Debian-Lex distro proposal
Hello everyone,
I ran across Debian-Lex about a 1.5 years ago while my wife was still in
law school and began contemplating setting up her own solo practice when
she graduated and passed the Ohio, USA Bar exam. At that time,
Debian-Lex appeared to be interesting, but definitely not what she was
looking for to help her manage her practice because of how rudimentary
and unstructured it was then. Time has passed, my wife graduated law
school, and is now a licensed attorney in the state of Ohio, USA. (If
you would like to see the website that I built for her you can access
it here: http://www.cadamslaw.com.)
I have been using Linux now for about 5-7 years, depending on how much
you count my early attempts to install RedHat Linux 6.x on to my
computer prior to 2000. I now use Mandrake 10.2 on my home webserver
(http://caveserv.homelinux.net) and have recently been fiddling with
Gentoo Linux (originally a Debian-based distro) - although getting a
MythTV box all setup is taking me a lot more time and effort than I
originally thought it would! I am not a lawyer, and probably never will
be, but I am a "tinkerer" - an inventor and dreamer at heart. I am
currently finishing up a Computer Engineering Technology BS degree over
the next 12 months, and have been a project/business analyst for the
past 2.5 years at Checkfree Corp. in Dublin, OH, US. I am a certified
Six Sigma Greenbelt, and will hopefully begin working on my Six Sigma
Blackbelt certification in Statistical Excellence and Process
Improvement within the year at Checkfree.
My wife has been using a laptop with Windows XP installed on it along
with an enormous slew of various US-based software packages to manage
her quickly growing law practice. Amicus Attorney, PCLaw, WordPerfect,
and about a half-dozen other programs currently sit on her laptop's
hard-drive, but they don't play nicely together as I'm sure you can
imagine on a Windows XP system. She crashes Windows almost daily just
by trying to use more than one of her programs at a time.
I have searched and searched, and trust me so has my wife, for software
that will more effectively and more inexpensively help her manage her
cases, clients, billing, documents, and all of the other things that
attorneys use their computers for, to no avail. Everything seems to be
stuck in a non-integrated, very proprietary structure under many
individual small companies here in the US. In my duties as "IT
Director" of my wife's solo practice I have been noticing that many
solo lawyers in the US struggle with technology far more than they need
to be doing. Therefore, I believe there is currently a great need for a
much more specialized and lawyer-specific computer system which could
meet the needs of my wife and all the many other solo US and
international lawyers who are wasting their time struggling with the
current Microsoft software monopoly when they could be doing actual
billable work for their clients. I am hereby proposing that Jeremy
Malcom, if he would be so kind, allows me to become involved in this
project as the Debian-Lex distribution project lead and technical
director.
Here are some of the early goals that I have for the current Debian-Lex
project:
- Build the core distribution using Debian as the base with at least
three core software packages which provide the following:
* Client/Case management (perhaps something similar to a combination of
Swish-e.org and www.lcm.ngo-bg.org software as was mentioned last month
on this listserv)
* Document creation software (OpenOffice.org is an obvious easy choice,
but I think for many lawyers something based on TeX/LaTeX would work
wonders over MS Word, Adobe Acrobat, and OpenOffice.org) - in the US
many jurisdictions have begun REQUIRING submission of electronic
documents when filing with the courts, so we will definitely need to
incorporate document conversion utilities for those firms that use MS
Word and pdf files.
* Time Tracking/Calendar/Scheduling/Billing software - This will
probably be a more difficult software system to integrate into
Debian-Lex as there are many many choices of what to use to cobble
something like this into a useful package for lawyers, but it's
obviously quite necessary for any lawyer to even begin thinking about
using Debian-Lex. (gotta be able to bill those clients!)
Now, here is the kicker for why I think this project can become a real
shining star within the Linux/GNU/OpenSource community: - local
specialization of legal information -
As another poster to this listserv pointed out, the document templates
for filing a divorce in Brazil are going to be quite different from the
templates needed in the US. Even within the US, courts and the law can
vary a lot from state to state. So creating an open-source system like
Debian-Lex provides the framework for all of the work people like us
can then provide as "add-on" services in our own particular areas of
expertise. For instance, I know that my wife uses several software
packages that do calculations for how to divide up the money in a
divorce, in a bankruptcy, etc. which are dictated in part by the law in
Ohio, USA. I'm sure I could create specialized software to do this for
her in a Debian-Lex system.
In summary, I think the concept of Debian-Lex is a great one, but it has
not yet gained the momentum needed to provide a commercially viable
solution for the many many lawyers that practice law throughout the
world. Allow me to take charge of this idea and I think we can all
benefit from our work on this project while further promoting the
values and hard-work of all of the many other Open Source programmers
and advocates that have gone before us. (I know that last line may
sound a bit contrived, but I am serious about my desires for this
project to become a shining beacon of the power of GNU/Linux and the
Open Source software movement.)
Please feel free to contact me at jadams@adamstechconsultants.com with
your thoughts, questions, or suggestions. Thank you!
- Jeremy Adams
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