On a clear summer day, my father carefully drove his car out of his narrow one-car driveway past the retaining walls on either side and onto the street. He then turned to the right and parked the car in front of our house. Or so he thought.
After he exited the car, he found out the hard way that rather than put the car in park, he had actually left it in reverse. The car retraced the path from whence it had come until it crashed into the retaining wall on one side of the driveway.
Abraham Lincoln said, “Discourage litigation. Persuade your neighbors to compromise whenever you can. Point out to them how the nominal winner is often a real loser — in fees, expenses, and waste of time. As a peacemaker the lawyer has a superior opportunity of being a good man. There will still be business enough.”
In the many years since, some lawyers have heeded Lincoln’s sage advice, and many have not.
Once upon a time, there was a lawyer whose practice was reliant on one huge client. His junior associate made a mistake on the client’s file. The client demanded that the lawyer fire the associate. The lawyer refused to cast aside a young associate for having made one mistake. The client fired the lawyer. The lawyer lost his practice. The associate lost his job anyway.
It is a slow news day in my retirement world, so I thought that I would break from my own tradition of writing lengthy posts and just post a brief thought.
I need an articling student. You know, those law students who we hire to write articles for us which we can publish under our own name. (That is why they call them “articling” students, isn’t it?) Of course, those of us who have real class include an acknowledgment that we were ‘assisted’ by the articling student, giving a whole new meaning to the word ‘assist’ which now means “to do all of the work.”
If I had an articling student, I would have had something useful to post today instead of this drivel.
I need an articling student.
Once upon a time, in a common law jurisdiction not that far away, there was a partner in a law firm who did what all good law firm partners do. He billed a lot. He brought in many clients. He trained the junior lawyers. He supervised the clerks. All in all, he was somewhat of a star. I will call him Earl.
Since I retired, I have entertained myself by writing about the legal profession, mentoring a few lawyers, and teaching some classes about business law. None of these are particularly remunerative activities.
Now and then someone suggests to me that I should write a novel, or at least compile my articles into a book. And sell it. And try to make some real money. My standard answer is that it sounds like work, and that I have no interest in working.
It is not that earning a few dollars would not come in useful. I long ago learned from my mother that ‘rich or poor, it is good to have money.’ And I am not rich. But nor am I poor. I think that I can get by without working, and I have every intention of finding out if I am right.
“Review this agreement and provide me with your comments” is usually the first introduction that young business lawyers are given to the topic of reviewing contracts and the sum total of the training that they receive about how to do it. So off we go and comment on the scourge of typographical errors, the horror of undefined terms, the frightening absence of the word “reasonable,” and of course, unforgivably sloppy cross-references.
Actually, there are a multitude of more important things to think about when you are reviewing contracts. One of them is how long the agreement is going to last, and that actually depends on three things. These are: (i) term; (ii) termination rights; and (iii) renewal rights.
There was once a law firm with a small corporate department consisting of a law clerk and one senior corporate lawyer who I will call Carl. The partners of the firm had tired of Carl’s antics so they hired a bright young corporate lawyer who I will call Martin. The idea was that if Martin was any good, they would tell Carl to shape up or ship out.
Lawyers are avid fans of awards, so much so that they sometimes even pay to get them, which is a topic for another day.
I was thinking (because I have time to do that now that I am retired) that perhaps we should create a new award program which we could call the “Dumbies.” We can award a prize for the dumbest clauses that lawyers regularly insert into commercial agreements.
I hated partners meetings. Not because I did not like most of my partners. In fact, I quite enjoyed spending time with the majority of them. But there were always one or two…
After many years of contemplating why I disliked partners meetings so much, I developed a theory. Here it is.