
Should lawyers learn to code? Arguments for and against - lawtomated
https://lawtomated.com/to-code-or-not-to-code-should-lawyers-learn-to-code-3-2/
======
rudyfink
Speaking as a software engineer who became an attorney, I would say that most
attorneys could benefit from basic programming knowledge (e.g., simple
scripts, macros, and SQL).

I say this because the bulk of work for many types of legal practice is
information filtering/search/organization/and presentation, both in wrangling
evidence and in exploring the law itself. Basic programming knowledge can do
great magic in terms of making these processes more efficient, such as by
programmatically manipulating the hundreds or millions of files that can be
produced in legal cases.

In terms of more in-depth knowledge of programming, there is a definite place
for it in the law (it has worked to my benefit), but I think that role is
specialized/limited. I think improved software tools will, generally, fill the
profession's need rather than every attorney attempting to specialize in
another field enough to roll their own apps.

~~~
petra
>> attorneys could benefit from basic programming knowledge (e.g., simple
scripts, macros, and SQL).

Can you give a few examples of practical uses of those tools ?

~~~
rudyfink
One simple example would be where an attorney receives a thumb-drive with 100s
of documents and files as a "production" in a case. An attorney without basic
skills would (or would have staff) manually enter all of those files into a
spreadsheet or a word document. An attorney with basic programming skills
would write/run a short shell script that instantly pumps all of the metadata
about those files into an Excel spreadsheet.

Another example, though a bit more general, would be an attorney trying to
find documents in a case that were created around a certain date. An attorney
without basic skills is, again, going to end up in a manual or semi-manual
(with a basic tool) process. An attorney with basic programming skills is
likely able to directly craft a query that produces the documents.

~~~
rayiner
Or you send it to a vendor who has written the code to do that.

~~~
pnw_hazor
This.

It doesn't make much sense for a $400/hr attorney to play around with scripts
and such or otherwise do much of anything with document production (that is
what staff is for).

If an attorney knows coding from a previous career, it can be helpful in a few
cases, but for a non-technical attorney to try to pick up enough coding to do
anything useful is a stretch.

~~~
RichEO
It may be the case that some vendor somewhere can provide a tool to do this,
but they will charge quite a bit more than $400 and it will take more than an
hour to find them.

A shell script to achieve your ends could be endlessly helpful here.

~~~
pnw_hazor
Having the depth of knowledge to recognize when a simple shell script would be
helpful is the harder part.

It is one thing to teach a non-techie lawyer how to "hello world" But getting
them to understand file system attributes, permission schemes, file I/O,
regular expressions, and so on, is where "learn to code" falls apart in this
context.

Just getting a non-technical person to learn how to navigate in Powershell is
a near impossibility.

------
deckiedan
My grandmother passed away a few years ago, and some of her express wishes
were not correctly stipulated in her will - so when things were being sorted
out it got messy. Thankfully all the family were really chill and we could
sort it out amicably - but I had the idea at the time:

If legal documents have to be parsed and understood almost like source code,
could we also have a testing framework? So I could stipulate things I want to
happen as tests (user stories) and then run it against the contract / legal
document and confirm that it does actually allow what I want to happen?

You'd be restricted to a subset of legal language - and possibly you'd have to
actually write documents in some kind of meta-language (probaby lisp...) and
then turn it into English or whatever as an output format in the end...

But would this work?

~~~
jaredklewis
It wouldn't work because specifying requirements isn't the difficult part of
law or really a problem now.

The problem is reconciling those requirements with reality. If contracts
become functions, we don't make anything more neutral or unbiased. Same as
today, the person who supplies the arguments to the function gets to control
the output.

For example, earlier this year there was an interesting lawsuit [1]. An
insurance contract excluded "acts of war." There was no dispute that that was
a requirement.

The dispute was on whether or not a given action was an "act of war." Mondelez
claimed that the NotPetya cyber attack was an act of war as the US government
said it was the work of the Russian military. Zurich disagreed.

[https://www.zdnet.com/article/notpetya-an-act-of-war-
cyber-i...](https://www.zdnet.com/article/notpetya-an-act-of-war-cyber-
insurance-firm-taken-to-task-for-refusing-to-pay-out/)

~~~
guntars
Maybe it’s different for the contract law, but I definitely think that
legislation could benefit from more formal language.

We recently had a disagreement between an NPS officer and another visitor
about what constitutes an occupied campsite. Apparently having paid for it,
having a receipt on hand and another receipt with your name on the board by
the entrance with the site number next to it doesn’t mean it’s occupied, you
also have to leave a personal item. When you look at the rules it does mention
leaving a personal item, but it’s in the “How to pay” section indicating to me
that it’s a precaution to prevent two people trying to pay for the same site
at the same time. Alas, the ranger disagreed and we almost lost our site and
it turned into a whole ordeal all because the author of the rules didn’t spell
it out and it was up to everyone’s interpretation.

Writing rules in the form of code has the chance of taking out a lot of that
interpretation. Like you said, people can still disagree about what’s “an act
of war”, but even that can be more precisely defined in a way that agrees with
the common sense in the majority of the cases while still being unambiguous in
the exceptional ones.

~~~
jaredklewis
Sounds like the campsite could improve their signage, but as a general
principle, I very much disagree.

There is a fundamental tradeoff between specificity and generality, where the
more specific a law is, the longer and more complex it must become to
accommodate the nearly infinite number of situations that can occur.

Take a look at the bill of rights. The thing is about as vague as the English
language allows and is less than 500 words.

When is a search "unreasonable?" What constitutes "due process?" Where is the
line between a "peaceful" and non-peaceful "assembly?" How long of a wait
before a trial is no longer "speedy?" When is bail "excessive?"

Is it even possible to enumerate all of the possible situations and amounts
when bail is considered excessive? There are countless crimes and countless
mitigating circumstances. How could anyone foresee all the possible situations
that can ever happen?

Despite these questions, most Americans have some idea of what the amendments
mean and they can be easily taught to high school students in a US history or
civics class.

Compare with a highly specific law, the Affordable Care Act (not picking it,
just an example), which is 350k words long. At most, people are likely to have
read a summary of a few specific points, but the law is basically only
knowable to career lawyers with significant domain knowledge.

So even if it is possible to be very specific in laws, doing so basically
makes the laws so immense and complex that they become unknowable. And since
laws govern human behavior, humans need to be able to know the laws.

You basically just run into Bonini's paradox. A set of laws that was
sufficiently specific to have absolutely no ambiguity would be as complex as
the universe itself.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonini%27s_paradox](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonini%27s_paradox)

~~~
guntars
The Bonini’s paradox makes perfect sense, but I don’t think it applies to this
case because the law is not trying to model anything, it stands on its own.
It’s the same difference as trying to model the law and predict what is and
what isn’t lawful based on some circumstances vs declaring that the model IS
the law and it determines what’s legal or not.

Let’s take the tax code as an example. I’d argue that it already is a form of
a program (maybe that’s why they call it code), but instead of something that
I can run on my computer and explore and play with inputs to achieve a more
beneficial result for myself, I have to instead pay a tax professional to do
it. I think having the tax code executable would actually make it more
accessible to people that are governed by it, not the other way around.

~~~
jaredklewis
For the program you want regarding the tax code exists now. TurboTax, HR
Block, free file etc...plug in numbers, see different totals is exactly how it
works.

Of course there is still a ton ambiguity in answering the questions on the
form. That has nothing to do with the format of the laws and everything to do
with the inherit nature of translating reality into simple booleans and
integers. If you wanted to remove all ambiguity, the form would need to be
complex as reality.

------
dotancohen
I'm really waiting for the corollary. Should coders learn law? I'm of the
opinion that engineers most certainly should.

~~~
otoburb
>> _Should coders learn law? I 'm of the opinion that engineers most certainly
should._

Canadian engineers have to take a short closed book 3-hr Professional Practice
Examination (PPE) covering "ethics, professional practice, engineering law and
professional liability" as part of the licensing process.[1]

The reference is from Professional Engineers of Ontario as Canada's engineers
are regulated at the provincial level, but thankfully is also generally
similar across the provinces. I'd imagine the American version (PE)[2] is
somewhat similar.

While engineering law (typically torte) is a very small slice of The Law (TM),
at least it's a start in the right direction.

Note that this would only apply to a subset of coders who actively seek out a
professional "Engineer" title designation. Most computer engineering or
electrical engineering graduates (probably the most likely population) don't
need to, and don't actually end up, becoming professionally designated.[3]

[1]
[http://www.peo.on.ca/index.php/ci_id/2060/index.php?ci_id=20...](http://www.peo.on.ca/index.php/ci_id/2060/index.php?ci_id=2060&la_id=1#PPE)

[2] [https://www.nspe.org/resources/licensure/how-get-
licensed](https://www.nspe.org/resources/licensure/how-get-licensed)

[3] Anecdata

~~~
jbay808
Yup. In BC, we basically have to read a law textbook covering contract law,
professional liability, use of codes + standards, intellectual property, and
other such topics and then pass an exam about it. Among many other
requirements...

~~~
checktheorder
It's much the same for us Canadian accounting grads. Law classes are standard
in any reputable accounting undergrad program, and mandatory for CPA
accreditation (as it was in the CGA, CA, and CMA before the CPA merger). It's
not so much about training accountants to be lawyers, but more about making
sure that accountants understand when to seek legal advice, the consequences
of failing to do so, and how to converse with a lawyer effectively.

------
kemiller2002
I'm not saying that lawyers shouldn't learn to code, but I don't think it
would be wise of them to heavily rely on it in practice.

1\. They have a specialized skill set, and they can offload a lot of this to
other people in the firm. Billing someone several hundred dollars an hour so
that you can spend time fiddling with SQL is kinda unethical. This could be
considered gray, but it's akin to charging someone the full billing rate to
use a copier. Maybe this will ultimately end up billing less and saving the
client money, but then maybe not. It all depends on the person.

2\. The more important reason in my opinion is that programming is a
specialized skill. You have to learn and really understand how it all works.
It's easy to say "Well, just learn some Bash, and SQL" and you'll totally be
able to get information faster. The question of whether or not it runs is an
easy one to answer. Did it return information, yes or no? The real question
and where it is tricky, is was it actually correct? Did you search all the
files, etc.? Hiring a professional developer to aggregate information and have
the knowledge to understand edge cases is why developers make the money they
do.

Think about the flip side. Should all programmers become lawyers, because
after you are one it's easier to understand the legal system. No, that's
silly. Should programmers learn something about law? Of course, everyone
should, but that doesn't mean that everyone should practice it. Now you could
be saying, "Well, but going to law school takes years. That's a ridiculous
statement to begin with." How long do you think it takes to be a really
competent programmer?

~~~
james_in_the_uk
I agree with most of this, but as a lawyer who has used SQL and PHP to
automate work that I'd have otherwise been billing $600/hour to do manually I
do find fault with your point on ethics.

Yes I could have delegated that work to do manually by a junior lawyer
($300/hr) or had the dev work done by an IT analyst ($800/day) but in both
cases I'd have then had the check the output very carefully (junior lawyer) or
gone through the cost and delay of onboarding a dev.

Doing it myself was the best overall value for the client.

There is an ethical issue if the lawyer is not properly qualified to do dev
work. You can get into hot water that way. I avoid it by working closely with
my client's IT teams, so they can vouch for what I've done.

~~~
geebee
Interesting observation. Coding could be comparable to using the photocopier,
or it could be comparable to very advanced electronic legal research.

I'm not in law, but I do work with physicians and health care researchers who
often need elaborate data analysis. I've found that there are some types of
work that benefit immensely from having both coding and medical knowledge in
the same brain, so to speak. This is usually when data is complicated and
messy, and when the question a researcher asking isn't fully formed yet. The
ability do complicated SQL, natural language processing, data formatting and
cleanup, and so forth can end up shaping the question that gets asked. The
process isn't always straightforward - researcher thinks of the question, asks
the programmer to do the coding, programmer gets the answer back to the
researcher.Yes, sometimes it works to describe what you want from a dataset to
a programmer, but this often isn't the case for very interactive investigation
of data sets. For this reason, I actually would highly recommend learning to
code for some health professionals and researchers.

Now, there's a limit to what one person can learn to do, and there comes a
point where it's not reasonable to ask people to be expert in multiple fields.
Even when a researcher is pretty skilled at programming for data analysis, the
moment will eventually arrive where the medical researcher needs to work
closely with a programmer (who has very advanced data analysis coding skills).
But even then, I've found that researcher often wouldn't have conceptualized
the question that gets asked without possessing at least intermediate level
data analysis skills (including SQL, Unix, Python or R like languages). I've
also noticed that researchers who possess these intermediate+ level skills are
far more effective at working with programming specialists whose main skill
set is processing data.

I'm not sure if this comes up as often in law, but I wouldn't be surprised if
poring through very large data sets for discovery might be one scenario where
this happens.

~~~
james_in_the_uk
Yes you are correct - I've seen this in e-discovery exercises.

------
CobrastanJorji
Even if lawyers don't learn to code, I think they'd find source control to be
a significant boon.

~~~
twothamendment
I wish our laws were in source control, even the bills that don't pass. I'd
love to see who added the pork, who watered it down, etc.

With a 2,000 page bill, it would make it easier to keep up with the changes,
even if you don't yet know what is in every page at the start.

~~~
Udik
Laws (at least in Italy, probably in other countries with similar systems) are
actually commits to a source control system- in the sense that they contain
both new content and modifications to previous content (additions, changes and
deletions).

What I think is missing is a concept of _document_ : commits (laws) just
accumulate on top of each other without producing named, organized documents
(files, in proper source control systems) with clear responsibilities, that
can be easily referred to from other documents, and of which the latest
version is the only one that counts.

~~~
maxerickson
US jurisdictions mostly produce the organized documents you speak of. For
instance, the codified laws here:

[https://www.loc.gov/law/help/statutes.php](https://www.loc.gov/law/help/statutes.php)

~~~
Udik
This (from a quick reading, I might have misunderstood) seems to be a system
for categorising laws, but not exactly what I was talking about: when you look
for something, you're still referring to individual laws, by law number or
popular name.

Instead, when you want to read a computer program, you don't look at
individual commits to the code base, you look at its files. Commits are more
or less irrelevant, what counts is the most recent version of a set of
documents, and each commit might create, modify or delete more than one
document.

It seems only a change in perspective, the end result is the same; but
reasoning in terms of documents with well-organised names and
responsibilities, describing processes and data and designed for reusability,
is much easier and more compact.

~~~
maxerickson
Here's a better link, to the text of the United States Code:

[https://uscode.house.gov/](https://uscode.house.gov/)

It's still full of references to bills and such, but it is the consolidated
text of the law.

------
dkersten
I think _everyone_ would benefit from learning a little bit of code and maybe
databases. Not necessarily for practical purposes, but rather to expose them
to it since so much of the modern world runs on software. The same way as we
are thought the basics of chemistry, biology, physics, history, geography etc
in school, I think kids should be thought the basics of software too. Give
them some exposure, show them a little behind the curtains and.. then let them
decide if they want to do more or not, same as the other sciences and subjects
we teach kids and teens in school.

------
TheLastPass
Unrelated to the point of the article, but since we're discussing lawyers and
their knowledge of coding in a Silicon Valley audience: has anyone else
noticed that many of the lawyers who specialize in software licensing actually
have a very shallow understanding of common open-source licenses? I think I've
worked with at least 3 firms now at my current employer, a medium-size (>2000
person) software company. When I've had meetings with them about compliance
with open-source licenses, they seem to be unaware of really basic aspects of
the licenses. I've had one that thought the ASL 2.0 left you wide-open to
patent trolls because you gave up all of your patent rights. I've had another
that thought we could simply stop redistributing GPL software and have no
further obligation to provide a way to get our modifications to the source.
Especially for someone who went to law school, it seems as thought most of the
lawyers I've worked with haven't read the license text, but simply heard this
and that about the licenses. Is this common among Silicon Valley lawyers, or
have I just had bad lawyers? I'm sure there's a lot more to law in Silicon
Valley than this, but this is even with the person they refer me to for open
source license questions.

~~~
james_in_the_uk
Not excusing shoddy lawyering but here are some thoughts:

1.Many of these lawyers probably don't actually specialise in open source.
Especially if they work for companies as project or product lawyers. They've
probably been allocated it as part of their remit, along with issues like
contract and data privacy.

2\. Open source is a niche within a niche (IP law). It requires a nuanced
understanding of copyright and patent law but also requires strong
understanding of software development practices. Concepts like GPL linking are
really tricky to grok even if you are a knowledgeable IP lawyer.

3\. Several popular open source licenses weren't written by lawyers and so can
be a little ambiguous when read against the relevant jurisprudence. Most are
not well tested in court and so it's hard to give definitive advice on how
they work.

------
austinhutch
The combination of headers, ripped images, scroll jacking, and that it is
posted from the source give this article a very blog spammy feel, optimized
for that exact google search.

~~~
lawtomated
Thanks for the feedback. Honestly not optimised for anything other than trying
to attempt a complete answer to a question we often get asked and see asked
time and time again in the press, albeit usually answered in hyperbolic terms,
i.e. "lawyers should never code" or "all lawyers should code", neither of
which we agree with.

Scroll jacking is unintentional - not sure what you mean in regards to the
article specifically. Be great to understand this better and fix? Is it the
lazy loading of the images? If so, that's an attempt to boost the page loading
speed.

~~~
PieUser
Scrolling is horrible when using a trackpad like on a Macbook

~~~
checktheorder
You could have cut that sentence down to the first three words and I still
would have wholeheartedly agreed with you. There is no justification for that
design choice, in any circumstance.

------
citeright
As a lawyer who codes (though I don’t currently work as either a lawyer or a
coder) I thought this article does a great job of explaining where coding fits
into law. At least in my experience, coding is a “legal-adjacent” skill:
coding is neither necessary nor sufficient for good lawyering. But there are
deep conceptual similarities between coding and lawyering, and knowing how to
do one job well can certainly make some parts of the other job easier.

For example: redrafting a contract is a lot like refactoring code. (Make sure
that terms are only defined in one place; consider and account for edge cases;
be aware of how changes in one area affect dependencies elsewhere, etc.).

If, like me, you’re allergic to repetitive, time-consuming tasks, coding is a
way to potentially make your lawyering job go faster. I know lawyers who’ve
used a combination of Python scripts and Zapier steps to fully automate client
intake, for example.

HOWEVER! I’m pretty confident that coding will never become a core legal
competency. Coding and lawyering are different roles, with different outputs,
serving different stakeholders. Instead what’s more likely to happen is that
coding will gradually eliminate a whole swath of tasks that we once assumed
only lawyers could do — until we realized that those tasks were just
algorithms in disguise, and therefore automate-able.

Like most other knowledge workers, lawyers are going to be responsible for
managing — and applying wisdom and discernment — to the outputs that
algorithms/software generates. And that’s a good thing! It’ll mean that
lawyers are doing more of what they do best.

------
lbarrow
Holy crap, what is wrong with the scrolling on this site? It makes it super
hard to read the article.

~~~
sampleinajar
I'm guessing it's related to the hummingbird plugin they used.

------
burritofanatic
It depends on the situation. If one is a lawyer who wants new skill sets and
perhaps even a career change, an absolute yes. I did this transition seven
years ago and left law entirely. I've met a handful of other interesting ex-
lawyers who have made the switch from law to software and have been satisfied
with the choice.

At the beginning of this year, after trying to explore what I wanted to do for
the next stage in my life, I decided to get back into the profession as a solo
practitioner and transition away from software development. I'm officially
back to practice, and I'm surprisingly happy with my professional life -
something I never thought would really be possible.

If you're a practicing lawyer who wants to give yourself an edge as a lawyer,
I think it's more important to understand the concepts and principles as
opposed inventing or finding the barely existent job of coder/lawyer for a
firm - I don't know the name of the role, and I've seen it touted by legal
tech folks - but these are elusive. Understanding what's possible, I believe,
is by far way more important. For example, I've worked with countless non-
coding project/product managers, and they've been great contributors to the
process in software development.

My recommendation for lawyers? Do the Python track on Codecademy over a summer
and read Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software.

~~~
james_in_the_uk
I've thought about moving from law to software more than a few times. I like
being a lawyer but software is an unscratched itch. I've noticed that many
people who leave law eventually come back. What made you return?

~~~
burritofanatic
It has a bit to do with the type of work arrangement I want for this phase in
my life -- nearing 40 and splitting my time between two geographic locations
where active computer time all the time becomes challenging.

I also wanted to move away from working for corporations to working for/with
people instead.

If you have an itch, I say go for it unless you're on a track you absolutely
don't want off of ever.

~~~
james_in_the_uk
Interesting thanks. Sounds like we are at a similar stage and have similar
circumstances. Being a lawyer is working for me too for the same reasons, so
I'll ride this track for a little longer.

------
hugocbp
As a corporate lawyer that transitioned to software engineering, I'd say
lawyers need to learn to code about just as much as everyone else.

Coding is clearly really useful for repetitive stuff and to deal with lots of
data, but from my own 10 years of experience practicing law I honestly do not
see anything in particular that would make a lawyer benefit more than other
professions from coding.

Looking back at my time, maybe having an app that had contract clauses and
allowed me to quickly set up a base one from the templates would be helpful
and save some time. Nothing huge.

Managing lawsuits is a great candidate, but there are already dozens of
"spreadsheet apps" that do that, as are there apps to keep track of contracts
(expiry, increases, thresholds and so on).

A lot of research is already taken care by Google and other apps (consider
Brazilian law practice here, which is based on Civil Law so a little different
than Common Law in US, UK, Canada).

In summary, learning to code is not really that huge of a deal for a lawyer.
It is still helpful like it is for most professions, but I honestly do not see
a lawyer that codes having that great advantage over one that doesn't.

------
equivocates
I'm a lawyer who can code. Here's how I have used that skill:

* MS VB Macros for automating how my documents look and what they do

* Basic sync scripts that sync folders locally > server and vice versa

* An app to keep track of the my frequently used rules: trial rules dot com

* A website to keep track of various developments in my area law [internal to my firm]

* A PDF app that automates basic tasks [batestamping, adding exhibit stickers, etc]

Edit for spelling/formatting.

------
timwaagh
Against: in my romantic view after watching way too much 'Suits', being a
lawyer is mostly about convincing the other party to settle. By becoming a
coder instead you may end up becoming nerdified and hence less capable of
making the other side settle. The lawyer I used is a very bald old man who
wears suits and is generally speaking a little bit intimidating. He knows a
bit about law and a bit about humanity. He doesn't use computers other than to
check his email and write documents in word. And he did his thing and
convinced my boss that he'd better pay up if he wants to get rid of me.

That's worth the 200E per hour I paid. I really don't need someone to do
coding for 200E per hour (my own wage is more like E18) and I certainly don't
need another 'me' to represent me.

~~~
lonelappde
Software is full of almost lawyers who left law because they couldn't handle
how irrational the law is.

~~~
pnw_hazor
A few of us lawyers left the tech-grind because they couldn't handle how
irrational software development is.

------
macspoofing
NO. They should have a good mental model of computing and they probably should
learn tools that would aid them in data analysis (Excel is phenomenal for
that). Apart from that, there is little benefit in knowing how to program in
C# or Java or Python.

------
bitL
I am thinking about doing JD after MBA (with CS & ML degrees already). The
environment got really bad for developers, all kinds of fraudsters zeroed in
as tech is making more money than finance these days and startups weaponize
legal illiteracy against their own early employees. I woke up from the "all
will be good" illusion and realized one has to be well-versed in legal matters
these days in addition to be a top tech person. I guess it's going to be
valuable for a JD to have some algorithmic skills as their own field is now
changing and resembles early badly run algorithms in a need of bugfixes.

~~~
howard941
Do you enjoy history? Your first year classes will be like taking history
lessons from caselaw. If it's remotely close to "yes I like it" _and if you
can do it without going into debt_ then go for it.

~~~
bitL
Yeah, I am aware of that :-/ OTOH it could be refreshing to focus on something
completely different than hunting the latest Deep Learning papers and figuring
out if they work on the problems I am trying to solve... I still hope there
will be some accredited online JD program by the time I get to do that to save
time and money.

~~~
howard941
There's nothing more remote from those papers than reading about the Rule in
Shelley's Case and various archaic English Court opinions dealing with
pirates, matey. You won't like years 1-2.5 if you don't like English history.
OTOH if you're in the English speaking world you'll learn stuff you'll never
use in a law practice that you'll never forget and cherish the rest of your
life. Enjoy! But FFS do not I repeat do not go into debt for it. Marrying rich
is an option for some.

~~~
pnw_hazor
Ditto on not going into debt for law school!

I went to LS after several years of programming at various startups that
failed. I wouldn't go now since LS tuition has almost doubled since then.

------
pnw_hazor
Probably better to just get better at using office products.

I do use "programmer skills" in my law practice, but I was a SW developer for
15 years before going to law school. I use emacs for initial editing and I
have made some crude "lint" tools that help me proof my documents.

Learning a bit of javascript, perl, python, etc. isn't going to be much use
for a neophyte coder in an office full of Word, PPT, PDF, or visio documents.

------
tsumnia
I disagree* to lawyers learning to code. With the asterisk because I think
there are aspects of Computer Science they would benefit from.

1) Workflow Creation - Obviously, much of the legalities start from a
boilerplate template that are expanded upon. However, this skill is not
exclusive to CS and so there are other domains where a lawyer could learn this
(from, say, business)

2) Natural Language Processing - This is more a CS concept and where some
coding may be necessary, but not really. The more focused work would be from
argumentation mining [1] and properly building strong arguments. The link I
include is to my PhD lab's project on "Augmented Graph Grammars", that look to
quantify the aspects of argumentation into a graph structure. While CS
researchers could mine the graph structures to report better arguments, using
a process such as this for lawyers would be beneficial.

[1] [https://research.csc.ncsu.edu/arglab/projects/augmented-
grap...](https://research.csc.ncsu.edu/arglab/projects/augmented-graph-
grammars.html)

------
padobson
Does anyone have any thoughts on heterodox ways to go the other direction? I'm
a software engineer with an interest in the law and I always wondered what
sorts of opportunities there were for someone like me.

What's a good way for an consultant engineer to pick up a law firm as a
client? What kind of open source community is there for legal software?

~~~
pnw_hazor
Some big firms have electronic discovery departments (and there are vendors in
that space too).

Though, if you are interested in law tech, law firms are not the place to be.
Seek out law-tech companies that are building tools that enterprises may use
to manage their contracts or licenses. Also, compliance management (SOX2,
etc.) is a growing field.

------
snek
Real question: should they be trained in formal logic? Should everyone be
trained in formal logic? (I think so, anyway)

~~~
thatsJustBadUX
Lawyers are generally trained in formal logic and in Canada is necessary
knowledge for them to enter law school.

Source: Sister was studying the Canadian LSAT.

~~~
pnw_hazor
Unfortunately there is little use for formal logic in the practice of law.

------
a_c
Should anyone not learn to code?

~~~
ghaff
It's probably a useful skill even at a relatively superficial level for a lot
of people. But there are an awful lot of useful skills out there and people
have differing interests, aptitudes, and needs. So I don't buy the idea that
_everyone_ should learn to code.

~~~
s_y_n_t_a_x
You learn a lot of mental skills from coding. I believe we should teach it
really young, at least a simple scripting language. Sometime around Junior
High, it can even be an elective, like band. I thought I didn't have any
creative skills because I couldn't draw or play music, but I have the most
creative skill of all, being able to build useful tools out of thin air.

It affects how you structure your thoughts, think through scenarios, gives you
perspectives. There's so many perks, and kids would able to pick it up easily.
You just need basic math and English skills to start.

I taught myself in the 6th grade or so. I believe it made a large impact early
on in my life, and it makes programming very natural to me. I know the 10x
developer term is controversial, but I believe that's one way to become one.

------
vslira
In Composing Contracts[0], Peyton Jones, Eber and Seward describe a framework
for "programming" financial contracts, even allowing for external events[1] to
influence the result (for example, actual stock prices) of the contract.

As a though exercise, could actual law (or, more specifically, Penal Law,
Contract Laws, etc) be formalized in an analogous manner? I know contracts are
not law per se, but the comparisons are easy to spot.

[0] [https://www.cs.tufts.edu/~nr/cs257/archive/simon-peyton-
jone...](https://www.cs.tufts.edu/~nr/cs257/archive/simon-peyton-
jones/contracts.pdf)

[1] In the case of laws, external events could be the judge's opinion, for
example

------
macmac
> General Intelligence > Lawyers are generally very bright. Law is a tough
> degree > and a tougher profession. It rewards intellectualism, > continual
> learning, and adaptability. These are all > traits necessary for learning to
> code.

This does not match my experience. I have worked in law for 20 years and hired
(and fired) many lawyers for top tier companies. I saw some variant of an IQ
tests for every one of them. As general rule they were not impressive and
significantly below the scores we saw for programmers. The verbal
comprehension was generally solid or better, the others not so much.

------
howard941
This is a good piece. I don't believe (I'm probably mistaken) it's a US take.
But it's still good. I came through it from the other side and used software
royalties to pay my way through law school. I didn't have a CS or engineering
degree and that ruled out practicing before the Federal patent bar: Make sure
you realize this if you start taking law school classes, you need the
undergrad engrg or CS degree in the US to sit for that exam and practice
before the bar in that specialty. My geekdom precedes most CS major offerings
and all but a handful of computer engineering offerings.

Other observations- \- Engineers make fucking excellent lawyers. Statutes
construed alongside caselaw is sort of like data sheets alongside a schematic
and code. You'll blow past everyone else in school and research will be a
snap. When you get out to the real world don't spend too much on electronic
research. Two services are there to service white shoe firms. You can't afford
them if you're not one of the people I reference in the YMMV, _infra_

\- Good engineer attys are efficient and effective and don't hold back the
truth. Your clients will come back to you and trust you. You will be a
rainmaker on merit. But schmoozing, man, learn it if you don't do it. I can't:
It hurt. YMMV if you practice for a large firm and are expected to book 8K
billable hours per year. At that point you're doing something exceptional (not
a judgment)

\- US judges are a mixed bag, elected or appointees. I preferred elected
judges but wound up practicing 90% of the time before Federal appointees.
Until early noughts the appointees were great. The statutes and binding
caselaw in front of them may not make a difference. Unfortunately they're not
like compilers or circuitry. You became an atty/engrnr because you're
brilliant. But you need to schmooze or latch on to a partner to bring clients
in and take the schmoozing bit on for you. Seek them out in law school and
hang up your shingle with them. Don't go solo if you neither schmooze nor
practice well. Don't go into law if you lie, please. If you don't schmooze,
and if you forget to suppress your brilliance in arguments your client will
get fucked. You'll get fucked if you have a temper and cross the contempt line
(but that's really hard to do if you're sane enough to get through law school
without a thorazine drip)

Bottom line: Go for it. My 2.5 years at law school were the most fun I had in
my life. My 10 years practicing were stressful and not worth doing (I didn't
have the schmoozer partner) but the education and my law license carries me
forward in my engineering career, hopefully will get me into a corner office
when geeking tires me. And it breaks the ice with my geeky colleagues who
always need advice.

Copyedits for slightly improved readability. AMA here or by email if you wanna
dig deeper

~~~
DevX101
8k billable hours per year = 153 hours per week. Not even Elon Musk works that
much.

~~~
howard941
You are indeed correct. Nevertheless that's the way it is for new grads - 1st
and 2nd yr fresh out of law school - at high end medium and large firms that
are sort of like pyramid schemes. The associate newbies need to generate those
billables (are those realtime hours? I never checked. Does the client check?).
The partners get their cut from those billables. Periodically the herd is
winnowed to make room for those with more energy.

~~~
gamblor956
_You are indeed correct. Nevertheless that 's the way it is for new grads -
1st and 2nd yr fresh out of law school - at high end medium and large firms
that are sort of like pyramid schemes._

I'm questioning whether you have actually worked for a firm because your
expectations for firm billing are wildly inaccurate as is your understanding
of how billing works in a firm.

1st year lawyers bill time which generally doesn't get charged to client,
because clients are unwilling to pay for training brand new lawyers.

Associates after their first year generally bill between 1600 and 2400
hours/year, depending on the firm. All of those hours are _actual hours
worked_ because a lawyer who lies about that is committing fraud and can be
disbarred for that (in addition to facing criminal sanctions). Clients do
verify the hours billed--which is why lawyers are required to provide very
detailed descriptions of hours worked, in some cases down to 6-minute
intervals (i.e., tenths of an hour).

Partners bill _in addition_ to those associate hours. The only partners that
get to avoid doing billable work are the rainmakers, because they do the tough
work of actually acquiring paying clients. 5th-7th year associates generate
the most profits for law firms because they have the highest ratio of gross
billings (= hourly rate x hours billed) to salary, though partners usually
generate the most _revenue_ for their firms.

~~~
howard941
> I'm questioning whether you have actually worked for a firm because your
> expectations for firm billing are wildly inaccurate as is your understanding
> of how billing works in a firm.

Let me end your speculation: All of my time was in 1 and 2 person law firms.
The inflated billables are anecdata from my classmates. You may rightly call
those out as anecdata. As for myself and the firms I worked in no attorney
ever exceeded 1K billables in a year.

------
ohaideredevs
Some other questions, and a purely subjective ones at that:

1\. Do you feel software or law is harder / more stressful?

2\. Do you feel that devs or lawyers are "smarter" on average? Specifically at
same pay scales - so partner vs architect / senior dev vs senior associate,
etc.

3\. Do you feel significant culture differences?

Any other notable positives and negatives that are significantly different
between the two?

~~~
pnw_hazor
Compared to getting an engineering degree, law school was easy (time consuming
but otherwise untaxing). The hardest part for some people was learning to
think like a lawyer.

Also, some people seemed to have a lot of trouble analyzing fact patterns from
different points of view. Where it may be easy for some to argue vigorously in
support of an issue they agree with but difficult to form arguments for the
other side.

Profs would listen to students argue from their preferred position (often the
good guy position) and then ask them to argue why the other side is right.
Some people just couldn't do it (future prosecutors?).

I found LS fascinating -- it was like learning a new kind of physics. One that
described how society works rather the describing how nature works. And, like
real physics, "legal physics" works whether you understand what is going on or
not. E.g., previously I had a small business and entered into many contracts
even though LS taught me that I had no idea how a contract really worked.

On the other hand, in my experience, the practice of law is much harder --
taking far more concentration and mental energy than SW development. Good
lawyers are as nerdy and as smart good devs.

------
a3n
Yes, so they can automate 90% of their function.

------
CalRobert
An old roommate of mine who has knowledge in both created
[https://free.law/](https://free.law/) to help address the lack of
availability of public court records for free (apparently the fees charged by
the gov't may be illegal).

Not mine but definitely an interesting resource for lawyers/coders.

------
paultopia
I'm a law professor who has taught some basic coding (along with stats) to law
students[1], I have a slightly different perspective on the lawyers learning
to code thing than a lot of what has been expressed here (though it's similar
to the "Dr. Doolittle" idea in the post).

For me the key goal is flexibility and uncertainty management. Lawyers have
traditionally been extreme generalists across non-law domains (consider the
fact that lawyers think of themselves as qualified to question expert
witnesses from all kinds of hard sciences in a courtroom) who have exercised a
consistent social function in the face of all kinds of social, political,
economic, and technological changes, and the lawyers who have been best able
to insert themselves at the joints of those changes are the ones who have
succeeded. Having some understanding of the ontology of the various systems
that are likely to be important in the domains where the law operates is
pretty much a general good. And right now, code plays such a huge role in the
economy that lawyers who have some clue what's going on are better positioned
to adapt to changes in the economy as their careers move forward. (It's for
similar reasons, I think that Harvard Law School recommends students take a
class in accounting, or at least used to do so back in my day.)

With a minimum base of skill in slinging around code, it expands my students
possible options. They might never use it again, relying on legal
tech/document management/whatever vendors for any of the things noted
elsewhere in this discussion. Or they might see a need and builds something
that becomes one of these legal tech/document management/whatever companies.
Or they might win a client a decade down the road by being the only lawyer in
the vicinity who speaks their language. Or they might be working for a
nonprofit who doesn't have the resources to buy solutions, and build something
in-house that increases their capacity for service delivery to people who
really need it.

TL;DR: lawyers have their hands in a lot of stuff by the very nature of the
profession; it behooves them on general principles to become conversant with
anything that occupies a large amount of territory in said stuff.

[1] version 0.1 of the course:
[https://sociologicalgobbledygook.com](https://sociologicalgobbledygook.com)

------
ganonm
I feel like Software Eningeering and Contract Law have many parallels and
similarities. What does a contract and a codebase have in common? 90% of the
content is covering bizarre edge cases and eventualities.

------
bnjms
This is probably the best place to ask with talk of macros for generating
documents.

Does anyone have a preferred method for generating Word documents that is
better than mailmerge?

~~~
james_in_the_uk
Most legal doc generation tools spit out Word's mangled version of HTML, but
with a .doc file extension.

OpenXML or OpenDocument is the more robust way to go.

------
Yaa101
Should they? Wouldn't they legalese the profession the same way that
politicians would politicise it?

------
smnplk
No, because none of their conditionals would be truthy.

------
tw1010
Whatever happened to division of labour?

------
crimsonalucard
I feel it's unfair that we have to jump through all kinds of cartel like
processes to get accreditation to lawyer it up while lawyers only need google
to learn how to code.

We need something like the AMA for software engineers. Or get rid of of these
arbitrary cartel blocks that prevent an ordinary joe from taking an online
course to become a lawyer.

Do you have a licence to practice software engineering? No well then you need
to go to jail like doctors and lawyers who also practice without a licence.

------
mlwhiz
In my view everyone should learn to code let alone lawyers.

------
rolltiide
A lot of lawyers would quit being lawyers if they could code

