I have a law office, and our largest challenge is translating heavily formatted legal documents between different word processors.
As a result, I run XP Pro so that I can run emergency versions of Word and WordPerfect.
That said, I am very pleased to report that my primary office suite is Open Office. My brother helped me create a template with pleading lines, and all of my legal forms and correspondence are created using Open Office. Its terrific!
Firefox is my browser, Thunderbird is my mail client and I have Knoppix for data recovery in the event of crashes.
I've searched for a long time, but I've never found any reference on a bookshelf, on the web or anywhere else that devoted sufficient attention to translating, creating and formatting legal forms with Open Office or rescuing formatting disasters when documents created with Word or WordPerfect have to be translated into Open Office format. I have to create my forms from plain text format and then add all of the formatting. It may not sound hard, but trust me, its a nightmare.
There are also problems related to proprietary case management software and accounting packages that are necessary to a law practice but which don't play as well as is desirable with the Open Office Suite, Linux or Firefox. I use Gavel & Gown Amicus Attorney at work, and I cannot find a viable open source substitute for it. I keep trying to convince my brother to write one, but apparently that would be an enormous project.:)
If these problems were adequately addressed, I believe that many lawyers would gladly give up their licensing fees and switch to Linux and Open Office.
Easy to do (Score:1)
months now. Didn't even bother to dual boot. I
have everything I need
Open Source Law Office --- the elusive dream! (Score:3, Interesting)
As a result, I run XP Pro so that I can run emergency versions of Word and WordPerfect.
That said, I am very pleased to report that my primary office suite is Open Office. My brother helped me create a template with pleading lines, and all of my legal forms and correspondence are created using Open Office. Its terrific!
Firefox is my browser, Thunderbird is my mail client and I have Knoppix for data recovery in the event of crashes.
I've searched for a long time, but I've never found any reference on a bookshelf, on the web or anywhere else that devoted sufficient attention to translating, creating and formatting legal forms with Open Office or rescuing formatting disasters when documents created with Word or WordPerfect have to be translated into Open Office format. I have to create my forms from plain text format and then add all of the formatting. It may not sound hard, but trust me, its a nightmare.
There are also problems related to proprietary case management software and accounting packages that are necessary to a law practice but which don't play as well as is desirable with the Open Office Suite, Linux or Firefox. I use Gavel & Gown Amicus Attorney at work, and I cannot find a viable open source substitute for it. I keep trying to convince my brother to write one, but apparently that would be an enormous project.
If these problems were adequately addressed, I believe that many lawyers would gladly give up their licensing fees and switch to Linux and Open Office.