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Re: Debian-Lex mailing list



I have subscribed.  Please let me know if I am not on the list.  I'm an atty 
in San Francisco.  More response below.

On Saturday 31 May 2003 21:13, Jeremy Malcolm wrote:
snip...
>
> Something else that I think that it is important for those involved in
> legal practice (particularly as lawyers, aka. attorneys, solicitors,
> counsel, barristers, whatever they are called in your part of the world)
> is to be able to access information about their clients and their files
> or matters from within various applications.  You want, for example, for
> your trust accounting software to use the same information as the
> software that you use to print out labels for your files.
>
> Integrating various packages to interoperate and share data should be
> one of our first discussion topics I think.  I do have a draft database
> schema which I will post to the list in a future message. 

Very true.  I would like to suggest that your project work with Open 
Office.org ( OOo) to see if you can incorporate their docs the same way that 
Time Matters incorporates Microsoft Word and WordPerfect docs.  Time Matters 
is a billing software product which also has a calendaring program and a case 
management program included.  I would have purchased Time Matters by now, 
because I was told it runs natively in Linux (I use SuSE Pro 8.2) except for 
the fact that Time Matters will not coordinate with OOo like it will Word and 
WP.  FLOSS has a strong future, and I see no reason to use proprietary 
software which will not work with FLOSS.

BTW, I use SuSE mostly because my Linux guru friend uses it, and I am quite a 
newbie, and so can't stray very far from beneath his wings. Also, SuSE is 
good for a newbie like me because it seems to find new hardware right away, 
without me having to do a whole lot.  On the other hand, there is another 
Linux guru on my floor at 580 California Street in San Francisco who is big 
on Debian, so I am very well aware that Debian probably has a whole lot going 
for it, too.  This project, for example, is a create example of incredible 
creativity.  I will help you as much as I can.




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