Maybe, but I can’t help but wonder who would use it. Based on personal experience, I don’t think that ‘timid Linux-loving lawyer’ is a significant part of the lawyering population. It is a technologically conservative profession by nature - paper law libraries were a must-have for any significant firm well in to the 2000s and quite a few firms still have them.
Most lawyers treat their computers as a necessary evil. Windows is the default OS, with creatives and technical people gravitating towards Macs assuming that the firm supports them. There is a strong tendency among lawyers to spend money instead of time on technical issues. As a result, many firms grow dependent on niche proprietary software that is heavily marketed to lawyers: billing/timekeeping/voice transcription/firm management. The arguable good news is that thanks to SaaS taking over that realm of software, more and more of the proprietary stuff is available on Linux through any decent web browser. Less buggy, more up to date, lower switching costs.
If Linux ends up being pushed out to employees in law firm environments during my lifetime, it’ll be because someone handling the IT/software decisionmaking for a firm has made a compelling business case to go that route for some percentage of the firm’s computers. Anything that gets deployed would probably be based on something like Red Hat since corporate support isn’t optional in a lot of these environments.
On the small firm side of things, lack of time and inclination to mess around with a new operating system is probably the biggest barrier.
I was being a little facetious, perhaps, attempting to put off a debate.
The world changed somewhat after 2007… arguably enabled by a successful ad campaign that said “There’s an app for that”. Younger generations are no longer mystified by / afraid of tech, or of downloading apps - and Linux has developed easy ways to make apps available.
The point both you, and the writer of the article make is pertinent : a lot of stuff is done through a browser these days, and that’s platform-agnostic.
And I think what you say about IT departments and a compelling business case is true too - and not just for law firms. OpenUK’s recent survey suggests that many companies, in diverse sectors, are seeing the numerous advantages of using open source software.
Maybe, but I can’t help but wonder who would use it. Based on personal experience, I don’t think that ‘timid Linux-loving lawyer’ is a significant part of the lawyering population. It is a technologically conservative profession by nature - paper law libraries were a must-have for any significant firm well in to the 2000s and quite a few firms still have them.
Most lawyers treat their computers as a necessary evil. Windows is the default OS, with creatives and technical people gravitating towards Macs assuming that the firm supports them. There is a strong tendency among lawyers to spend money instead of time on technical issues. As a result, many firms grow dependent on niche proprietary software that is heavily marketed to lawyers: billing/timekeeping/voice transcription/firm management. The arguable good news is that thanks to SaaS taking over that realm of software, more and more of the proprietary stuff is available on Linux through any decent web browser. Less buggy, more up to date, lower switching costs.
If Linux ends up being pushed out to employees in law firm environments during my lifetime, it’ll be because someone handling the IT/software decisionmaking for a firm has made a compelling business case to go that route for some percentage of the firm’s computers. Anything that gets deployed would probably be based on something like Red Hat since corporate support isn’t optional in a lot of these environments.
On the small firm side of things, lack of time and inclination to mess around with a new operating system is probably the biggest barrier.
I was being a little facetious, perhaps, attempting to put off a debate.
The world changed somewhat after 2007… arguably enabled by a successful ad campaign that said “There’s an app for that”. Younger generations are no longer mystified by / afraid of tech, or of downloading apps - and Linux has developed easy ways to make apps available.
The point both you, and the writer of the article make is pertinent : a lot of stuff is done through a browser these days, and that’s platform-agnostic.
And I think what you say about IT departments and a compelling business case is true too - and not just for law firms. OpenUK’s recent survey suggests that many companies, in diverse sectors, are seeing the numerous advantages of using open source software.