Definitely agree. In legal we've ended up with this odd process by which we start with semistructured data that could, but isn't, stored as structured data, e.g. the summary deal terms in a corporate context. That is usually a Word table of key value pairs, e.g. parties, financial values, percentages, key clause types or even the exact text to be included.
That is then negotiated into a long form MS Word contract, negotiated and then signed and physically scanned back into a machine as a PDF (vs PDFing the native word doc and preserving the text layer).
Very avoidable as you note, and actually solvable via a look backwards and / or redesigning the technical paradigm for representing a contracts data model from cradle to grave.
True, maybe we should have clarified that in our article.
The point we were trying to make is different however. That point is this: in reality most legal data, in its final authoritative form, at least re contracts, is stored in a scanned pdf of the signed agreement, ie an image not the original Word doc containing semi structured data.
Granted, if lawyers didn't scan docs as images and hold only those scanned images to be the authoritative data on a particular matter things might be different.
Lots of projects in the works at law firms and in house legal teams to try and maintain contracts as structured, or at least semi structured, data from cradle to grave but still old habits of scanning contracts persists.
Not sure if that adds clarity. Be good to know. If it does (or if it doesn't) be good to understand so we can improve our content :)
TLDR: simple overview of one (of many) overlaps between coding and contract drafting concepts, illustrated by the similarities between defined terms (contracts) and variables (code). First part of an on-going series looking at the similarities & differences between code and contracts and how lawyers and computer scientists might mesh prose to code whilst maintaining legally valid and enforceable contracts.
Note: aimed at both coders and lawyers, so naturally high level in each domain to make it accessible :)
Yes we were thinking of a legal and localized equivalent of codeacademy for law when we said there's simply not the same level of legal learning resources online as there is for coding.
Coding resources have come on a thousand fold, even in the last 5 - 10 years with top level teaching available for free / freemium via Coursera codeacademy, freecodecamp, udemy, udacity etc. Also all well supported by active user communities alongside stackoverflow and the massive open source community supporting the most popular languages and libraries.
There isn't an equivalent for legal knowledge in that sense, so far as we are aware.
Likewise you can't easily have personal projects with law or medicine - to do so is almost certainly illegal in most jurisdictions.
This is a really good overview of the legaltech start-up ecosystem as it is today. Slightly European focus, but increasingly global: https://www.legalgeek.co/startup-map/
It's produced by one of the major legaltech meet-up / events groups, legalgeek, in conjunction with Thomson Reuters, who are also a major legaltech provider.
1) Contract law - if you're building software, make sure you understand how to licence it and not give away too much IP
2) Related to (1), understand Intellectual Property (IP) law - again, helps you understand what you own and what others own re the software or systems built
3) Tied to (1) and (2) increasingly, anything re data ownership and data privacy (incl. GDPR, an EU regulation re data privacy). Super important for anyone building tech that touches data, whether analytics, machine learning, deep learning, or any simple database backed product (i.e. most things).
Perhaps as an aside, relevant advertising / marketing restrictions to make sure a product doesn't fall foul of any laws re what can / can't be claimed about a product.
Naturally the laws are different in different countries / states, so make sure you anything you read relates to where you're doing business.
A good tip is to google for law firm client alerts re these topics - law firms often produce free one or two pager guides summarising "all you need to know" basic info to encourage their services. These can be a good starting point.
We think it helps if coders need to work with lawyers, e.g. particularly so in the fintech, legaltech, regtech and insurtech biz space. That said, it's somewhat unequal in terms of availability of educative resources. For lawyers wanting to code they are spoilt for choice with free, freemium or premium courseware online or in person.
For coders wanting to learn law it's much less available and significantly more costly. A lot of online legal learning resources are very oldschool, incorrect or incomplete, which is a real shame.
Thanks for the feedback. Honestly not optimised for anything other than trying to attempt a complete answer to a question we often get asked and see asked time and time again in the press, albeit usually answered in hyperbolic terms, i.e. "lawyers should never code" or "all lawyers should code", neither of which we agree with.
Scroll jacking is unintentional - not sure what you mean in regards to the article specifically. Be great to understand this better and fix? Is it the lazy loading of the images? If so, that's an attempt to boost the page loading speed.
Glad you enjoyed it! You're spot on: it's a UK take (the authors are based in the UK but work with lawyers from all over), but intended to generalise to most legal systems.
Some of the best lawyers we know in transactional law, IP and, in some cases litigation, come from STEM backgrounds, either academically and / or via prior experience in a STEM sector.
That's an amazing achievement to have paid your way through law school via software royalties. Kudos!
As you say, there are lots of overlaps between the two disciplines. We're trying to write up a continuing series of articles snapshotting these overlaps to help bridge between the techies wanting to work with lawyers and the lawyers wanting to work with techies. This was our first experiment with such content: https://lawtomated.com/law-coding-variables-and-defined-term...
Detailed teardown of Google's new AI toolkit to expedite the search, extraction and analysis of data from contracts for:
(1) due diligence;
(2) contract reporting; and
(3) general lift and shift of unstructured data from docs to third party tools.
It could shake up the busy contract extraction space currently populated by productised point solutions aimed more at law firms than enterprise.
Google's Document Understanding AI seems flexible enough to benefit both law firms and their clients, particularly legal ops use cases in financial services.
That is then negotiated into a long form MS Word contract, negotiated and then signed and physically scanned back into a machine as a PDF (vs PDFing the native word doc and preserving the text layer).
Very avoidable as you note, and actually solvable via a look backwards and / or redesigning the technical paradigm for representing a contracts data model from cradle to grave.