Re jQuery: this is an emphasis in our copy for this post to Hacker News only. We've found that it helps technical people (many of our customers are technical) understand what we're doing.

Re guarantees, these docs are provided on an informational basis (read: not legal advice). We connect people with lawyers who understand the system and we have some good tech that speeds up their work re the legal sign off they provide. More to come on this.

Most of the jurisdictional quirks are contained in legalese, so when you abstract it away, you end up with documents that look the same regardless of jurisdiction (the legalese modules change, obviously).

We often compare this approach to jQuery because it lets us:

- get rid of boilerplate "code" for common mechanics to aid in clarity and brevity (thanks, jQuery); and

- use consistent language between jurisdictions (like jQuery's elimination of cross-browser incompatibilities).

There's more explanation of this technique in the second video on this page:

http://training.codepact.com/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17135321

Points: 21

# Comments: 11

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16863797

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

At the moment, expecting someone off the street to properly understand a legal document is broadly equivalent to expecting them to understand what's going on with a command line (assuming they use computers only casually).

Law needs the equivalent of a GUI.

It's possible. Some other lawyers and I are working on an open source system of "defined phrases" that can be used like software functions. Lawyers already define words, there's no reason you can't do the same with phrases.

Each plain english phrase represents a module of legalese that can be manipulated with "arguments" specified in conjunction with the phrase. Like a GUI, a comprehensible representation is there for the user, and the technical legalese still does all the work underneath.

You can take a look at it here http://lawpatch.org. Previous HN discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10597778

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2

The text above represents a response below. I apologise if this seems rude - I'm taking this approach to make sure I get back to everyone quickly (http://patbrown.org/pointmail.html).

1 - I’ll get back to you within 1 day.

2 - I’ll get back to you within 2 days.

[Higher numbers mean the same as above…]

t - thanks, I’ll look into it but I’m not sure how long it'll take.

n - No / No thank you - I appreciate your message though.

y - Yes / Yes please, that would be great.

s - Sorry, I’ve read your email, but it’s highly unlikely that I’ll be able to fit this in.

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The drawback of this approach is that it comes across as douchey to a high percentage of people. Is the approach irredeemably weird / off-putting? Any ideas on how to dial down the douche factor while maintaining the benefits?

If it’s viable:

- Would two character responses for finer grained meaning work better? For instance, “c1” could mean “It’ll be complete in 1 day” and “w1” would mean “Will get back to you on the below within one day”; and

- What other codes / messages do you think would be important to include?

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11150189

Points: 2

# Comments: 4

Our aim is to make legal language simple without introducing ambiguity or extra risk.

We think even the most technical legal agreements could look like term sheets using this drafting method. A spectrum of standardised positions also stops lawyers from constantly replicating work.

This is is an open source project by lawyers who are also developers - we'd love to hear from anyone who's got ideas for improvements or would like to contribute language for other areas.

We have patches drafted for the United States, UK and Australia. Happy to hear from people in other countries too! Creating this extra level of abstraction is also an opportunity to standardize documents across jurisdictions.

We're using Github permalinks to cover the linking issue for now, but we're discussing more permanent options. Would be interested to hear what other ways people think would work.

There's also the option for users to download the repos and use the commit hash in the document proper for reference.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10597778

Points: 21

# Comments: 8

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10594293

Points: 4

# Comments: 1

In the current environment, Hollywood's business model is unreasonable, and people know it. Until people think it's reasonable, a lot of them are going to pirate. Technology has changed. Hollywood needs to change.

What should be illegal, is threatening to sue someone for working on code with others.

__ Addition: My view on the savvy modus operandi here (I'm a lawyer when I'm not a developer). If you give someone any kind of reason to sue you, you're essentially handing them a stick. It's much worse if they can afford to hit you with it and you can't afford to defend yourself. The people threatening to sue these guys are almost certainly making silence a condition not to sue. This isolates the devs from people who could support them, and has the added effect of intimidating other devs with the unexplained "disappearances".

You say: "My view is that the Israelis viewed him as "the devil they knew", and that he was infinitely preferable (and more controllable) than Hamas."

I say: That's where you're getting it wrong. It wasn't a choice between Arafat and Hamas, it was a choice between Arafat and Abbas. Abbas was clearly preferable (for all the reasons stated above).

You say: "...it's not at all clear to me that there was any Palestinian leader with anything like real power who did want a deal. I mean.. Abbas? Seriously?"

I say: Yes, Abbas, seriously. Sharon was pursuing a strategy that was largely unilateral - in other words, a weaker leader on the other side was fine, as long as they didn't get in the way and kept the PA running. Arafat was in Sharon's way (not a good place to be historically).

You say: "The endorsement is meant for US consumption."

I say: No, I am absolutely sure that the Israelis are deadly serious about a Palestinian state (or something that can be called that). Israelis are terrified of the "demographic bomb", which is what they call the far higher fertility rate of Palestinians. The Palestinian birth rate threatens the Jewish majority even in what is currently agreed to be Israel over the next few decades. Giving away areas of current Israel with high Arab populations to the Palestinian state is often mooted as an option in a final status deal, in exchange for bits of land covered with Israeli settlements (which would be a double win for Israel).

Don't want to write more on this here. If you'd really like to continue the discussion, you can email me on slooge[at]hotmail.com.

First, I appreciate the acknowledgment that Arafat was indeed involved with Al-Aqusa (a terrorist group bombing Israeli civilians). Not sure why you think that that would make the US and Israel consider him a suitable interlocutor - I still think that stands in favour of my argument that Sharon was done with him and killed him to create the circumstances for a deal.

Arafat may have reduced funding to Al-Aqusa, but that's because they were on the ropes militarily by 2004. He certainly didn't stop funding because he thought terrorism was an unacceptable option. The simple fact was, that he was funding terrorists after the failure of Camp David, which again, makes him a very bad candidate for the next round of grand bargain negotiation.

To claim that Sharon wasn't looking for a deal is just silly (even if he was often inflammatory and arguably quite evil). The fact that Sharon was looking for a deal was widely acknowledged and published in newspapers - here's a quote from wikipedia: "In May 2003, Sharon endorsed the Road Map for Peace put forth by the United States, European Union, and Russia, which opened a dialogue with Mahmud Abbas, and announced his commitment to the creation of a Palestinian state in the future." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ariel_Sharon#Founding_of_Kadim... I'd provide more quotes, but this is pretty self evident.

You also seem to suggest that because Sharon was an aggressive guy, he wasn't looking for a deal. That just doesn't follow (especially in the Middle East, where the perception of strength is everything).

You also say "Additionally, Arafat's Fatah group was seen as the one group strong enough to keep Hamas controlled." My response: killing Arafat would / did not prevent Fateh from acting as a counterweight to Hamas. In fact, it's likely that Fateh was ultimately a far better counter-weight to Hamas with Abbas at the helm. Israel was able to work with Fateh to squash Hamas in the West Bank in a way that may well have been impossible with Arafat running the show (supplies of weapons to the Palestinian authority etc).

On an anecdotal note, it was clear on the streets (I was living there at the time), that in many cases, Palestinian policemen went from carrying shitty old AKs to gleaming new M16s within a year after Arafat was out of the picture.