alt Hacker NewsI actually wrote a detailed breakdown of why Google Docs doesn't meet lawyers' needs!
https://theredline.versionstory.com/p/why-lawyers-will-never...
The short answer is Google Docs:
- Requires all-or-nothing adoption which is a non-starter for law-firms
- Does not support commit atomicity
- Does not store a comprehensive history of the document
Replies
Amazing thanks!
So as far as formatting goes, it seems like it's only list formatting and small caps you've identified, am I missing anything else? (I am baffled by Docs' refusal to add small caps.)
But then as far as workflow is concerned, I'm not sure Docs is as unusable as you say it is -- the commit atomicity and comprehensive history aren't supported by Word either, are they? That's just a function of maintaining 20 separate copies of the file with each set of changes. You can still do that with Docs if you want to, rather than relying on the version history. And then "Tools > Compare documents" lets you merge in all the changes from another document, in an atomic way if you want. And if you want to use the revision history in a "master" version, you can used named versions as well.
Yes, everybody at the firm needs to use Docs. That's not unique to law -- every company that switches from MS365 to Google makes that kind of overnight transition, but it makes sense because you're paying one company or the other, not both.
It's the communication between firms that is going to be stuck in .docx basically forever though, so this is where Google needs to improve its conversion. Ideally Google would also build a "send a copy/transfer" feature so a firm can receive a Google Doc but know that from the moment it "opens" it, a new copy is made on their local Drive so the sending firm never sees edits or activity. But because that feels like it would be too easy to mess up, I think actual .docx file attachments will themselves be immortal, even if both sides used Docs.
Sounds like lawyers should be using Git and Markdown! Ha I know...
It's also not nearly as scriptable as Word is. Word has had macros ("fields") since its first Windows versions, VBA for over 20 years now, it's easy to develop complex add-ons - where I live we've had one for grammar checking for decades now (speaking of that, Google Docs' language features for less popular languages are far behind Word's). Various software supports export to Word and some programs even import from it. You'd be surprised what levels of automation has been achieved with Word.
Files are also easily shared (on physical media, email, no need for anyone to have a Google account to edit and send them back), encrypted, burned onto a CD for storage. DOC/DOCX are ubiquitous and stable file formats. No worries about data leaks in the cloud as it's all local by default...