Inspired by the post 15 rules for communicating at GitHub from a few years back, I spoke with Sam Glover from the Lawyerist podcast on how lawyers can adopt the workflows, tools, and philosophies of open source to make their legal practice more remote-friendly.
You can listen on iTunes or visit the podcast episode directly on Legal Talk Network.
To learn more about how GitHub uses GitHub for non-code things like legal and HR, this Fast Company article is a great read.
More to explore
When I joined GitHub in 2013, I found a company that had rethought how work happens. Thirteen years later, those lessons are more relevant than ever.
Async communication is like gzip compression for humans—more upfront processing, but greater throughput with fewer packets.
Unless absolutely required, avoid custom, modified, or non-standard open source licenses, which will serve as a barrier to downstream use of your code.
CLAs create a hostile developer experience, require significant overhead, and are usually unnecessary given modern open source norms.
Async is what makes remote work actually work. It produces better outcomes, improves work-life balance, and unlocks flow beyond Cold War-era workflows.
How GitHub uses issues and chat for async communication — fifteen rules that eliminate the 'you had to be there' problem in corporate workflows.
You don't have to share your code to benefit from open source. Adopting open source workflows behind the firewall produces more modern software regardless.
What government lawyers need to know about open source licensing — from MIT to GPL, consuming, publishing, and accepting contributions.
If issues, pull requests, and project boards are the best way to develop software, should they not also be the best way to manage software development?