OPML: Outlining the Law
You may recall that I've been interested in the new OPML Editor and what it can do for lawyers—I wrote first about it here, then again here. Here's a small example of what I mean when I say that OPML could be a great thing for lawyers:
The other day on my experimental OPML blog I posted the U.S. Constitution in OPML. If you click that link it will show you the plain-text code of the outline, but CasdraBlog has a nice screenshot of what it actually looks like in the OPML Editor. I put the text of the Constitution into OPML format months ago via NoteTaker, the outliner I use daily for a zillion things, including taking notes in law school. I got the original text file from the ACS, then just added outline breaks in the appropriate places to make it an outline in NoteTaker.
Now compare the above OPML file to this version, created by NoteTaker for web use. See how the online version mimics the functionality of the OPML version? Click a plus sign to expand a section, a minus sign to collapse it. With a few clicks, you can view the entire document collapsed into a few lines, then you can expand whatever section you're interested in down to the smallest level of detail. I find this a great way to cope with a large amount of information. The collapsed view allows you to see the big picture, and then it makes it easy to get to just those things you care about in a large document.
This provides a good, albeit small, example of how well the law and outlines work together. Almost all legal writing—from memos, to briefs, to motions, to appeals, to judicial opinions, to statutes—is in outline form already, but until now we haven't really had any other option but to represent those outlines in a flat, always fully-expanded linear, way. OPML gives us a way to make those documents much more functional and efficient to use. Imagine just a single set of statutes translated into OPML: The next time you have to refer to Chapter 8, section 3(A)(ii)(c) would be a lot easier if you could collapse everything around it to focus only on that section, don't you think? Then, at a glance, you could easily see the code sections before and after the one you're looking at and scan around much easier than you currently can w/most digital versions of statutes. This would give the online versions of code the same functionality as the book versions except that OPML outlines have the added advantage of actually being indented like outlines are supposed to be. Novel idea, huh? Now, imagine a Lexis or Westlaw-type research service that was just a bunch of interlinked outlines. Think of looking at a long journal article, or an AmJur entry, or even a long opinion, and being able to collapse the whole thing with a few clicks down to just its section headings. That way you could see at a glance if it's likely that the document contains the information you're seeking. If a section looks promising, expand it to its subheads and see if any of those look good, and so on until you've found what you're looking for.
Wouldn't this be great? Or am I just outline-crazy?
OPML Editor for Mac!
I started playing with Dave Winer's new OPML Editor on Friday, but really I was just checking it out because at the time it was Windows-only. No longer! The Mac version is here!
I wrote about the OPML Editor about a month ago—just sort of thinking out loud about how it might be helpful to lawyers. I don't have anything to add to those ideas yet, but after playing with it just a little I can say it's definitely fun to use and it shows lots of potential. The fact that it's open source means any programmer who sees that potential can try to turn it into reality, and I'd put money on there being lots of great applications of shared outlines and outlines-as-blogs by, oh, I don't know, this time next year.
Why does this matter? How about this: Law students could create “instant outlines” of their class notes. Everyone in the same class could subscribe to that same outline. Whenever anyone updated the outline, everyone who was subscribed would instantly see the changes and have them in his/her own notes. Talk about the ultimate outline. Sure, it could get out of hand, but like I said, the potential is incredible.
Oh, it's also a blogging tool. That's cool, too, especially the fact that it doesn't use a web interface to control the blog and the way it's so easy to create new posts -- just hit return! However, the coolness will be limited until you have more control over where you host your stuff. It's also based on the same back end that Radio Userland was built on, so it works the same way—a mini-server on your desktop. That's obviously got its own pros and cons, but I think the pros are bigger.
p.s.: I am thrilled there's now a Mac version of this tool. The dock icon for the Mac version of the outliner totally blows, though.
Lawyers, Knowledge Management, and OPML
If you've ever worked in a law office, you might be familiar with a common problem: Lawyers often do similar things over and over again, but they don't always have a very good way to keep track of what they've done before so they can efficiently reuse that work the next time they need it. For example, if you're a criminal lawyer, you're going to write a lot of motions to suppress evidence. How do you keep track of the work you've done on those motions to suppress so that you don't have to do it all over again the next time you have a related issue?
Another problem in law offices is collaboration. If you're working a case with other attorneys, paralegals, interns, etc., how do you keep everyone updated on what you've done, and how do you follow what others have done?
I believe this is what some people call “knowledge management”—how do you “manage” the knowledge in your firm? And I understand that there are lots of commercial packages available that attempt to help lawyers with these tasks. Many are built around an hourly billing model and are very complicated. For example, the GW clinics use Amicus “practice management software.” I found it to be slow, inflexible (you work the program's way or no way at all), hard for users to use and understand, and really too complex for what we wanted to do.
So what if you want something simpler—something without all the billing and client tracking features, something that just helps you keep track of your research and your collaboration with others? Enter OPML and Instant Outlining.
If you don't read Scripting News I'm not sure why you would know or care about this, but Dave Winer has been building a new OPML editor, a sort of outliner on steroids that allows you to create what he's calling “instant outlines,” or outlines that people can subscribe to—almost in the same way that you can subscribe to RSS feeds.* I can't describe it much better than that because I haven't seen or used it, but from what I've read, it sounds like it could be a really awesome way for people in a law office to communicate about the cases they're working on.
To see what I'm talking about, read this thread describing how the outliner can work into a collaborative workflow. And here's another description of the outliner at work and some thoughts about how it compares to email, instant messaging, and other means of communication. With those descriptions in mind, imagine that you're an attorney in the lead on a murder trial. You've got two attorneys helping you out, and all three of you have interns doing research and investigation for you. Plus you have an investigator and a paralegal helping out with the case. How do you keep all of them informed about what's going on? Why not use an outliner to keep your notes and let them all subscribe? They can keep their own outlines so you can follow what they're all doing. This would mean you wouldn't have to repeat new news six times, and you could probably have fewer long meetings where everyone reports on what they're doing. I've only worked on a couple of cases like this, but in those cases, I really think instant outlining could have been a big help. Another big advantage is that it keeps time-stamped records of the case as it develops so it would be easy to go back through and see what you learned when and all of that should make it less likely that you'll lose or overlook any little aspect of the case.
In addition to its collaboration possibilities via instant outlining, this new outliner promises to be a great way to track legal research within a firm or legal office. Take those motions to suppress, for example. Every lawyer in your office could have a “motions to suppress” outline; when you needed to write such a motion, you could check in on those outlines and gather all the relevant research that people in your office have already done. In addition or in the alternative, the office could maintain one “motions to suppress” outline to which everyone could add. It could live on the office server so that everyone could access and update it. The top level nodes of these outlines could state a sub-issue related to suppressing evidence, and the subnodes could collect the relevant cites and points of law to deal with that issue. Then, the next time you have to do a motion to suppress, you scan through the outline for related issues and jump right to the research. If you find anything new about that issue, you add it to the outline.
Finally, this mythical outliner (which is still just in beta testing, apparently) can also be a blogging tool. I've long been jealous of the way Scripting News can combine little one-line posts w/longer, multi-paragraph posts -- each with its own permalink. Now the tool used to create that sort of blog is going to be available for everyone (or at least to all Windows users; maybe Mac users soon). This won't necessarily be great for lawyers or knowledge management or whatever, but it's certainly interesting.
* OPML is the format most feed aggregators use to keep track of your RSS subscriptions, and it's also the format used by outliners like Omni Outliner or Aquaminds NoteTaker. Its great virtue as far as I can tell is the ability to expand and collapse different levels of your outline, and to move those levels around easily so you can organize and navigate through a lot of information quickly and easily. I've found it to be a great format for taking notes in law school.
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