would fit is with boilerplate agreements such as this.
No, they don't. That is not the legal profession; that is most likely malpractice and fraud. They charge a rate for their time, but their time is spent taking that form and customizing it to your situation, correcting the boilerplate (most boilerplates are not done incredibly well), analyzing your situation, and maybe researching a little of the relevant law if they don't know something arcane. A mother's will may need to be protected from a future divorce--the boilerplate needs changing. The law may have changed on the enforcability of covenants not to compete--the boilerplate needs changing. The lease you are writing might have an unusual term in it--the boilerplate needs changing. Anyone who uses a boilerplate for an agreement without at least re-reading it and making careful, studious changes where appropriate is not doing their job, except in some unilateral contracts where you have zero bargaining power. Anyone who charges $200/hr for the time it would have taken them to write an agreement from scratch when they did not do that is not being a professional and in all probability is breaking the law of the jurisdiction he is in in a way that can have serious consequences if he is found out.
-- IANAL, this isn't legal advice, and definitely isn't legal advice for you. Also, Squee!
I was a software development manager for a few years in this very industry working for one of the top companies.
Doing things like Bates stamping is pretty straight forward. That's really so that when you exchange documents, and versions of those documents, you can refer to them in your filings. The real issue is conversion of the documents. These days most people are OK with PDF files. Amazingly, most law firms also use TIF files (FAX type encoding, 100dpi) for most of their work. Bates numbering will just stamp a number onto each page/image. Bates comes from the Bates Stamper that was invented in 1891. It was a mechanical hand stamper that incremented by one digit each time you stamped.
Law firms are actually pretty particular about their software. One of the reasons is that if your discovery process is challenged, you have to be able to defend it. This is where having a company represent their product and be able to have it be defensible. How did you convert the word doc to a PDF? How did you index it to identify it as responsive/privileged/etc? Also, most of the time they are under a time crunch to produce documents. When you are under a time crunch, you can't afford to wait for an open source patch. You would be laughed out of court and sanctioned. So you depend on companies to provide support for this.
I can see FOSS being used by companies (we used some), but, it's not a solution that you can take to court.
http://www.pdfernhout.net/microslaw.html
This was originally posted to Slashdot on May 25 2002: :-) My comments to the Department of Justice request for comments were in the form of this satire:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=33107&cid=3582999
It was in relation to an article: "MPAA to Senate: Plug the Analog Hole!" about the MPAA wanting copyright protection built into all computer hardware. I sent a copy to Richard Stallman back then and he said it made him laugh.
Transcript of April 1, 2016 MicroSlaw Presidential Speech (Before final editing prior to release under standard U.S. Government for-fee licensing under 2011 Fee Requirements Law)
My fellow Americans. There has been some recent talk of free law by the General Public Lawyers (the GPL) who we all know hold un-American views. I speak to you today from the Oval Office in the White House to assure you how much better off you are now that all law is proprietary. The value of proprietary law should be obvious. Software is essentially just a form of law governing how computers operate, and all software and media content has long been privatized to great economic success. Economic analysts have proven conclusively that if we hadn't passed laws banning all free software like GNU/Linux and OpenOffice after our economy began its current recession, which started, how many times must I remind everyone, only coincidentally with the shutdown of Napster, that we would be in far worse shape then we are today. RIAA has confidently assured me that if independent artists were allowed to release works without using their compensation system and royalty rates, music CD sales would be even lower than their recent inexplicably low levels. The MPAA has also detailed how historically the movie industry was nearly destroyed in the 1980s by the VCR until that too was banned and all so called fair use exemptions eliminated. So clearly, these successes with software, content, and hardware indicate the value of a similar approach to law.
There are many reasons for the value of proprietary law. You all know them since you have been taught them in school since kindergarten as part of your standardized education. They are reflected in our most fundamental beliefs, such as sharing denies the delight of payment and cookies can only be brought into the classroom if you bring enough to sell to everyone. But you are always free to eat them all yourself of course! [audience chuckles knowingly]. But I think it important to repeat such fundamental truths now as they form the core of all we hold dear in this great land.
First off, we all know our current set of laws requires a micropayment each time a U.S. law is discussed, referenced, or applied by any person anywhere in the world. This financial incentive has produced a large amount of new law over the last decade. This body of law is all based on a core legal code owned by that fine example of American corporate capitalism at its best, the MicroSlaw Corporation.
MicroSlaw's core code defines a legal operating standard or OS we can all rely on. While I know some GPL supporters may be painting a rosy view of free law to the general public, it is obvious that any so called free alternative to MicroSlaw's legal code fails at the start because it would require great costs for learning about new so-called free laws, plus additional costs to switch all legal forms and court procedures to the new so called free standard. So free laws are really more expensive, especially as we are talking here about free as in cost, not free as in freedom.
In any case, why would you want to pay public servants like those old time -- what were they called? -- Senators? Representatives? -- around $145K a year out of public funds just to make free laws? Laws are made far more efficiently, inexpensively and, I assure you, justly, by large corporatio
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
I am an attorney, and I have made several internal stupid systems to deal with the lack of good free software for management of legal practices. There is one Italian piece of software last time I checked, but otherwise it is basically a bunch of companies that take their pound of flesh. Legal fees are expensive because in a grand sense of irony, lawyers create a parasitic culture that takes advantage of them. Look at West and Lexis. They resell government documents, and charge around 50 dollars per month for minimal access. You have to sign multi year contracts with "cost of living adjustments" of 2-7% depending. I could go on and on. I want to do something for this and if anyone is interested in making something let me know.
My pre-nup was basically a boilerplate. But the Lawyer only charged 60 bucks for it. Another lawyer wanted to charge 300 for basically the same terms.
they will adopt it in a second.
That acid knot your stomach. The dread. The constant mental might pissing contest. The perpetual distrust. The bigotry. The arrogance. Forget that you never get paid the full amount. Lawyers are miserable people to work for. They are the worst clients.
Yes. All you lawyers are like this. You just THINK you are an exception. That is part of your disease.
Doubt me?
Then riddle me this. After all these years, Why, are there not 3 - 5 mainstream lawyer packages?
There are 3 or so word processors. There are 3 - 5 major search engines. There are even 3 major smartphone platforms. The cycle does not take long anymore. All these spaces went from none, to many, to consolidation to oligopoly. Lawyer software never started the cycle. That is a FACT.
same as gnu, except when used by a government, insurance company, lawyer, or any lawyer driven industry (riaa,etc) and then $$$$ charge high prices, with a $250,000 fine per executable for violations.