[geeks] Geeking out with LaTeX

[Jonathan C. Patschke]

On Tue, 7 May 2002, Joshua D Boyd wrote:

> I think www.legalforms-while-u-wait.com would be a legal problem waiting to
> happen.  You might try selling this package your put together to lawyers, but
> most of them probably have essentially the same thing done in Wordperfect
> macros at this point.

Do you always take life this seriously? :)

> Still, might be doable.  I hear that once you get a foot in the door,
> custom programming for lawyers can be lucrative, somewhat easy, and
> fun(if you like that sort of work).

I've actually started down that road before.  My main problem with them is
that they don't understand the concept of `computability'.  Telling them
that there are certain things that a compuer cannot do is something they
interpret as "I don't know how to do that."  If there's any one group of
people that overwhelingly believes in the Hollywood variant of computer
power, it'd have to be attorneys[1].

At this point, though, I kinda wish I'd put up with it.  Oh well, live and
learn.

> Lots of opportunities for knowledge management stuff too, presumably,
> in mining past legal precedents, reasoning, etc.

No doubt there.  Maybe by the 24th century or so, the US legal system will
have migrated away from microfische and paper to something resembling a
not terribly insane object-relational database.

--Jonathan
[1] My experience may not be indicative of the status quo; YMMV; this
    statement has not been evaluated by the FDA; all rights reserved; not
    intended to diagnose or treat any delusion.