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Post subject: Software for a law office
 Posted: Dec 22, 2007 - 10:38 PM
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Joined: Apr 07, 2007
Posts: 387
Location: Italia
Status: Offline
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Hi,
I finally managed to convince my lawyer uncle to migrate his whole legal office to linux  While this being a nice further step to eliminate M$ bloatware from Earth, it'll sure drain some serious energy out of my nerves in order to have everything configured and fool-proof 
Never having completely 100% migrated a whole office network to linux I start asking myself questions about HOWTO's..... so I really need your precious advice!!!
The point is that, besides normal installation of clients (sidux for P4's and maybe AntiX or Deli for disgraced machines like P2's) I'll especially have to setup one server box for some mission-critical stuff. The following I have clear:
1. file exchange => samba
2. optional http server => apache
3. dhcp server => dhcp3-server / udhcpd
4. firewall / dyndns box => either some router or a small box with icop / smoothwall running on it (already used icop in a firm on a P3 128MB RAM and works like hell)
Then I get some doubts for the following:
5. ftp server: which (light) one is the best (vsftpd / wu-ftpd)? is there some with x-gui to configure it (like filezilla server on wi(n)dows)?
6. mail server: I've never setup one... I'd need some advice for an easy to learn/configure one, best if with extra x-gui to config (a quick howto is very welcome, btw); and some antivirus+antispam integrated wouldn't harm too....
7. integrated contacts/calendar suite: here the doubt lays between kontact+some server app (kolab, egroupware, etc.) or evolution srv+clients: anybody had experiences about configuring them? And importing data contacts from previous apps (either text, csv, etc.)?
8. backing up: I got some nice IBM DDS4 SCSI tape autoloader, now which software would be suitable/easy to configure to use it? maybe mondo? Any experiences?
9. An extra issue: is there (like with NT and following) a way to download/upload user profiles from/to a server when people log in/out from clients? This would allow people to work on different machines without having to reconfigure the single clients.
10. Now comes the most difficoult one.... does anybody know if there's some linux productivity suite (like litigation cases management and similar) for lawyer offices?????
11. Last but not least, besides smb4k which audits just functioning samba servers around, what about a program which can audit the office network topology (basically the same of dissecting a whole network cupboard and room sockets, best if graphically)?
....so hard the road for linux advocacy, but so sweet your advice!!! 
THX |
_________________
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SI VIS PACEM, PARA BELLVM
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AC MILAN CaMpIoNe d'EuRoPa 2oo7!!!!
AC MILAN WoRLd ChAmPiOn 2oo7!!!!
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Post subject: RE: Software for a law office
Posted: Dec 22, 2007 - 11:09 PM
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Joined: Feb 24, 2007
Posts: 679
Location: Berlin, Germany
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Post subject: Re: RE: Software for a law office
Posted: Dec 22, 2007 - 11:37 PM
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Joined: Apr 07, 2007
Posts: 387
Location: Italia
Status: Offline
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michaaa62 wrote:
You might look for Kumula cases and Rvgx. Here is a link to a german article http://www.linux-user.de/ausgabe/2006/09/066-kumula/
Good luck
Danke sehr Kamerad! Dieser Kumula Cases scheint sehr interessant.... werde es sicher probieren! |
_________________
-----------------------------
SI VIS PACEM, PARA BELLVM
-----------------------------
AC MILAN CaMpIoNe d'EuRoPa 2oo7!!!!
AC MILAN WoRLd ChAmPiOn 2oo7!!!!
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Post subject: Re: Software for a law office
Posted: Dec 27, 2007 - 11:27 PM
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Joined: Nov 27, 2006
Posts: 524
Location: Griffith NSW Australia
Status: Offline
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jaegermeister wrote:
Hi,
I finally managed to convince my lawyer uncle to migrate his whole legal office to linux While this being a nice further step to eliminate M$ bloatware from Earth, it'll sure drain some serious energy out of my nerves in order to have everything configured and fool-proof
This is a *huge* job that you have undertaken. Not only will it drain a huge amount of energy from you, but time and possibly even credibility if you don't get it right.
I work for a company with ~200 desktops and we have been in the process of migrating away from a dependency on MS products on the desktop for ~5 years - currently we run 50% linux desktops, a number that won't rise particularly quickly for the foreseeable future.
All I can offer you is advice on avoiding some of the pitfalls that we encountered, highlight some of the misconceptions about putting linux on the desktop, and detail some of the "wins" (some of the more effective strategies we employed that made users happy).
Misconceptions about Linux on the Desktop
* it's cheaper - at least in the initial transition, this is simply not true. It will cost you in planning, lost productivity while users come to grips with new interfaces, cost of training, cost of extra support requirements and other unforeseen issues. The cost benefits come in later, software license cost and maintenance savings, administration savings (depending on your setup), increased productivity due to the speed of the machines (depending on your setup) etc.
DO NOT EXPECT TO SAVE MONEY UPFRONT.
* getting linux on the desktop is the most important thing - it's not. Standards Based Computing is important, providing tools that allow increased productivity and flexibility is important. Data Sovereignty is important. The trick here is to do the migration in two broad steps - migrate existing tools on windows to cross platform tools (on windows initially). Firefox and OpenOffice (+ TRAINING!) are the easy pickings here. They can run side by side with IE and MSO. Find cross platform alternatives to the other software they use - once they are trained and comfortable with the new tools and you have a cross platform Standard Operating Environment (SOE), you've almost got the battle won - change the platform (*nix/mac/*bsd) but provide the same toolset and they won't care - suddenly you have choices about what platform you run and it will make little or no difference to the users. Hell, you could even save yourself some trouble and backout of the final step of the migration and leave them running windows - they will still be in a much better position than before.
* users like MS products, and hate linux/openoffice/someotherhandle - most users don't understand nor care what they use, as long as they can do their job. You need to ensure they can do their job with the new tools *before* you deploy them with no fallback option (by training them). If you don't do this, the users will start causing problems, they will think that you are only doing the deployment because it's "free", they will undermine you by complaining to other staff, they will say they hate linux/openoffice/whatever other replacement software you are using. This is all a symptom of users who are unskilled and can only barely use the old tools. TRAINING IS KEY! once trained they can use the new tools better than they could ever use the old ones - productivity++. Bear in mind, there are users who may have legitimate reasons for not being able to be productive with alternative tools - do not ignore these users.
Pitfalls
* not providing enough training, leading to us losing a *lot* of credibility with users. This took years to get back.
* don't let the cat out of the bag - if you are going to do this migration, you may find you get a lot of publicity. If you genuinely want to make the switch, do not do interviews talking about what you are *going to do*, talk about it only when you've *done it*. Otherwise you may find an MS account manager beating down the directors door and making him an offer he can't refuse (bypassing you altogether), and therefore destroying your chances for success.
* lack of planning - this is no trivial task, plan, test, plan, test, talk to users, work out processes, make sure your solution can replicate or improve existing processes.
Wins
* structured training provided a lot of our users with more skills in the alternate software than they ever had in any other software. Suddenly they "liked" openoffice/linux/whatever
* shift in user thinking regarding software/services provided by IT - in the past a user would come to IT and ask for "MSProject" or "Access" or "Blackberry" other products by name. There was a shift at some point a couple of years ago when the users started asking for "Mobile Email" or "Project Management Software".
* our company is not large, but we have a significant presence now in many Australian corporate news outlets as a succesful business based on Open Standard computing. This in turn provides us with leverage and influence on the direction of our upstream closed source software providers (yes, we still have closed source software in use - remember, you need to provide the best tool for the job)
Quote:
Never having completely 100% migrated a whole office network to linux I start asking myself questions about HOWTO's..... so I really need your precious advice!!!
The point is that, besides normal installation of clients (sidux for P4's and maybe AntiX or Deli for disgraced machines like P2's)
Standardise if you can - the more distros you run the more support costs you will have. A hd installation of sidux is not trivial to maintain, let alone 10-20 or more. Pure debian may be a better bet (depending on how current the desktop software is you require), or even consider outsourcing the desktop support to RedHat or Suse for example.
I would recommend dumping the p2 boxes and buying new machines. I would even recommend dumping *all* machines and standardising on a desktop model with a stable update path (eg Dell Optiplex' get a major hardware refresh every 18 months, so you know your driver support will be fine for 18 months at least - most major PC suppliers offer something similar). You could even use that as a carrot, once the SOE is in place and users are productive on the new software in windows, promise new hardware if they switch to linux (for example).
Quote:
I'll especially have to setup one server box for some mission-critical stuff. The following I have clear:
1. file exchange => samba
2. optional http server => apache
3. dhcp server => dhcp3-server / udhcpd
4. firewall / dyndns box => either some router or a small box with icop / smoothwall running on it (already used icop in a firm on a P3 128MB RAM and works like hell)
One server for "mission critical" stuff is a single point of failure for the company. If that box dies, the "mission" will fail. You need to have contingency plans for the very likely event when the server does fail. Virtual Machines provide some interesting options in this area -
Quote:
6. mail server: I've never setup one... I'd need some advice for an easy to learn/configure one, best if with extra x-gui to config (a quick howto is very welcome, btw); and some antivirus+antispam integrated wouldn't harm too....
Depending on whether they have staff onsite to maintain the mail server I would recommend outsourcing this to some hosting company. Zimbra is an open source web based collaboration suite that provides mail, shared calendering, shared contacts etc in a very flash web based interface.
Quote:
7. integrated contacts/calendar suite: here the doubt lays between kontact+some server app (kolab, egroupware, etc.) or evolution srv+clients: anybody had experiences about configuring them? And importing data contacts from previous apps (either text, csv, etc.)?
see above
Quote:
8. backing up: I got some nice IBM DDS4 SCSI tape autoloader, now which software would be suitable/easy to configure to use it? maybe mondo? Any experiences?
There are a few different backup software options, I think bacula is probably closest to what you want but it is not intuitive to use. Especially if the users will be managing it - I don't have a good solution here, except to perhaps use a combination of tape for archival purposes and rdiff-backup or similar on an external disk for daily snapshots that the users have easy access to.
Quote:
9. An extra issue: is there (like with NT and following) a way to download/upload user profiles from/to a server when people log in/out from clients? This would allow people to work on different machines without having to reconfigure the single clients.
Samba can provide this functionality, I would recommend backending it with an ldap server (fedora directory server or openldap)
Quote:
10. Now comes the most difficoult one.... does anybody know if there's some linux productivity suite (like litigation cases management and similar) for lawyer offices?????
http://www.activeagenda.net might be worth a look? It's not specific to law, but plugins are trivial to write and the developers are easily contactable (we flew both of them to Australia for training/support/development earlier in the year)
Quote:
11. Last but not least, besides smb4k which audits just functioning samba servers around, what about a program which can audit the office network topology (basically the same of dissecting a whole network cupboard and room sockets, best if graphically)?[/color]
ocsinventory may meet some of those requirements, plus it is available in the debian repositories. Another possibility is http://www.open-audit.org
I haven't used it myself, but they can provide some very nice maps:
http://www.open-audit.org/network_maps.php
Quote:
....so hard the road for linux advocacy, but so sweet your advice!!!
THX
Please plan well, do not make "linux" adoption your goal since that will lock you in just like your client is locked into MS atm. If you make the goal standards based computing, focus on cross platform compatibility etc, the linux desktop will be as viable an alternative as any other OS 
Good Luck! |
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Post subject: RE: Re: Software for a law office
Posted: Dec 28, 2007 - 12:00 AM
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Joined: Dec 03, 2006
Posts: 85
Status: Offline
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as much as I enjoy using linux, this project is not realistic IMHO. a lawyer typically drafts very sophisticated (i.e. highly formatted) documents and then often needs to share them with clients and/or with other lawyers. OOo is just not capable of replacing MS office in a law office. First, it is about ten years behind MS office in terms of complex formatting capabilities and ease of use. Second, an OOo document cannot be shared in ODF format with the vast majority of clients and other lawyers.
OTOH, if your uncle works on relatively simple documents and can get by sharing drafts in PDF form, maybe OOo will be adequate. But, what about other legal software used by typical law offices, such as billing software, case management software, etc.? I suppose if your uncle uses nothing like these but only does basic wordprocessing, emails, and internet research, maybe you could pull this off.
good luck! |
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Post subject: RE: Re: Software for a law office
Posted: Dec 28, 2007 - 12:05 AM
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Joined: Dec 01, 2006
Posts: 326
Location: Greece
Status: Offline
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| WOW cleary, nice of you to spend time posting this advice. Thanks. |
_________________
"Philosophers have interpreted the world in many ways; the point is to change it."
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Post subject: RE: Re: Software for a law office
Posted: Dec 28, 2007 - 02:52 AM
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Joined: Dec 02, 2006
Posts: 1909
Status: Offline
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| jegermeister, hope your project goes well and hope to hear in the future how your project went. A good thing is to get the support from the get-go from the people who will be using the systems. Its a good idea to make a test setup first to show the new apps. One possibility is to look for cross-platform applications that are available for Linux (and Windows) as a start and install them on the existing windows clients and servers at first to get people used to using the new apps. Then machine by machine replace them with Linux. Its possible you might not be able to replace every windows server, but with judicious use of crossplatform applications and tools, you should be able to make the windows servers you still are stuck with to interoperate with Linux. |
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Post subject: RE: Re: Software for a law office
Posted: Dec 28, 2007 - 05:19 AM
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Joined: Dec 02, 2006
Posts: 1046
Location: East Coast
Status: Offline
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| Really nice thread and very nice points of view. Thank you |
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Post subject: Re: RE: Re: Software for a law office
Posted: Dec 28, 2007 - 08:11 AM
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Team Member
Joined: Nov 24, 2006
Posts: 2010
Location: w3
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jiro wrote:
as much as I enjoy using linux, this project is not realistic IMHO. a lawyer typically drafts very sophisticated (i.e. highly formatted) documents and then often needs to share them with clients and/or with other lawyers.
Not true - actually there is just trivial word processing with simple formatting done in a typical law office. Documents shared are usually read-only drafts and should be pdf, anyway.
jiro wrote:
OOo is just not capable of replacing MS office in a law office. First, it is about ten years behind MS office in terms of complex formatting capabilities and ease of use. Second, an OOo document cannot be shared in ODF format with the vast majority of clients and other lawyers.
Not true - OpenOffice not behind in complex formatting, please do not spread the usual MS tales here. Although ODF would be preferrable, there is no need to use it as OpenOffice creates wonderful DOC files, too.
jiro wrote:
OTOH, if your uncle works on relatively simple documents and can get by sharing drafts in PDF form, maybe OOo will be adequate. But, what about other legal software used by typical law offices, such as billing software, case management software, etc.? I suppose if your uncle uses nothing like these but only does basic wordprocessing, emails, and internet research, maybe you could pull this off.
Linux based professional software already exists and is in good shape, and most specialized applications have become web based or platform independed recently, anyway. Wake up - things have changed dramaticially over the last couple of years!
And yes, as some of you know IAAL, and I do have 3 law offices at the moment as clients with IT services. We have migrated them almost completely to FOSS, and - with 2 notebook exceptions - all machines are running sidux now.
As cleary already pointed out, it is vital to plan, test, train and support such migration carefully. He also mentioned that cost savings will happen, but not in short term calculations. They should not be the main motivation for the switch. However, specially lawyers will understand the advantages of open formats and open source, and are aware of the risks that come with vendor lock in. Increased security is also an important argument for lawyers.
Greetings,
Chris |
_________________
64bit stuff for sidux
development is life - code.zikula.org
an operating system must operate - sidux.com
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Post subject: RE: Re: RE: Re: Software for a law office
Posted: Dec 28, 2007 - 01:05 PM
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Joined: Dec 02, 2006
Posts: 1909
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| Legal briefs are usually specially formatted...you could create templates for them and OOo can do that nicely |
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Post subject: Re: RE: Re: Software for a law office
Posted: Dec 28, 2007 - 01:18 PM
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Joined: Nov 27, 2006
Posts: 524
Location: Griffith NSW Australia
Status: Offline
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slam wrote:
...Although ODF would be preferrable, there is no need to use it as OpenOffice creates wonderful DOC files, too.
I strongly disagree - on the point of data sovereignty it seems particularly important that a law firm records all it's documentation in an open (ISO ratified) format, purely for archival purposes. 5 years down the track they may still be able to read vX.X proprietary doc/xls formats, in 10 years they'll be lucky if they can, and in 20 years they have no chance. Law firms keep wills and other documentation likely to require retrieval in 50+ years time and closed MS document formats will not provide them with that capability.
Data Sovereignty should be foremost in any companies/government department/financial instituions mind when choosing software. Does the software own your data or do you? |
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Post subject:
Posted: Dec 28, 2007 - 01:40 PM
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Joined: Dec 05, 2006
Posts: 39
Location: Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are insects.
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Well... legal documnets actualy use pretty standard formats compared to anything like corporate presentations or PR shots!
Such a discussion can't be complete without mentioning the Sutti law firm in Milano.
http://www.sutti.com/
They switched to FLOSS long ago and even produced KNOMOS, a law-office specific app suite of their own
http://www.knomos.org/english/mission.php |
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Post subject:
Posted: Dec 28, 2007 - 01:55 PM
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Joined: Dec 02, 2006
Posts: 1909
Status: Offline
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| Good point, cleary. Legal documents should be in a format that can be easily retrieved whether now or 50+ years down the road and the ability to retrieve a document at any time is a must. |
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Post subject: Re: RE: Re: Software for a law office
Posted: Dec 28, 2007 - 02:01 PM
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Joined: Nov 30, 2006
Posts: 3481
Location: Budapest
Status: Offline
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slam wrote:
...Although ODF would be preferrable, there is no need to use it as OpenOffice creates wonderful DOC files, too.
cleary wrote:
I strongly disagree - on the point of data sovereignty it seems particularly important that a law firm records all it's documentation in an open (ISO ratified) format, purely for archival purposes.
I fully support cleary's statement, but unfortunatelly most of the time one has to go the way slam describes.
But overall: the development of the 90's that MS Office became THE office application 95 percent or more used/use is a pest.
Two examples:
1.
In the late 80's I was working on medieval German literary texts and had quite a lot of documents written with MS Word for DOS 4.0 and 5.0. At some stage (Word 97?) MSFT dropped the compatibility, so I could not read any of the texts anymore, none of the special characters. Only because of worldwide user complaints MSFT offered a converter about nine months after release of their then newest Office suite. This was disaster.
2.
A colleague of mine gets newsletters from the Austrian Ministry of Education. Those are written with some newer version of MS Word, and she cannot open them with her older version of MS Word, and she does not want to spend 150 Euro or more on a newer version of MS Office just for reading this stuff, so I pointed her to Open Office, and she is happy again.
Closed source, non standard formats were not, are not and will not be reliable formats for long time use. They might be handy for quick communication, but milage varies even there.
hubi |
_________________
Bonitas stultitiaque sodales sunt.
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Post subject:
Posted: Dec 28, 2007 - 02:06 PM
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Joined: Nov 30, 2006
Posts: 3481
Location: Budapest
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