In college I was struck by a housemate's law books. They only contained text with no pictures, drawings, diagrams, tables, graphs, formulae, or any of the other tools for organizing information common to engineering. They looked to be extremely tedious and boring.
Later, another former housemate, a math major who was developing software, went to law school for a JD. It was his opinion that many of the tools from computer science were useful for deciphering the more complex laws and regulations.
How you think may be a significant factor in whether you are a good match to certain occupations.
> the tools from computer science were useful for deciphering the more complex laws and regulations.
I've sometimes thought that certain aspects of law (e.g. contracts) are very similar to the strict rule-based thinking required in programming, and that the same basic logical thinking is required. It's just that some concepts have been formalised differently between the fields, and also that law has inherent fuzziness due to incomplete specification of its programs, the ambiguity of some language/phrasing, and the changing societal environment.
With programs, the computer interprets the rules deterministically (generally speaking), and we programmers are forced to draft our regulations accordingly or we'll get unwanted results. Whereas contracts are a bit less deterministically interpreted, and human incentives and potential interpretations have to be considered in drafting.
In the modern day, there's almost no way to decipher the true precise meaning of a law just from its text. What really matters is case law - how the law has been applied in practice by courts over the years.
I was the only one in my class in law school who used mind maps and spaces repetition (back then on a Palm Pilot).
After I graduated, new professors came in who now are popularizing such methods, writing books about it, etc..
I think it’s a zeitgeist thing. If you’re too early, nobody will take you seriously. But at some point the tide is strong enough to break through.
Kinda the same as with AI/automation. I tried selling this to lawyers in 2020 and failed miserably. Three years later, ChatGPT became a thing, and now every lawyer wants a piece of AI.
It’s not the better mousetrap. It’s not people wanting new things that moves the world. It’s people not wanting to be left behind.
Later, another former housemate, a math major who was developing software, went to law school for a JD. It was his opinion that many of the tools from computer science were useful for deciphering the more complex laws and regulations.
How you think may be a significant factor in whether you are a good match to certain occupations.