Track changes

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“Track changes is the thief of joy.”

— Theodore S. Logan Roosevelt

One bit of legaltech that legal eagles never had trouble adopting was document comparison software. Over the years this kit has gone by different names: Americans call it “redline”, Brits “blackline” — we think this is a function of relative printer sophistication either side of the Atlantic — and by reference various proprietary brands: Compare, Comparite, DeltaView, Change-pro and Microsoft Word’s built in function, “Track Changes” — but all do the same job to some degree of proficiency: comparing two versions of the same bit of text and “marking them up”.

They may be awful at formatting in Microsoft Word, and they may totally misunderstand SharePoint and email filing, but lawyers lurve track changes. They pine for track changes whenever using applications, like PowerPoint, that don’t offer it.

Legal eagles wish you could track changes on emails and text messages, and will take some pains to replicate track changes by formatting in red strikethrough and blue underlining.

There is a pathology here: the doctrine of precedent. Legal eagles know two things:

1. If someone else has done something before, and it didn’t blow up, then it is safe to do again. (This falls foul of the inductive fallacy, but so does everyone else, so let us not chide them about it)
2. Even if what was done before does blow up, then it wasn’t my fault.
3. If I copy something that has been done before by someone else, then:
   1. It probably won’t blow up.
   2. It definitely won’t be my fault if it does.

In this way is the Buttocractic oath satisfied.

Track changes in Finance Fiction

Track changes of course features in finance fiction. Here is an extract from Hunter Barkley’s forthcoming Opco Boone novella, Deltaview Force: An Opco Boone Adventure:

Boone fixed A.J. with a hard stare. “All right, kid, in you go. Let’s throw a redline around the immediate area.”

A.J. followed up with a static-mount diff-sensor. He rookie unclipped the stabilisers and set the unit on the floor. He punched in the coordinates and it emitted a sheet of red light.

Okay, everyone hold still now.

The diff-sensor swept for semantic content. A.J. watched the display. The hourglass flipped. It flipped again. After a few moments it rendered: zeroes across the board.

“We’re clean, sir. No material alterations. The text-field is Delta-1 as we left it.”

Boone looked concerned. “Odd. To what significance?”

“To one decimal place, Commander.”

“Okay. Run it to three, soldier.”

The kid re-ran the analytics. The diff binoc whistled and beeped.

A.J. shrugged. “Point nine-nine-seven. As good as clean, sir. You could eat your dinner off that.”

As good as clean, but not clean. Interesting. “Recalibrate it, lad. Let’s go find those missing diffs.”

See also

• Opco Boone
• Blob
• Microsoft Word
• Microsoft Office