openmissoula.org

My long, intrepid journey to convert my law office from proprietary to free and open source software (FOSS) included some surprises. The largest surprise was that the trip required linux code literacy no less than traveling an ocean would require navigation skills. Learning FOSS is nothing like licensing “out-of-the-box” software.

When I started practicing law, it was still relatively common for older lawyers to use dictation to create documents. These lawyers often did not know how to type let alone know how to use a word processor.

My grandmother was a lawyer who knew how to type, but her peers often mistook her for someone who was merely there to do the typing. She nevertheless recalled the skill as an advantage in the days of manual typewriters and carbon copies.

My mother forced me to take an introduction to typing class when I was in high school. I learned to use word processors when the first ones arrived so the transition was easy. Today I am able to do my own word processing. An assistant generally slows me down when I’m drafting and editing a legal document. As I’ve migrated to FOSS, my need for an assistant has continued to decrease.

That said, I’ve also realized I’m missing an entire set of skills that later generations of lawyers will likely take for granted. I interact with computers, software and networks like a consumer. Those skills aren’t enough. I need developer skills. All lawyers do. Like lawyers today know how to type. Lawyers tomorrow will need to know how to code.

In order to unlock the power of the computer and of networks, lawyers need to understand what the computer essentially is and what it can do. Its critical to have some notion of the computer as a logic machine and to understand its power to manipulate and organize datatypes. Apart from a deeper understanding of what it means to write and compile code, database literacy is probably the most obvious missing skill I can identify.

At a more general level, its a stunning irony that lawyers use logic as a professional tool but often lack any concept of how to use free code to unlock the logic engine inside every PC.

So its trite to conclude a project with the discovery that the journey is less complete at its end than it was at the beginning. But that’s where I find myself today.

True. There is no proprietary code left which is needed to run my law practice. The code in my office will already do more than the proprietary code I used in the past.

But I’ve exhausted a ridiculous amount of time and money to get where I am. And I’ve barely scratched the surface of what can be done. The limit I encountered is not the code. Its my own skill level.