alt Hacker News>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.
Sure, you could, but that defeats the purpose of Google Docs which is to make the document collaborative. If you save each iteration in a different Doc, you might as well use Word.
It would also add friction to the workflow because a lawyer would need to download the document from Google Docs whenever they circulate it to a client or counterparty.
The best solution to the problem, in my opinion, is a docx native version control system. I write about how that works in our product Version Story in "On Building Git for Lawyers."
https://theredline.versionstory.com/p/on-building-git-for-la...
> If you save each iteration in a different Doc, you might as well use Word.
Funnily enough, that's how I (and a lot of people I know) use Google Docs.
The version history is great if you accidentally delete something and want to go back, but I don't know anyone who relies on the version history as a kind of meaningful archive -- it's just too fragile. Unless you create named versions, changes get collapsed, and when you make a copy, the version history doesn't get copied.
And it doesn't prevent collaboration -- multiple people can still collaborate on one set of changes in one "branch" file, while other people can collabroate on another set of changes in another "branch" file. When collaboration is done on both, they can get merged into the master file.
You've definitely convinced me that Docs doesn't work for law firms, but mainly for other reasons. Using multiple versions of files doesn't defeat the purpose of Docs -- it still makes collaboration much easier, and nobody's stuck e-mailing files back and forth that are out-of-date by the time they're opened.
Your idea of a VCS for .docx is intriguing though. Good luck!