LaTeX for lawyers

My mom had an interesting suggestion for document creation. She works with engineers who apparently share my Word loathing and they use LaTeX. It’s really geeky but an interesting option. If I understand it correctly, its basically a syntax/schema which seems to work a bit like HTML or Markdown in the sense that you’re using a plain text editor for your documents and the formatting is derived from the syntax you use:

LaTeX is based on the idea that it is better to leave document design
to document designers, and to let authors get on with writing documents.
So, in LaTeX you would input this document as:

documentclass{article}
title{Cartesian closed categories and the price of eggs}
author{Jane Doe}
date{September 1994}
begin{document}
   maketitle
   Hello world!
end{document}

Or, in English:

• This document is an article.
• Its title is Cartesian closed categories and the price of
  eggs.
• Its author is Jane Doe.
• It was written in September 1994.
• The document consists of a title followed by
  the text Hello world!

LaTeX contains features for:

• Typesetting journal articles, technical reports, books, and slide
  presentations.
• Control over large documents containing sectioning,
  cross-references, tables and figures.
• Typesetting of complex mathematical formulas.
• Advanced typesetting of mathematics with AMS-LaTeX.
• Automatic generation of bibliographies and indexes.
• Multi-lingual typesetting.
• Inclusion of artwork, and process or spot colour.
• Using PostScript or Metafont fonts.

I’ve thought about using HTML to create documents but I don’t know if you can create multi-level numbering in HTML or even something like Markdown or LaTeX so this idea of going totally geek is pretty much a thought experiment. In addition, even if I could create all the document elements I need to include into the documents I create as a lawyer, using syntax is far too geeky to be viable in my firm.

Just the same, the idea is pretty cool.

Source: Introduction to LaTeX

Postscript: A visitor pointed out that I haven’t clearly attributed the source of my quote so I’ve added clearer attribution at the end of the article.