On Building Git for Lawyers

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.

> 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.

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.