Why Lawyers Don’t Run Startups

So that you can make an informed decision. Also, there is often a middle ground. "Fat and salt are bad for me, so I will keep eating them, but now I will do it in moderation."

Similarly, there are times you may decide to take an action that will risk a lawsuit, but you can do so in an informed way by consulting a good lawyer. Paul Graham makes the point in http://www.paulgraham.com/softwarepatents.html that most startups should simply not worry about infringing patents. This is a calculated risk, but one they should know they are taking if they do so.

Similarly, there is a calculus of negligence (brief laymen's overview at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calculus_of_negligence ) that essentially says that if the probability of hurting someone else's property multiplied by the most likely damage is less than the cost to remove that risk, you simply accept the risk and be prepared to pay out the damage if it happens and do nothing to reduce that risk. This is a very calculated risk since if something happens you will be required to pay for it and the other party will rightly sue you if you do not. Yet the rational thing is still to just accept that risk, but you can only make that risk rationally if you have calculated that risk (perhaps with advie of a lawyer).

OK...but I think 'limiting risk at all cost' is a bit of stereotype; doctors (and attorneys) do take difficult or even dangerous decisions which require them to weigh risk as a matter of course, which is why members of both professions carry malpractice insurance. Also, many board decisions do not require unanimity.

I question the idea above because it echoes a good deal of what I've heard about the pre-crash standing of risk managers at banks; during the bull market they got sidelined as party poopers and now many of the same banks are risk-averse to the point of paralysis. Surely there's room for a happy medium; growth-at-all-costs is no healthier than safety-at-all-costs, and we often read of reckless corporate decisions which end up costing shareholders far more than than they saved in the short term. Look at that recent Home Depot lawsuit for example - a $4m 'saving' turned into a $21m loss.

Further, 'external signs of success...choice of profession exposes what their priorities are' suggests that somehow members of these professions get ahead by charging fat fees for obvious common-sense advice; doing well by simply having a phobia of mistakes and accumulating their reputations by default. But 'making it look easy' is one of the things that distinguishes skilled from mediocre people in every profession. By that yardstick, programmers are just glorified button-pushers, capitalists are mere rentiers, emergency workers are all adrenalin junkies, and civil servants do nothing but push paper.

It's true you can't make an omelet without cracking a few eggs, and eggs that aren't cooked within a certain time will go bad. On the other hand, turning the heat all the way up ensures your omelet will be inedible.