Software development in the legal sector

techguy

Hello,

I am an experienced software engineer looking to do a masters in something that is not Computer Science.

Up to now my main focus was on a business oriented course that would teach basics of finance, accounting and management etc.

But what about law. I would like the idea of doing something in the legal space and I can see plenty of products that could be (have been?) developed.

Does anybody work as a dev in the legal space.

As opposed to just applying for a job in a law firm, I would like to do some kind of masters that teaches me some law etc so that I can add more value to a law firm and be "smarter" when it comes to developing products.

Any thoughts? Thanks.

14ned

techguy wrote: »

Hello,

I am an experienced software engineer looking to do a masters in something that is not Computer Science.

Up to now my main focus was on a business oriented course that would teach basics of finance, accounting and management etc.

But what about law. I would like the idea of doing something in the legal space and I can see plenty of products that could be (have been?) developed.

Does anybody work as a dev in the legal space.

As opposed to just applying for a job in a law firm, I would like to do some kind of masters that teaches me some law etc so that I can add more value to a law firm and be "smarter" when it comes to developing products.

Any thoughts? Thanks.

In my experience, law firms aren't interested in improving automation as the easiest route currently is to outsource grunt work to India. So long as there is a pool of cheap office workers in India, there is little incentive to improve automation in the West. That might change eventually, but it's a long time away.

I'd suggest you take a Masters in Management. Much of Google's repeated attempts to hire me since 2009 come from me having two undergrad degrees, one in Management and one in Software Engineering. There is a huge paucity of professional managers in software, and it's a very easy way to get a big jump in income in a short time. The work is generally easy too so long as you don't let the politicking seep into your home life (e.g. unable to sleep due to pondering how best to deal with the banana skins thrown at your team/division).

And besides, I personally found the Management theory really interesting and useful. I always got poor grades in it as I can't write a decent essay, but I scraped my 2.1 and it really did explain an awful lot of the weirdness you see in management layers above your dev team. If you attend a good management school (most are not) which enforces you following around real executives for a few weeks with a clipboard, you really will come away the better for it, it explains so much of what goes on in the A-suite and how utterly detached - and in fact totally ignorant - they are from anything on the ground.

Niall

Berserker

Agree with the previous poster all the way. Most of the work in the legal sector is done off-shore, with the exception of an odd bit of consultancy firm work. One friend of mine worked in the sector for a short period of time and he said that it was very limited in technical terms.

If you can couple your technical experience with a qualification in the area of management then you really have a powerful combination. Don't get me started on the standards in management in the technical realm in this country. As an experienced SE, you've probably suffered at the hands of some of the charlatans in that line of work.

14ned

14ned wrote: »

In my experience, law firms aren't interested in improving automation as the easiest route currently is to outsource grunt work to India. So long as there is a pool of cheap office workers in India, there is little incentive to improve automation in the West. That might change eventually, but it's a long time away.

I'd suggest you take a Masters in Management. Much of Google's repeated attempts to hire me since 2009 come from me having two undergrad degrees, one in Management and one in Software Engineering. There is a huge paucity of professional managers in software, and it's a very easy way to get a big jump in income in a short time. The work is generally easy too so long as you don't let the politicking seep into your home life (e.g. unable to sleep due to pondering how best to deal with the banana skins thrown at your team/division).

And besides, I personally found the Management theory really interesting and useful. I always got poor grades in it as I can't write a decent essay, but I scraped my 2.1 and it really did explain an awful lot of the weirdness you see in management layers above your dev team. If you attend a good management school (most are not) which enforces you following around real executives for a few weeks with a clipboard, you really will come away the better for it, it explains so much of what goes on in the A-suite and how utterly detached - and in fact totally ignorant - they are from anything on the ground.

Niall

I'll just add two points to my original post:

1. The legal sector in all Western countries is highly regulated with rules governing how a law firm is to be formed, operated, and accounted for. That makes it both hard to innovate plus there is even less incentive to innovate as you'll be fighting the regulation, plus all the other law firms who really would prefer as little innovation as possible - hence the almost universal support for the tight regulation. Of the solicitors I know in Ireland, there is absolutely zero desire for regulatory change, if anything they want more change-inhibiting regulation, not less!

2. If you'd like a taster on whether a Management qualification is for you or not, try reading a fourth year Management textbook like http://www.amazon.co.uk/Rethinking-Organisational-Behaviour-Post-Structuralist-Framework/dp/0273683594/ref=la_B001JRX1N6_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1451737932&sr=1-1 perhaps bought second hand to make it cheap.

Now I must stress that this is a fourth year text book. It is as advanced within Management as a text book on Functional Programming might be in a Compsci course, so don't expect to fully understand all of it - after all you'd be missing the preceding three years of university study.

Still, I liked that book unlike a lot of the earlier drivel you must rote learn off (in second year we had to memorise about 1,500 pages of textbook for regurgitation, very similar to medicine), and it's a good summary of the essentials of modern Management theory. Management courses at most institutions teach standard Management theory which spans 1800-1950 or so and is very much based around extracting maximum productivity from an industrial factory via worker incentivisation (pay, conditions, free stuff), production line conditions (speed of line, lighting) and micro-management (time and motion quantisation) - only the very top courses in the world then counterteach the standard Management curriculum in the final year (i.e. everything you just learned for three years is wrong, and here is why) which covers the period 1950-present and that book I linked to on Amazon is the typical textbook for the compulsory portion of the counterteaching.

(Do note I did my Management degree about ten years ago now, so it's entirely possible that all Management courses now counterteach Management theory in the way only Oxford and St. Andrews used to. In particular the modern theory fits knowledge workers much better than factory worker theory, though note most tech multinationals like Google and Apple employ the factory worker theory of management almost exclusively and it seems to work).

Niall

techguy

Thanks guys, some really informative material there.

I think i'll reconsider a development role in the legal sector then..that said, your management recommendations do seem good.

I will definitely investigate further but will probably refrain from reading a fourth year book as it might offer little value due to complexity. Thanks.

stevenmu

I've done some bits of work for legal firms, and like others have said there's nothing really special happening there from a technology/software perspective.

The main areas would be around document management, time or work package management and billingbilling. But there's nothing really unique to how legal firms do these.

If you are interested in the legal side of things, then one are you might want to consider is compliance. You could consider either transitioning from a pure techy role to a compliance role, or into being a developer working on compliance related technologies and products, both of which are rapidly growing areas and are predicted to keep growing.

This wouldn't have you working in a legal firm, but in either the financial sector directly, or in companies/consultancies providing services to them.

In terms of qualifications, I'm not really sure. You could look at a masters in the MIS area, or look at industry qualifications such as CISSP, CISSM, C-RISK etc, but I don't know a lot about them, you'd need to research.

tricky D

These fellas have a large legal component in what they do which might be up your street.

http://expertrevenuesystems.com/ie/products/lms/