Over this past weekend, Twitter discovered the problem that I have dedicated the past four years of my life to solving. Why don't lawyers and other non-coders use git?
I enjoyed reading this thoughtful essay, Jordan. Thanks for finally taking the time to share what you've been building and why with us.
Git never quite clicked for me. I could use it but it wasn't abstracted visually for me, which is a crutch I need. If you can make turn git into visual candy for lawyers that will be quite important.
At a larger level, your essay has me thinking about turning all bureaucratic document-based processes into gits. The room we leave for error is astonishing. Perhaps your second product can be Hill Hub, which is git for Congress.
It seems like you achieve a massive improvement just by having a single place where document versions are stored, and tracked. One of the most error prone processes is emailing documents that become out of date the moment sent.
Will you tackle making agreements that are written IN ALL CAPS READABLE next as well?!
Google Docs is a step in the right direction but has several limitations.
1. Lawyers don't want everyone holding the pen at the same time. Specialists want to make their changes and have them reviewed in isolation from other's changes. Think of a redline like a pull request. You don't want other people's changes in your work when it's getting reviewed.
2. Google Docs breaks down when even a single person drafts outside of it. See the section of my essay about why lawyers will never stop using Word. Even if you managed to get an entire firm using Google Docs, it still wouldn't work because they need to exchange drafts with external parties.
Very interesting!
With zero modification this would also be indispensable for (conventional) engineers writing compliance documents
I enjoyed reading this thoughtful essay, Jordan. Thanks for finally taking the time to share what you've been building and why with us.
Git never quite clicked for me. I could use it but it wasn't abstracted visually for me, which is a crutch I need. If you can make turn git into visual candy for lawyers that will be quite important.
At a larger level, your essay has me thinking about turning all bureaucratic document-based processes into gits. The room we leave for error is astonishing. Perhaps your second product can be Hill Hub, which is git for Congress.
Thank you, Mike! Git for Congress is definitely part of the long term vision!
It seems like you achieve a massive improvement just by having a single place where document versions are stored, and tracked. One of the most error prone processes is emailing documents that become out of date the moment sent.
Will you tackle making agreements that are written IN ALL CAPS READABLE next as well?!
"How do we know which rows from the original document match with which rows of the modified?"
https://react.dev/learn/rendering-lists#keeping-list-items-in-order-with-key:~:text=important%20if%20your%20array%20items%20can%20move
Tadaaaa!
Heard of google doc?
Google Docs is a step in the right direction but has several limitations.
1. Lawyers don't want everyone holding the pen at the same time. Specialists want to make their changes and have them reviewed in isolation from other's changes. Think of a redline like a pull request. You don't want other people's changes in your work when it's getting reviewed.
2. Google Docs breaks down when even a single person drafts outside of it. See the section of my essay about why lawyers will never stop using Word. Even if you managed to get an entire firm using Google Docs, it still wouldn't work because they need to exchange drafts with external parties.