Re: Technical writing in the legal field

["Ginny Hupp" <ghupp -at- directcon -dot- net>]

One place that can combine the two worlds might be the IT or legal 
department of a software company.  I'm just completing a manual about how to 
use the document management database for the legal group of a large software 
(games) company.  This company has a large and extremely busy international 
legal department because they have to license every aspect of any celebrity, 
literary character, or product that appears in any games.   So the audience 
for this manual is attorneys and paralegals who are users of the database 
system that stores and indexes all the documents they produce.

I believe that the paralegals in this company write a lot of contracts.  But 
I suspect (as others have said) that it is mostly a matter of doing 
research, and putting together sections of boilerplate language, with some 
tweaks here and there.

I've also worked in a large law firm in the (somewhat distant) past.  The 
large ones usually have an IT group that can include trainers and might have 
need for a technical writer, for either training material or system 
documentation.  I'm not sure how much law firms outsource that type of work 
these days, versus doing it in house.

I'm about to begin a position writing NIAP certification documents for a 
large software company.  (NIAP = National Information Assurance Program). 
NIAP is a government program that evaluates the security aspects of 
submitted IT products, and issues a security certification at various 
levels.  The company going for the certification has to submit its software 
to an independent testing lab, which is where the writing comes in.  There 
is a series of formal documents that must be submitted for each product, 
showing how the software and the development process meet the established 
requirements.  I believe there will also be written documentation of  test 
configuration, implementation and expected results.  I haven't done this 
kind writing before, but it looks like it will involve a combination of 
software technical documention and interpreting and applying the government 
requirements, in a prescribed format.  It looks to me like a type of 
specialized technical writing work that will be around for the long run.  If 
your friend is interested in this, the NAIP website is at 
http://niap.nist.gov/.  That's where I learned everything I know about it so 
far.  >:-)

Ginny


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Lisa Wright" <lisawright -at- mail -dot- utexas -dot- edu>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com>
Sent: Saturday, August 27, 2005 10:30 AM
Subject: Technical writing in the legal field