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enigmaingr
September 15th, 2010, 09:16 PM
Hello,

I ran across a listserv conversation about using Ubuntu as a practicing lawyer. For anyone interested, the thread can be found here: http://new.abanet.org/divisions/genpractice/solosez/Pages/052010Thread5.aspx

Sef
September 18th, 2010, 01:15 AM
Moved to community cafe.

Brunellus
September 18th, 2010, 01:42 AM
Interesting link.

There is one particular problem I have encountered as a law student, though: OpenOffice doesn't generate tables of authorities very nicely.

For those of you who don't know, a Table of Authorities is a specialized type of bibliographic index: it lists the legal sources in a brief--statutes, case law, commentaries, etc--and where each is cited in the paper.

Back when I was working as a legal assistant, there were proprietary plugins to MS Office that would auto-generate tables of authorities based on the text you entered. Thus, if I typed "42 U.S.C. § 1983," or "Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436 (1966)," the plugin would recognize each instance and generate appropriate entries (in "Statutes" or "Cases," respectively). I haven't found a good way of doing this in OpenOffice or any other FLOSS software.

thatguruguy
September 18th, 2010, 04:28 AM
I'm a solo attorney and use Ubuntu daily.

steve161
September 18th, 2010, 04:47 AM
Same here, but I have heard about the problem that Brunellus mentioned in his/her post. Thankfully, it is not something that is needed in my practice. Still, it would be nice to hear that the team at OpenOffice is taking a look at the issue.

thatguruguy
September 18th, 2010, 04:51 AM
Yeah, it's been a while since I wrote an appellate brief.

Brunellus
September 18th, 2010, 04:54 AM
Same here, but I have heard about the problem that Brunellus mentioned in his/her post. Thankfully, it is not something that is needed in my practice. Still, it would be nice to hear that the team at OpenOffice is taking a look at the issue.
It's not a problem unless you need to generate ToA's. I only really encountered it preparing things for moot court at law school--the rules required tables of authorities. Back at my old job, we had an appeal before the Federal Circuit--which was when I learned to do tables of authorities.

If you ask me, I think legal bibliography is broken, not OpenOffice. Bluebook form is so bizarre and idiosyncratic that it's hard to make it work with any automated citation-managers that I know of. I haven't yet figured out a good way of doing it for LaTeX, for instance, which would be my preferred choice for nice typesetting.

steve161
September 18th, 2010, 05:14 AM
Ah, the infamous Bluebook. I think I opened that one as much as my 4 Black's Law Dictionaries that I received as gifts.

Brunellus
September 18th, 2010, 05:18 AM
I was an Associate Editor at my law review, so I got to know the Bluebook far better than I think anyone ought to.

One of these days, I'll break down and hack up a Biblatex extension to deal with the bluebook. Maybe.