Love.Law.Robots. by Ang Hou Fu

blog

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If you’re interested in technology, you will confront this question at some point: should I learn to code?

For many people, including lawyers, coding is something you can ignore without serious consequences. I don’t understand how my microwave oven works, but that will not stop me from using it. Attending that briefing and asking the product guys good questions is probably enough for most lawyers to do your work.

The truth, though, is that life is so much more. In the foreword of the book “Law and Technology in Singapore”, Chief Justice Sundaresh Menon remarked that technology today “permeates, interfaces with, and underpins all aspects of the legal system, and indeed, of society”.

I felt that myself during the pandemic when I had to rely on my familiarity with technology to get work done. Coincidentally, I also implemented my docassemble project at work, using technology to generate contracts 24/7. I needed all my coding skills to whip up the program and provide the cloud infrastructure to run it without supervision. It’s fast, easy to use and avoids many problems associated with do-it-yourself templates. I got my promotion and respect at work.

If you’re convinced that you need to code, the rest of this post contains tips on juggling coding and lawyering. They are based on my personal experiences, so I am also interested in how you’ve done it and any questions you might have.

Tip 1: Have realistic ambitions

Photo by Lucas Clara / Unsplash

Lawyering takes time and experience to master. Passing the bar is the first baby step to a lifetime of learning. PQE is the currency of a lawyer in the job market.

Well, guess what? Coding is very similar too!

There are many options and possibilities — programming languages, tools and methods. Unlike a law school degree, there are free options you can check out, which would give you a good foundation. (Learnpython for Python and W3Schools for the web come to mind.) I got my first break with Udemy, and if you are a Singaporean, you can make use of SkillsFuture Credits to make your online learning free.

Just as becoming a good lawyer is no mean feat, becoming a good coder needs a substantial investment of time and learning. When you are already a lawyer, you may not have enough time in your life to be as good a coder.

I believe the answer is a strong no. Lawyers need to know what is possible, not how to do it. Lawyers will never be as good as real, full-time coders. Why give them another thing to thing the are “special” at. Lawyers need to learn to collaborate with those do code. https://t.co/3EsPbnikzK

— Patrick Lamb (@ElevateLamb) September 9, 2022

So, this is my suggestion: don’t aim to conquer programming languages or produce full-blown applications to rival a LegalTech company you’ve always admired on your own. Focus instead on developing proof of concepts or pushing the tools you are already familiar with as far as you can go. In addition, look at no code or low code alternatives to get easy wins.

By limiting the scope of your ambitions, you’d be able to focus on learning the things you need to produce quick and impactful results. The reinforcement from such quick wins would improve your confidence in your coding skills and abilities.

There might be a day when your project has the makings of a killer app. When that time comes, I am sure that you will decide that going solo is not only impossible but also a bad idea as well. Apps are pretty complex today, so I honestly think it’s unrealistic to rely on yourself to make them.

Tip 2: Follow what interests you

Muddy HandsPhoto by Sandie Clarke / Unsplash

It’s related to tip 1 — you’d probably be able to learn faster and more effectively if you are doing things related to what you are already doing. For lawyers, this means doing your job, but with code. A great example of this is docassemble, which is an open-source system for guided interviews and document assembly.

When you do docassemble, you would try to mimic what you do in practice. For example, crafting questions to get the information you need from a client to file a document or create a contract. However, instead of interviewing a person directly, you will be doing this code.

In the course of my travails looking for projects which interest me, I found the following interesting:

  • Rules as Code: I found Blawx to be the most user-friendly way to get your hands dirty on the idea that legislation, codes and regulations can be code.
  • Docassemble: I mentioned this earlier in this tip
  • Natural Language Processing: Using Artificial Intelligence to process text will lead you to many of the most exciting fields these days: summarisation, search and question and answer. Many of these solutions are fascinating when used for legal text.

I wouldn’t suggest that law is the only subject that lawyers find interesting. I have also spent time trying to create an e-commerce website for my wife and getting a computer to play Monopoly Junior 5 million times a day.

Such “fun” projects might not have much relevance to your professional life, but I learned new things which could help me in the future. E-commerce websites are the life of the internet today, and I experiment with the latest cloud technologies. Running 5 million games in a day made me think harder about code performance and how to achieve more with a single computer.

Tip 3: Develop in the open

Waiting for the big show...Photo by Barry Weatherall / Unsplash

Not many people think about this, so please hang around.

When I was a kid, I had already dreamed of playing around with code and computers. In secondary school, a bunch of guys would race to make the best apps in the class (for some strange reason, they tend to revolve around computer games). I learned a lot about coding then.

As I grew up and my focus changed towards learning and building a career in law, my coding skills deteriorated rapidly. One of the obvious reasons is that I was doing something else, and working late nights in a law firm or law school is not conducive to developing hobbies.

I also found community essential for maintaining your coding skills and interest. The most straightforward reason is that a community will help you when encountering difficulties in your nascent journey as a coder. On the other hand, listening and helping other people with their coding problems also improves your knowledge and skills.

The best thing about the internet is that you can find someone with similar interests as you — lawyers who code. On days when I feel exhausted with my day job, it’s good to know that someone out there is interested in the same things I am interested in, even if they live in a different world. So it would be best if you found your tribe; the only way to do that is to develop in the open.

  • Get your own GitHub account, write some code and publish it. Here's mine!
  • Interact on social media with people with the same interests as you. You’re more likely to learn what’s hot and exciting from them. I found Twitter to be the most lively place. Here's mine!
  • Join mailing lists, newsletters and meetups.

I find that it’s vital to be open since lawyers who code are rare, and you have to make a special effort to find them. They are like unicorns🦄!

Conclusion

So, do lawyers need to code? To me, you need a lot of drive to learn to code and build a career in law in the meantime. For those set on setting themselves apart this way, I hope the tips above can point the way. What other projects or opportunities do you see that can help lawyers who would like to code?

#Lawyers #Programming #LegalTech #blog #docassemble #Ideas #Law #OpenSource #RulesAsCode

Author Portrait Love.Law.Robots. – A blog by Ang Hou Fu

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Update 11 May 2020 : A few days after I wrote this post, Pi-Hole released version 5.0. Some of the new features impact the content here. Since it’s only been days, I have updated the content accordingly.

It was a long weekend, so it was time to play. Ubuntu 20.04 LTS just came out. This is important because of the “LTS” at the back of its name. I took the opportunity to upgrade “Ursula”, my home server. I have not been installing OSes like changing my clothes since High School, but I had big plans for this one.

Ad Blocking on a Network Level

Securing your internet is tough. I have “fond” memories of earlier days of the internet when browsing the internet exposed you to porn. How about flash movies that install software on your computer? It now seems quaint that people are surprised that they can be tricked over the internet with phishing and social engineering.

I value my privacy and I would like to control what goes on about me and my computers. I don’t like ads or tracking technologies. More people seem to be on my side on this one: with every browser claiming that they will block ads or trackers.

Browsers are important because they are the main window for ads or trackers. However, other activities also generate such risks, such as handphones, smart gadgets, and other internet-connected devices.

If you are accessing the internet outside of your browser, your browser won’t protect you. The more comprehensive solution is to protect on a network level.

To protect yourself on a network level, you will adjust your internet router settings and how your internet traffic is processed so that all requests are caught. A blacklist of trackers and suspicious websites is usually maintained. If a query meets the blacklist, they are not processed.

As you might expect, fidgeting with your internet router settings, finding out what your ISP’s upstream servers are, or even niggling around config files is very daunting for most users.

Enter the Pi-Hole

I first learned about Pi-Hole through the DigitalOcean Marketplace. It was great that it was designed for containers from the start, because I wanted “Ursula” to serve services using containers instead of the complexity of figuring out Ubuntu Linux’s oddities.

Home1. Install a supported operating systemYou can run Pi-hole in a container, or deploy it directly to a supported operating system via our automated installer.DPi-hole logotelekrmorPi-hole Web Page

Previously I implemented my internet blacklist using response policy zones in a bind9 server. I am not entirely sure how I did it… which would be a disaster if my server gets wiped out.

The best thing about dockers is that you would write the configuration in one file (like a docker-compose.yml for me) and it’s there. Once you have reviewed the configuration, you would just call docker-compose up and the program starts up for you.

Once you have the server running, you can ogle at its work with pi-hole’s gorgeous dashboard:

So many queries, so many blocked. ( Update 11/5/20 : Screenshot updated to show the new version 5.0 interface. So many bars now!)

I could make a few conclusions from the work of my Pi-Hole server so far:

  • Several queries were blocked from my handphone. This shows that phones are a hotbed for ad trackers. Since most of us use our phones for web browsing, advertising on the internet has not taken a hit even though more browsers feature some form of adblocking.
  • The second chart (labelled “Clients “Over time)”) roughly corresponds to the computers used during the day. During this circuit breaker period, you can see your work computers dialling “home”. At night, more home computers are sending queries.

Installation Headaches

Using Pi-Hole as a local LAN DNS server

My previous LAN DNS server was meant to serve DNS queries for my home network. My home server and Network Attached Storage device were its main customers. I also exposed some of the services (like my Plex) to the outside world. If my LAN server was not around, I will have to remember many octets (read IP addresses).

Update 11/5/2020 : In the original post, I complained about setting local LAN hostnames being hidden. Version 5.0 now allows you to set hostnames through the admin dashboard. This is one feature that I would be using! Turns out, it was quick and easy!

The dashboard used to add local DNS domains. New in version 5.0.

Installing Pi-Hole Behind a Traefik Server/Reverse Proxy

I didn’t wreck my Ubuntu 18.04 LTS server so that I could install Pi-Hole. I wanted to be able to serve several services through my Home Server without having to be limited by one set of 80 (HTTP) and 443 (HTTPS) ports. Pi-Hole uses both of those ports. I will not be able to have any more web servers.

A reverse proxy routes a request to the correct server. My forays with Nginx and the traffic server had not been successful. Traefik got me curious because it claimed it could automatically figure out configurations automatically. If I could get Traefik to work, Traefik could sort out how to have several applications on one host!

Traefik, The Cloud Native Application Proxy | Traefik LabsTraefik is the leading open-source reverse proxy and load balancer for HTTP and TCP-based applications that is easy, dynamic and full-featured.Traefik Labs: Makes Networking Boring

So getting Traefik to work was a priority, but I also really wanted to set up Pi-Hole first. Curiously, there are some resources on getting both to work together correctly. Since this was the first time I was using both Traefik and Pi-Hole, I needed to experiment badly. In the end, I went down with this configuration in my docker-compose file:

version: '3'

services: reverse-proxy: # The official v2 Traefik docker image image: traefik:v2.2 containername: traefik # Enables the web UI and tells Traefik to listen to docker command: —api.insecure=true —providers.docker ports: # The HTTP/HTTPS port – “80:80” – “443:443” # The Web UI (enabled by —api.insecure=true) – “8080:8080” volumes: # So that Traefik can listen to the Docker events – /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock – /home/houfu/traefik/:/etc/traefik/ environment: DOAUTH_TOKEN: [... Token provided by Digital Ocean for SSL certificate generation] restart: unless-stopped

### pi-hole

pihole: containername: pihole domainname: xxx.home hostname: pihole image: pihole/pihole:latest dns: – 127.0.0.1 – 1.1.1.1 ports: – '0.0.0.0:53:53/tcp' – '0.0.0.0:53:53/udp' #– '0.0.0.0:67:67/udp' – '0.0.0.0:8052:80/tcp' – “0.0.0.0:8443:443/tcp” volumes: – ./etc-pihole/:/etc/pihole/ – ./etc-dnsmasqd/:/etc/dnsmasq.d/ # run touch ./pihole.log first unless you like errors # – ./pihole.log:/var/log/pihole.log environment: ServerIP: 192.168.2.xxx PROXYLOCATION: pihole VIRTUALHOST: pihole.xxx VIRTUALPORT: 80 TZ: 'Asia/Singapore' WEBPASSWORD: PASSWORD DNS1: [VQ Server 1] DNS2: [VQ Server 2] restart: unless-stopped labels: # required when using —docker.exposedbydefault=false – “traefik.enable=true” # https://www.techjunktrunk.com/docker/2017/11/03/traefik-default-server-catch-all/ – “traefik.frontend.rule=HostRegexp:pihole.xxx,{catchall:.*}” – “traefik.frontend.priority=1” – “traefik.backend=pihole” – “traefik.port=80” – “traefik.port=443”

(Some private information, like the names of my private servers and the IP of my ISP’s DNS servers, have been anonymised.)

Conclusion

I could not have done this without the copious time at home created by the circuit breaker. For now, though, I hope I can run this and many experiments on this server and report it on this blog. Is there something I should try next? Let me know in the comments!

#blog #tech #docker #DigitalOcean #Updated #OpenSource

Author Portrait Love.Law.Robots. – A blog by Ang Hou Fu