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Open Source Your OS

Lawyers are asking the wrong question when they wonder whether to upgrade their operating system (OS) to Microsoft Windows 7 or stay at Windows XP or Vista. If you’re upgrading, the question should be what are ALL my options? Now that Microsoft issues its operating system in so many versions that you need a score card to keep track of which does what – did you know that Windows 7 Starter for netbooks even locks down your wallpaper – you might as well compare them to other alternatives. The legal technology world has changed a lot since you installed that version of Windows 98!

Choices, Choices

You might think that there aren’t viable alternatives to the Windows operating system in the law practice. Apple Mac devotees would argue that point, although they have remained a very small segment of the legal world. The American Bar Association Legal Technology Resource Center thinks that Mac may gain ground in 2010 buoyed by adoption of Apple’s iPhone. The ABA’s 2009 Legal Technology Survey Report indicates 3.6% of all lawyers responding, and nearly 7% of solos, run Mac OS on their primary computer.

Linux adoption is slowly growing, probably thanks to the popularity of netbooks, although there are no numbers for Linux lawyers. Like the Mac, it is likely to pop up in a law practice that purchases consumer, rather than enterprise, technology. Linux comes in a variety of flavors with Ubuntu being one of the more common. In fact, Ubuntu is in many mid-size to large law firms as a specialized network server, according to the International Legal Technology Association’s 2009 Technology Survey. Ubuntu is an excellent choice for a lawyer moving trying out Linux.

We’re Not Compatible

Compatibility is one reason raised for staying on Windows. It’s not necessarily that lawyers love Windows but they do prefer Microsoft Word. If you are determined to stay in Microsoft Word, you’re committing to Windows or Mac OS for now. That may change with Microsoft Office 2010, which will have Office Web apps that you can access from your Web browser. Linux users with Mozilla’s Firefox Web browser will be able to use these limited functionality versions of Microsoft Office software, as will Microsoft Internet Explorer and Apple Safari users.

Let’s put Microsoft Office to one side, though. If your document sharing and collaboration consists of e-mailing documents or using online collaboration tools, portable document format (PDF) is probably a more important file format than Word’s .DOCX. PDF enables your recipient to access your document, without troublesome metadata, and without worrying about what word processor they have on their PC. If that’s how you share your work product, then open source office suites like Open Office (for Windows, Linux, or Mac) and Neo Office for Mac may be good alternatives. Undoubtedly, there are additional feature comparisons that can sway your decision toward a particular word processor, but most of us do not use the most advanced and arcane features of our word processors.

No Legal-Specific Software

Another frequent comment about the need to stay in a Microsoft Windows environment is the availability of legal-specific software. This is undoubtedly true. If you are using a typical practice management, litigation support, or time management software product, you will almost certainly need to download and install it in a Windows environment.

The reality is that most lawyers are not using legal-specific software and some may agree with the comment from Sam Glover of the Lawyerist, that “most [practice management software] is really bad”. For example, 55% of the respondents to the 2009 ABA Legal Technology Survey Report have case or practice management software (39.9% of solos). Almost half of those use Microsoft’s Outlook e-mail and productivity tool, not a dedicated legal application.

If you are in that slim majority of lawyers using practice management software, or you want to join them, you can now use a number of online Software-as-a-Service offerings designed for lawyers. They don’t care what operating system you use, just that you can reach them with one of a number of Web browsers. The trend in Web-enabled legal applications seems to be one of growth, not decline, and is likely to happen even in large firms where the Web browser becomes the interface for internal and external applications.

Try a Flavor Other than Vanilla. Mint Perhaps?

The drawback to the Macintosh OS is really cost. If cost is no option to your practice, then definitely consider using a Mac because the hardware is delightful to look at and the operating system is very user friendly. Linux can give you an inexpensive alternative, though, and has the added benefits of probably running on your current (even old) hardware and having a nice interface too.

If you have equated Linux with the old DOS command prompt, think again. When you install Ubuntu or Linux Mint, you will be looking at an interface similar to Microsoft Windows or Apple Mac. It’s not identical but the learning curve is not hard and, for those who point and click rather than reading any manuals, you can be up, running, and comfortable very quickly.

The typical lawyer can run well-known software that will parallel their current Microsoft Windows environment. Mozilla’s Thunderbird e-mail app and Firefox Web browser, Google’s Chrome Web browser, the Open Office suite (with word processor, spreadsheet, and presentation software), and TrueCrypt encryption are all available on Linux. You can get some more ideas from Nashville, Tennessee, solo lawyer Zale Dowlen’s Linux for Lawyers’ site. You can even run some Windows applications (yes, including Microsoft Office) thanks to software like Codeweavers’ Crossover Linux.

You might be balking at the communal, group hug nature of open source. I won’t ask who supports your current operating system (Windows XP mainstream support expired in April 2009) but you can even buy support for your Linux OS, from companies like Canonical or any number of consultants.

You might still be reluctant to take the plunge. I was, and installed my copy of Ubuntu 9.1 (Karmic Koala) on the same machine as my primary Windows XP, so that I could boot the computer into whichever one I preferred to use at the time. Now I can get comfortable with features in Ubuntu, whose interface I prefer to Windows, and slowly transition off Windows XP. I can browse other Windows computers on my network from Linux using Samba, and much of the rest of my work requires only Internet applications like Mozilla Thunderbird and Google Chrome, regardless of my operating system. Microsoft Word 2007 and Open Office documents convert back and forth in no time.

Broaden Your Vistas Horizons

It may be that Windows 7 has something you can’t live without, like Apple’s iTunes! Linux is not for everyone but it is a great time for lawyers to look at their options and balance the cost and features of their operating system. As more and more services are accessible through a Web browser, and more applications are made to work across operating systems, solos and small firms can benefit from a closer look at Linux.

Comments

  1. David, I’ve been flirting with buying a Linux netbook, and would be interested in knowing more about your experiences. How much time/brain sweat did it take for you to figure things out? A large part of the reason that I remain in Windowsworld is laziness.

  2. Hi Wendy,

    If you’re really interested in trying it out, you can install this program in windows and test it out for yourself risk-free: http://wubi-installer.org/. You will find that Linux (at least Ubuntu/Mint) is easy to use, but that if you want to solve any problems or make things work that don’t come out of the box, you may find it challenging (depending on the issue). Certainly for a netbook that you just use to browse the internet and edit some documents, you will find it extremely easy to adjust.

  3. Learning how to use Linux, Ubuntu in my case, was very easy. I know less about Unix at the command prompt than I do about DOS. So I was reliant on menus and taskbars familiar to any Windows or Mac user. You’ll find them similar, right down to having the time/date, application menu (like Start button), etc. all on a bar that goes across the screen (top or bottom). The names are sometimes different – panel instead of taskbar, System instead of Control Panel – but I can still right click on my desktop to change my display settings, have icons on my task bar to quick start an application, and customize my program launcher folders.

    Once you are running your applications – and all the ones I use run the same on Windows or Ubuntu, including Microsoft Word and OneNote with Crossover Linux – the experience is the same as Windows. The only menu item that always gets me is that “Preferences” tends to be on the “Edit” menu instead of the “Tools” menu in any program on Ubuntu.

    My Dell Mini 9 recognized my Palm T|X as soon as it was plugged in, as it did my external hard drives and flash drives. The big hurdle I was worried about was drivers – would it be plug and play (or plug and pray) – and Ubuntu handled all of my hardware without me downloading anything, even for the printer.

    I’d take the plunge and get Linux on a netbook. As Evan suggests, you can get “Live CD” versions of Ubuntu that can run of CD or flash drive so you can play around with it in advance. The less complicated your environment, the shallower the learning curve. But I think that’s the same whether you’re getting started in a new version of Windows or switching to Mac or Linux.

  4. I think small to mid-size firms are in a much better position to entertain the ‘full array’ of OS options out there. Bigger firms tend to get into support issues with vendors very quickly. If your DMS vendor won’t fully support linux or mac, that’s a big hurdle.

    An interesting side story, ADP Canada couldn’t get Vista to operate properly with their web-based payroll service until last November! I mentioned to their support people that Windows 7 was coming out the following week, only to receive a *sigh* on the other end of the phone. Oh, and no FF as your browser. IE only. …. I lost a little more hair that day.

    Point of the story is that if an IT director is faced with 25 such hurdles… there’s good reason the OS environment rarely gets changed. For most organizations trying to be progressive, a mixed OS environment seems like a better first step. (which kills your standardized workstation, but that’s a whole other debate…)

    Don’t get me wrong, I *love* linux. Been using it server side for almost 20 yrs. … But it’s still a tough decision to move away from Windows for a desktop OS. Unless the firm is in a position to go fully-cloud or citrix.

    Ok, flame away. :)

  5. No flaming needed, that’s a fair assessment! Your server side experience is typical of what big firms are doing. The 2009 ILTA technology survey shows healthy use of Linux (Red Hat, Ubuntu) and Unix in large firms on the server side, probably due to the support available. Both Red Hat and Ubuntu are available for desktop users as well.

    I think you’ve hit the nail on the head for where the growth will happen, which is that cloud computing or Software-as-a-Service will free up a lot of lawyers to look at Linux as a realistic option for their legal tech software. And since the majority of lawyers are in solo or small firms (about 65% of lawyers in Canada are in a firm with 10 or fewer lawyers in 2007), the complexity of the large firm isn’t an obstacle to their adoption.

  6. For a number of months, I’ve been using a Dell Mini 10v which I ordered with Ubuntu already installed. No complaints. I posted some thoughts about my experiences last December. As noted there, getting an internet stick to work was non-trivial. Except for that, I wouldn’t have needed anything other than the graphical interface, which does pretty much what you are likely to think it should. If you’re thinking of a machine with Ubuntu already installed, you might want to wait a little while for the stable version of the next long term support release, 10.4, due in the 4th month of 2010.

  7. Linux works very well. Never crashes or jams up. I’ve used Linux for 8 years now and am very happy with it. The newer versions are very user friendly with excellent support in user forums.

    Having said that Windows 7 seems to have cleaned up the microsoft act pretty well as of late.

  8. Thanks for your mention of CrossOver–we really appreciate it. We do indeed open up some productivity options for people wanting to switch to Mac or Linux, but still run Windows applications.

    Best Wishes,

    -jon parshall-
    COO
    http://www.codeweavers.com

  9. My experience with Ubuntu is excellent – its stability is superior to my experience with Vista & Windows 7 (XP was great).

    My reason for trying a Linux alternative is not cost but quality – the Operating System and applications must be better to make the change.

    It appears to me that Linux is the preferred OS for us; however, the biggest obstacle that we face is from the desktop user – they know MSWord 2007 and perceive problems with OpenOffice (& this may be real &/or perceived).

    Therefore, any change over in our firm is an incremental change with the founding partner (me) leading the change – change must take place through leadership.

    As a side note: I implemented MS SharePoint and had significant implementation problems, so we switched to the Open Source document management system KnowledgeTree (http://www.knowledgetree.com/)which is excellent and interfaces with MSWord & runs on either Linux or Windows OS. Give it a try!