{"id":23095,"date":"2018-03-06T08:57:08","date_gmt":"2018-03-06T08:57:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.legalgeek.co\/?p=23095"},"modified":"2018-03-06T08:57:08","modified_gmt":"2018-03-06T08:57:08","slug":"lawyers-who-code-super-coder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.legalgeek.co\/lawyers-who-code-super-coder\/","title":{"rendered":"Lawyers Who Code: The Super Coder"},"content":{"rendered":"

Legal Geek is compiling a \u2018hack-book\u2019 of lawyers and legaltechies who code. If you code, or are learning to code, we would love to include you in our \u2018hack-book\u2019. Drop us a line via press@legalgeek.co [yes it is .co].<\/em><\/p>\n

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OK, a disclaimer. James Moore<\/strong> is not a lawyer who codes. He is a coder who works in legal tech. He has some superb insights on the benefits of coding for lawyers, and he can also code in an incredible 10 languages.<\/p>\n

How has your career in coding developed?<\/h2>\n

“I\u2019ve been writing code since I was 12 years old and unsurprisingly I went on to study computer science at university. I then worked for a computer software company in Cambridge called Redgate Software and over five years I rose to become their CTO.<\/p>\n

“Then I went on to co-found, on-demand paralegal service, F-LEX<\/a>.”<\/p>\n

What benefits can lawyers gain from learning to code?<\/h2>\n

“Whilst I\u2019m not a lawyer, I do spend a lot of time with lawyers and I think there are real benefits in learning to code for them.<\/p>\n

“The first benefit is confidence. Computers can be intimidating, everything changes quickly and new things are coming along the whole time. But if you scratch under the surface a lot of \u2018new\u2019 technology is easier to understand than you might think. Blockchain, for example, is actually quite simple. There is a lot of very similarity between Blockchain and how we store passwords.<\/p>\n

“Another thing is that there are not a lot of lawyers who do code so you are going to really stand out from the majority of lawyers if you can.<\/p>\n

“Finally, it can help you spot ways to become more efficient. You might be working on a case and if you understand software you can spot that such and such a task could be done very effectively by a computer.”<\/p>\n

How difficult is learning to code?<\/h2>\n

“In the long run, it probably takes the same length of time as learning a foreign language. But in the short term you get a lot more use from it than you would from a foreign language.<\/p>\n

“You will definitely need to be prepared to learn new ways of thinking.”<\/p>\n

What advice would you give someone learning to code?<\/h2>\n

“If I was instructing someone to code I would probably give them a BBC micro:bit because you get very immediate feedback using this device which is important to keep motivation up.<\/p>\n

“In terms of what languages to learn, I would say Javascript or Python are the best to start with, as Javascript is what all web pages are built with and Python has easily accessible AI toolkits.<\/p>\n

“Once you are up and running, you will need to find a project you are passionate about that you can work on. There are a lot of open source projects on the internet where coders are building a bit of software for free. Find something that excites you and find a community involved in that area and you will learn a lot very quickly.”<\/p>\n

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