I'm actually close to launching this kind of product. A bit more complex than Word + Git, but I hope it will be worth it.

One question: is there a use case for live group-editing? Same way live code editors work. I have to admit that I'm not super familiar of the workflows in that industry, so I am mostly just designing features the way I would like them to work.

Do you mind sending me a message when you launch? Currently work with a bunch of engineers and technical editors and this is something we are looking to address.

I ran into this exact problem when selling my company. It's horrible.

How far along is the product? Have you talked to any lawyers about it?

I'm expecting to get the MVP done before the end of this year.

The MVP is mostly targeted at businesses who have to sign/generate contracts at scale. There's a lot of features for those use cases, and then there's features for users that the parent is talking about (pure contract-drafting).

I have not talked to any lawyers yet. I think the worst part is that I don't even know how good the computer-skills of lawyers are, so... designing features by my competence feels wrong. Since I can design the UI to match the general structure of a contract, there's a lot that I can add to make the user's life easier, but it also adds more for the user to learn.

I think it is awesome that you are working on a project.

Most folks don't get started, so congrats on that, but can I say please do talk to some lawyers asap.

I know it is super painful but, believe me, it can save you months if not years of going down the wrong direction.

Here is a blog post we put together to show how to get in touch with people to interview:

https://blog.nugget.one/2016/09/21/case-study-how-i-got-25-c...

Apologies for the unsolicited advice :)

Enjoyed reading your article. Thanks for sharing.

Be very careful trying to solve this "problem". While MS Word change tracking may seem abhorrent to you, most lawyers are well trained in its use and are very comfortable using it. Also, switching costs are huge. A lawyer would not only need to see the benefit of an alternative but also convince all other lawyers they work with to put aside the solution they are already comfortable using and try something new.

I should note - yes, my wife sees no problem at all with this workflow.

My understanding of the workflow is that they will send a clean copy as well as the redline to each other. Sometimes someone will in response further modify the wrong copy, and send back, which causes problems as it becomes unclear what was accepted and what was not and someone has to manually go through and check things. I hear that complaint come up - so I know there is at least one pain point involved.

... and what is the consequence of this 'problem' to the billable hours?

At least some portion of attorneys, like my wife, work as in house counsel and therefore do actually have efficiency as a nominal goal.

The in house counsels are probably the weak underbelly of the law industry. Any startup thinking of disrupting this area should probably target the in house lawyers first.

As a technical founder it's still really strange working with top lawyers that send drafts around as word documents.

There are quite a few start-ups that have tried to solve for this. But the legal industry...

You might take a look at MatterSphere.

http://thomsonreuters.com/en/products-services/legal/large-l...

I think this product attempts to do that: http://www.pleasetech.com/pleasereview.aspx

that said it doesn't look all shiny and new.

A patch centered VCS like Darcs might be a better fit for legal documents.

Why they don't use Google Docs to track changes and collaborate?

Office 365?

github with contracts as text files?

Ginormous educational effort for users might be not paid off.