North Coast Connections: Word processors and lawyers

Lawyers, like many professionals, live and die by the written word. That means they use word processing software a lot in their day-to-day work lives. Due to the sheer volume of words they produce, many lawyers (especially those in larger firms) employ teams in this endeavor that include legal secretaries, paralegals and law clerks. Even so, the general trend in the professional field is to employ fewer "typists" and require more hands-on keyboard chores, or at least increased use of voice recognition. The legal profession is also affected by this trend. But whether they "type their own" or use staff, there are big word processing problems lawyers encounter that are not readily apparent in most other professions.

First, lawyers often must collaborate with others to prepare legal documents and court filings. While they could simply circulate an electronic version and use the "track changes" feature of most word processing software packages, keeping track of versions and changes requires better technology designed to enhance collaboration.

Second, since many legal documents undergo edits and changes before they are finalized, most word processing software implants metadata into a document that can reveal previous versions, who made the changes and when the changes were made. Therefore, if a lawyer attaches an electronic version of a letter or legal brief to an email to send to someone, the recipient could dissect the document and find lots of additional information that could be used to undermine the lawyer's case.

Third, courts are increasingly coming of tech-age and allowing electronic filing (called E-filing) of court processes. However, in order to avoid the problem of lawyers and litigants filing easily editable word processing files, many (if not most) courts only allow the filing of PDF versions of documents that require lawyers and litigants to convert word processing documents into another format.

Enter the need for enhanced software packages that do more than just process words. There is an increasing number of software programs that easily track versions of documents to make collaboration easy, erase metadata in final versions so that past changes are not detectable, and allow conversion of word processing electronic documents into PDF files suitable for E-filing in court.

The PDF debate, by the way, is one that does not stand close scrutiny. The decision by courts to require PDF files for court filings is borne from the belief that PDF files are "immutable" and cannot be altered. Anyone who possesses the full (and expensive) version of Adobe Acrobat (and not just the free version of Acrobat reader) knows that PDF files are easily alterable, and even contain metadata. In my opinion, no one is taking the courts to task on the issue because technically the paper versions of files and briefs are similarly capable of forgery and alteration, though the likelihood is low and subject to challenge.

One popular product, Workshare Professional (v 4.5) works seamlessly with Microsoft Word. Although, surprising as it may be to most people, the legal profession is still a major user of Corel's Word Perfect for core word processing needs.

Go figure!

Chris Crawford
www.justiceserved.com

North Coast Connections

Thoughts and analysis on technology and life on the North Coast.

Word processors and lawyers

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