Idea for using Git as a legal documentation compiler - need an idiot-proof interface . .

[Philip Rhoades P]

People,

I am currently helping a friend who is financially stressed with a major legal drama (child custody) and producing the required legal documentation is turning into a time-wasting nightmare.  Using a collaborative tool like Google Docs helps a lot but the the lawyers are making the situation harder by refusing to use GD and insisting on sending doc or pdf files back and forth via email (or paper!)  for commenting - it is a hideously inefficient process.  I thought a mechanism based on Git might work much better ie:

1. The clauses (paragraphs) in an affidavit are split into separate files.

2. Lawyers, client and client support person (me) make suggested editing changes to each file and issue a pull request.

3. The client - with the final say on wording - accepts or rejects the pull requests as appropriate.

The problem:

The user web interface for such an app has to be idiot-proof for the lawyers (ie definitely not a techie interface or traditional Git environment) - I think it would be something like a file-manager listing where a particular file in the repo could be opened and edited and when the editing is finished a "Pull Request" button could be pressed and then the client (maybe with my tech help?) could accept or reject the pull requests in the normal Git environment.

Given that the idiot-proof web interface would have to be developed, I would prefer a Ruby and / or NodeJS environment so I thought this was a good place to start the discussion!  If I don't get any joy here I was thinking of putting this idea on something like Freelancer to see if I can get something going for a modest cost but I would be happier with a community development if I could generate enough interest.

Ideas?  Suggestions?

Thanks,

Phil.

[Aleksey Tsalolikhin]

If you and come up with something that works, it could change how lawyers work. I mean, this could be big.

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[Aleksey Tsalolikhin]

If you  *can* come up with something that works, I meant to say.

[Philip Rhoades]

Aleksey,

On 2016-10-23 02:54, Aleksey Tsalolikhin wrote:
> If you *can* come up with something that works, I meant to say.
>
> On Oct 22, 2016 8:53 AM, "Aleksey Tsalolikhin"
> <ale...@verticalsysadmin.com> wrote:
>
>> If you and come up with something that works, it could change how
>> lawyers work. I mean, this could be big.

Well the particular situation that I have to deal with at the moment is
fairly simple but it would get MUCH more complicated to deal with
everything lawyers do but it seems like a good idea to me to get started
. .

P.

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Philip Rhoades

PO Box 896
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Australia
E-mail: ph...@pricom.com.au

[mike.w...@verticalsysadmin.com]

Very interesting idea!

From a UI perspective, I think GitLab's diff interface is quite good—to make it better for lawyers would probably require something a little more like the Stack Exchange's side by side rendered markdown diff format.  (Here is an example; revision 5 at this link particularly showcases the feature I'm talking about as it has lots of changes: http://unix.stackexchange.com/posts/131767/revisions)

The diffs would definitely need to be shown not on a line by line basis, but content-aware, since I believe lawyers (along with all other users of MS Word) don't hard-wrap their lines.  :)

The idea of splitting the clauses into separate files is interesting, but I think might require more survey of actual lawyers' usage requirements.  (For example, in the back and forth your friend is having, how many changes are local to a single clause and how many involve moving phrases or sentences from one clause to another?)  The most obvious idiot-proof way to allow merge requests is to only allow any given file to be involved in one open merge request at any time, and this could give issues with use cases involving moving wordings from one paragraph to another.  But really, without a survey and looking over actual patterns of legal document editing (even if just anecdotal), this is the purest speculation on my part.

Best,

--Mike Weilgart