The practice of law is a knowledge, information, and document-intensive profession. In many respects, lawyers ply their trade in the same way independent programmers do: we sell our expertise, experience and technical skill in using what is, essentially, the aboriginal “open” source code — the code of laws and courtroom procedure.

In 2004, after practicing law for 23 years in a mid-sized downtown Seattle law firm, I opened my own boutique law practice and I decided to make GNU/Linux the centerpiece of a completely free/open software law firm environment.

Almost everything about the practice of law is open and public. You do not “lease” the law from any corporation and you do not acquire a license to use any federal or state statute, municipal code or administrative regulation. What the client pays for is the lawyer’s knowledge about how to use a highly complicated set of frequently asynchronous laws and procedures, much like what a client pays for when hiring a programmer.

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