Programming for the legal profession

Anonymous Monk has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Hi monks,

I was wondering if anyone has used Perl for an attorney, legal profession? I remember reading here (I think) of an attorney that uses Perl in his practice and I should have saved the page! I am considering contacting some attorneys in my town to offer my services (programming) and I was looking for ideas on what I could provide.

Thanks for any ideas, suggestions you may have.

Chris

Comment on Programming for the legal profession

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•Re: Programming for the legal profession by merlyn (Sage) on Jun 26, 2003 at 06:41 UTC
I was wondering if anyone has used Perl for an attorney, legal profession? Well, not exactly, but I've used attorneys for my Perl profession. {grin} -- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker Be sure to read my standard disclaimer if this is a reply.	[reply]
Re: Programming for the legal profession by Zero_Flop (Pilgrim) on Jun 26, 2003 at 04:38 UTC
I did some work for an attorney once. It was for a murder case, they were the defense. They had a copy of the victims HD and they needed me to go though it searching for anything fishy, threats, names, ect. It was pretty fun; I have to admit, playing the investigator. Basically the first thing I did was to grep the entire copy for key words. Then I collected all of the file extensions so I could determine what programs they used. For the programs that allowed it, like word, I wrote some scripts that did the key word search again. Once I had all of my hits, I had to go back and print out the excerpts and locations for the attorney to review.	[reply]
Re: Programming for the legal profession by BrowserUk (Patriarch) on Jun 26, 2003 at 04:21 UTC
Your first problem would be finding some benefit from using computerisation in their practice. Usually this comes down to showing them how comps can save businesses time (and therefore money) but that a losing pitch to a lawyer. Every minute you cut off their daily workload is $1 or $2 less client-billable revenue to a lawyer:) Examine what is said, not who speaks. "Efficiency is intelligent laziness." -David Dunham "When I'm working on a problem, I never think about beauty. I think only how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong." -Richard Buckminster Fuller	[reply]
Re: Programming for the legal profession by particle (Vicar) on Jun 26, 2003 at 13:16 UTC
i have a good friend who uses perl regularly in his job at a law firm. he specializes in mining relevant information from client hardware; his skills have proven quite useful during trial discovery. ~Particle accelerates	[reply]
Re: Programming for the legal profession by Anonymous Monk on Jun 26, 2003 at 22:42 UTC
Thanks everyone for your replies :-) I am fishing for some ideas to suggest when I talk to a lawyer. BowserUk, I see your point! Chris	[reply]