> I agree the legal system needs a good refactor from time to time. It’s like software, over time accrues debt.
It's like software, in that incremental changes are safer and ground-up rewrites are usually disastrous failures engineered by people who failed to fully understand the complexity of the application domain.
OTOH, I'm not sure a “refactor” is a meaningful concept for the legal system. Oh, sure, you can hold requirements and expected outcomes the same and change the details, structure, and organization of legal code. “Refactors” of that kind happen all the time. They aren't as significant in impact as with software, because the code isn't imperative and doesn't run on dumb machines, so refactors are mostly about readability, and don't (e.g.) improve runtime resource usage significantly.
It's like software, in that incremental changes are safer and ground-up rewrites are usually disastrous failures engineered by people who failed to fully understand the complexity of the application domain.
OTOH, I'm not sure a “refactor” is a meaningful concept for the legal system. Oh, sure, you can hold requirements and expected outcomes the same and change the details, structure, and organization of legal code. “Refactors” of that kind happen all the time. They aren't as significant in impact as with software, because the code isn't imperative and doesn't run on dumb machines, so refactors are mostly about readability, and don't (e.g.) improve runtime resource usage significantly.