[wnewman]

"You can easily diff text. Text works with version control systems."

Yes, yes, a thousand times yes.

It is very strange to me how hard it seems to be to convey this to almost anyone who has not experienced it in serious computer programming. E.g., a few times I talked about it with lawyers who work on complex documents, and got nowhere. And occasionally I have even run into subcultures of programmers who didn't get it (and/or, relatedly, the power of build-automation tools like "make").

[stephancoral]

Does there exist a diff tool or 'contract version control' for lawyers? Seems like it would be a lucrative market

[wmil]

There's no simple standard one, but there are a lot of solutions. The most basic is that MS Word can open two files and show you the differences.

Then there are various "document management systems". Sharepoint has a lot of features for revision tracking. There are multiple Salesforce based solutions.

So there are plenty of products in that market. I don't know if any of them are good. Sharepoint usually works well if you're already using Active Directory.