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Fucking Sue Me (2011)

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Re: Fucking Sue Me (2011)

#161

Post by btilly »

rayiner wrote: post #133
btilly wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But lawyers working in private practice, or partners in firms with a lot of power, will presumably be willing to balance risk against reward, and try to optimize accordingly. Lawyers: please correct me if I'm assuming incorrectly here. I am not a lawyer, but you are certainly assuming incorrectly. It is a lawyer's job to not only get you a good contract, but also to maximize their billable hours. They do not gouge to…

So what you have is a curve of diminishing returns. If you spend 2 hours on a legal problem, you might get an incomplete result. If you spend 10 hours, you might get something that meets the standards of good representation but still leave a few avenues unexplored. If you spend 20 hours, you might be able to explore those avenues and assure yourself that there are no risks lying there. If you spend 30 yours, you migh…

Absolutely. Doubly so because the lawyer is liable if their legal advice turned out to be bad, but the lawyer does not fully share in the upside if the negotiation goes perfectly.

Re: Fucking Sue Me (2011)

#162

Post by zefi »

The lesson here is the same drawn from pg's essay on doing things that don't scale - http://paulgraham.com/ds.html.

If you were a multibillion dollar company acting at scale, it would make sense to spend time perfecting the contract. But because you could assess the risk of failure for all elements of the project and felt comfortable with them, there's little need to do the extra due diligence required by a company acting on a larger scale.

The majority of a founder's job is making decisions. But the point at which a decision needs to be made to be effective is the point where the founder often has only 10% of the information needed to feel comfortable making it.

Re: Fucking Sue Me (2011)

#163

Post by larrys »

btilly wrote: post #160
larrys wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"But the risks and rewards that the lawyer is balancing are their risks and rewards, which are not the same as yours." Otoh if you take away that "pay for time" aspect you end up with someone who might be likely to cut corners because they are being compensated in a way in which they are disadvantaged if they spend more time than they need to. After all you did also say: " They do not gouge too aggressively - after a…

"They do not gouge too aggressively - after all they want future billable hours" so there is some "governor" on the process that prevents them from eating like a goldfish with unlimited food supply. One of the things that you'll notice lawyers doing is throwing up a trial balloon by finding something to bill you for that you did not ask. If you don't push on that, you'll wind up on the "gouge" side of the equation. I…

Totally excellent observation.

I will add to that thought something that I observed in a completely different business with respect to pricing.

Specifically pricing that is estimated and then needs to be revised when the job specs change. (Not programming by the way if it matters).

For certain customers when you give them the new price they go nuts and have a hard time accepting even though you are right to bill them additional charges (for things they asked you to do or material changes). What this does to the vendor is make them really cautious about trying to charge for things lest they get that anger unleashed again.

The "nice guy customers" on the other hand react like a gentleman and so you feel fairly confident in changing pricing liberally because they are so damn nice about accepting those pricing changes!

Re: Fucking Sue Me (2011)

#164

Post by larrys »

grellas wrote: post #139

Lawyering in general, and business lawyering in particular, is an art in which good judgment counts a lot more than mere technical precision. From a lawyer perspective, a written contract may have all sorts of areas in which it falls short of an ideal in capturing all key issues potentially affecting a client. There are recitals (defining factual context), covenants (setting forth promises), conditions (defining when…

"There is a dynamic to negotiations and nothing galls the parties more than to have to sort through a lot of lawyer comments over what they see as non-essential points for their deal."

Isn't that a strategy sometimes used to wear down the other side and make it hard for them to uncover the true intent of what one party is trying to slip by the other party? Or give added ambiguity which can be beneficial to one party or another?

Re: Fucking Sue Me (2011)

#165

Post by krmmalik »

So I've skimmed maybe the top 10 comments on this thread and it seems everyone has gone off on a complete tangent. I'm seeing this more and more on HN. Maybe someone further down has covered the point but I'll say it anyway. The lesson has nothing to do with a lawyer or hiring people. It's to do with embracing uncertainty. That's the key take away here.

Re: Fucking Sue Me (2011)

#166

Post by marincounty »

Take the risk, but try to protect youself--become judgement proof if you can? I sometimes think if you're doing something risky, with the real possibility of getting sued it's not unreasonable to hide money in a tin can. Ha--Ha. Yes, it's not conventional advice, but it might keep you from being homeless, or despising all lawyers.

Re: Fucking Sue Me (2011)

#167

Post by darkarmani »

niuzeta wrote: post #75
ksmiley wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Playing the devil's advocate here: if contractors self-select themselves out of being hired because they're not sure they can get the job done, then all the better! The remaining applicant pool will be stronger on average.

seconded. I wouldn't even have to quote Machiavelli to say that it's important to show your future contractors(or your peers) what you are capable of, to force them to think twice before arranging anything with you. Will it reduce the number of incoming contractors? Probably. Will the contractors who'll still chime in be more likely reliable, after considering what they're agreeing with? Very likely.

> Will it reduce the number of incoming contractors? Probably. Will the contractors who'll still chime in be more likely reliable, after considering what they're agreeing with? Very likely.

Wouldn't it more likely select contractors that have good liability shields and get to charge a premium for working for an asshole company because there are less people willing to do the work? This is how patent trolls are set up with no assets to lose.

Re: Fucking Sue Me (2011)

#168

Post by teddyh »

jankymess wrote: post #140
danielweber wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don't tell your lawyers what you want, they will try to remove every problem. Tell your lawyers you want decent terms, and you don't want to spend forever working on contracts, and have them explain the risks you face from the contract the other party proposed. Failing to engage with lawyers and then not liking their results is like managers who fail to engage with software developers and then don't like the r…

as technical folks, i don't think we fully understand the different types of lawyers there are. you know that eye twitch you develop, when someone asks if you can fix their computer because you "work with computers"? it's similar for lawyers. in my first two businesses, i didn't do enough [serious] transactions to need lawyers. in my third business, i reviewed and wrote our initial contracts, which were eventually re…

Just like pentesters are good and competent at breaking security but might not necessarily be good designers of secure software or systems.

Re: Fucking Sue Me (2011)

#170

Post by sokoloff »

fixxer wrote: post #116
jballanc wrote: post #57

The lesson, or at least the lesson I've learned from dealing with lawyers at companies big and small, is that lawyering is a practice in making sure nothing can possibly go wrong. In a way, lawyers are the QA team for the legal world. They know that the shit hitting the fan can potentially be very expensive, so they will go to extreme lengths to prevent any possibility of that happening. But just like you cannot rely…

Well, I mostly agree... but there are some very significant exceptions. Notably, I've dealt with in-house counsel from a certain Fortune 500 as part of my research and let me tell you this: they don't have a fucking clue what is going on. They just want to flex muscles for the sake thereof (or they think everything is "intellectual property", which is asinine). So, in this circumstance, they are a barrier to progress…

Actually, especially if you're desperate. Asshole counter-parties can smell weakness and if you are, they'll exploit it.
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