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July 31, 2007
A self indulgent comment on in-house lawyers who do not know their place in the world
This is of no concern to wider readership. It will however make me feel better, above all as I need more venting as I find that drinking the national per capita income in Cuban products on monthly basis is worrisome.
In house lawyers.
How did we ever get cursed with the idea of these cretins.
Or rather, why is that the particular one I have to deal with on green lighting certain of my more creative ideas such an utter cretin. "I don't understand your rational..." - "I'm confused by the economic...." - "It's not clear to me..."
Every fucking proposition has to get lawyered to death - idiotic turns of phrase, for an internal document, has to be smothered in lawyer poo. Okay, calling potential clients cretins in a document isn't right, I grant that and I hardly ever insult clients anymore. But endless lawyering of every bloody phrase on every fucking proposition is endlessly mucking up the process. I can't win and keep business if the cretin insists on days and days of chasing her own fucking tail over language. Never mind despite a supposed financial specialisation, she seems to understand fuck all of anything at all.
I really don't give a bloody fuck if she understands the deal - I would literally stunned if there was any proposition this little monkey understood or did not feel necessary to lawyer to death so as to justify the absurd salary she pulls in for actively destroying value.
It's not even her damned job to do risk management, that's someone else's role, and well I don't care for it when my creativity is reigned in by tedious observations that such and such an idea is ... well, off the reservation, I can accept it coming from certain quarters.
But this idiot.... Is causing me to finance the Brothers Castro - which while entertaining to me personally is becoming worrisome.
At least her idiocy has given me a quote, burned in my head, from a now departed Sr. colleague who said, "She's so stupid and speaks so slooowly that I usually get bored half way through watching her talk and start thinking about other things."
Posted by The Lounsbury at July 31, 2007 08:18 PM
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Perso Biz Notes
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Comments
Heh. Apart from stupidity, I suspect part of the problem is that your interests don't align with hers.
I know of one big law firm in Moscow who has effictively decided that not doing deals is in their best interest. Don't get me wrong. They work on deals. But it appears that a tacit decision has been made that actually approving any deals -- or even having any firm legal opinions on anything -- is too risky. There's way to much potential for blowback.
They may well have a point. Russia is probably the dodgiest place on earth for finance at the moment. Russian financiers couple a thorough understanding of Western financial norms with a total willingness to violate them. I know of one investment banker who, on telling his clients that their numbers wouldn't support the valuation they wanted was asked, "OK. What do you want the numbers to be?"
Posted by: Anonymous at July 31, 2007 09:43 PM
This is an endemic problem - institutions do not need lawyerly consultation at every step of their internal processes. One review at the end is sufficient for sign-off or rejection/adjustment of a policy, operation, contract or whatever.
Even with competent attorneys, their analytical training is designed to split hairs to find things that are wrong while their bias toward defending a client on the best possible ground cultivates a mindset that paralysis is safer than action, unless the action is a preemptive concession to appease a possible litigant.
Except for the brighter sort, the big picture tends to elude them entirely.
Posted by: zenpundit at August 1, 2007 03:29 AM
Well, being a jurist myself I sometimes tend to share your disinclination towards lawyers - I work in a quasi-operational capacity and have sometimes to contend with our legal department, never an uplifting experience... They tend to lack the operational perspective on things, and a one- or two-months yearly training period on the ground should be mandatory - but I suppose this isn't practiceable in most companies or organisations...
Posted by: Ibn Kafka at August 1, 2007 09:45 AM
I know something more of this field than I care to disclose and would suggest a paragraph at the bottom of each document explaining the matter in dumb English, and then adding a ritual sentence: This reduces or would reduce the legal and financial exposure of company because ......
She will then reply with asking about small concerns or errors that she wont followup on and meanwhile will copy paste your final paragraph into her own words in other correspondence.
Posted by: matthew hogan at August 6, 2007 03:52 AM
