My spouse is a human lawyer. She's working now for a software company; she did her part taking it public a few years ago. She knows our trade pretty well.
The difference between a lawyer on the one hand, and a "jailhouse lawyer" (an engineer who does legalish work) on the other, are these:
The lawyer knows how to get things done to support the business. It's rare for a real in-house lawyer to tell the business, "we can't do that." More often, it's "here's how we do that."
The lawyer knows how to write a form contract (sales, lease, nondisclosure, etc) so other lawyers will read it and say "ok, that's fair" and sign it.
The lawyer knows how to read an incoming form contract to see if it's fair.
The lawyer has real relationships with her counterparts at customer and vendor companies. When a vendor tries to change terms, she calls her counterpart and asks, "what's this about? My business has problems with this. How can we get to yes?"
The lawyer knows that if a dispute gets to a judge, the remedy will be money. With very few exceptions there's no way for a judge to repair a business deal that's gone sideways. So the lawyer says, "anything but court."
At some level, the law is like computer code. But the computer code has been around for many centuries and it has been patched over and over and over again as needed to solve real-world problems: in the US and English system that's called "case law.". There's an adage that "hard cases make bad case law." Lawyers know the ins and outs of this stuff.
In my experience as an entrepreneur, when I've played lawyer I've generally overdone things to my detriment.
The US is definitely litigation-happy. That makes things tough.
I feel like the rise of the "legalish"/"jailhouse lawyer" type person is just a facet of a broader societal trend towards the rejection of expertise.
Experts are gatekeepers, and the whole thrust of the culture over the last few decades has been towards the removal of gatekeepers, towards the "democratization" of everything. Who needs journalism when you have blogs and social media? Who needs doctors when you have WebMD and Goop? Who needs lawyers when you have LegalZoom and YouTube?
The problem, of course, being that experts are called experts because they know stuff that you don't, and as we drive all the experts out of the public square the vacuum left behind as their knowledge departs is being filled by dangerous nonsense. "Democratization" is not proving to be a very good advertisement for democracy.
The less fashionable expertise becomes, the more I find I appreciate it.
Lawyers are also infamously expensive in billable hours. Not to mention scope creep of law both with contract proliferation and law sizes with no condensing efforts or even garbage collection of long unenforced, obviously superceded by higher courts, or so removed from societal context to be nonsensical laws.
If it is omnipresent enough and too expensive to defer everyone had to practice some law then.
People will not even pay a $1500 for an independent review of a $1million home purchase. Most just blindly follow their real estate agent's advice even though such agents are usually hopelessly conflicted because of their own financial interest in getting the deal done.
That's not a completely fair example, though, for a number of reasons.
If you think there's an honest chance that a $1500 independent review could turn up something that would make you turn down the deal and try to find another, do you then expect to have another $1500 review done? What expectation should you, a non-expert in doing this kind of calculation, have about the total cost of having independent reviews done?
Also, $1500/$1million sounds tiny, but nobody who thinks they can't afford a $1500 review buys a $1million house in cash; they get a mortgage and expect to pay $4.5k/month, and people in general don't save (or have the ability to save) as much as I do/would. So it's $1500/$4500 in the immediate future of having to make your first payment, on top of closing costs, etc., for benefit that is already unclear to a non-expert.
And by definition we're talking about a non-expert, because that's why they would have the need to hire a lawyer to do an independent review.
Anyway, it's not that I necessarily think lawyers are that expensive across the board, but the existence of that perception shouldn't be very confusing. A non-expert doesn't have the tools to accurately put a value on expert services.
Another scenario: say you have this $1500 review and it uncovers issues. You want the house anyway and try to negotiate the price down. Oops, the house goes to the next bidder who didn't bother with such a review. Basically, all you can do with the review is to "know what you're getting into".
Depending on the jurisdiction, anything discovered in a detailed inspection of this sort will have to be disclosed to any future buyers.
So, in that case, it would be to the best interest of the seller to reduce their asking price and/or fix the major problems that were found, so that they no longer have to carry this legal burden going forward.
Yes, this happened to me and my wife (she's the lawyer in the family), and this resulted in us getting over $12,000 cut off the purchase price of our house, in addition to getting a number of major problems fixed before the deal actually went through.
IANAL myself, and I can't make any claims that anyone else will necessarily benefit in the same way, but that detailed inspection of the house-to-be-bought can be worth 10x the cost you pay for it -- or more.
In residential deal, the legal review comes after the offer has been accepted and the title co has provided a title commitment and proposed title insurance policy but before closing.
Depending on the discovered issues, if any, your offer may be voidable or in a worse case you will have to forgo your earnest money. Still better than losing the whole house years later because of something like an incorrectly handled DIY divorce.
As I understand it, the title company reviews and insures everything related to the title. And the Purchase and Sale agreement is a standard form contract. What would a buyer need a lawyer to review?
Here, for example, you overstated the responsibilities/duties of the title company.
A title company's promise to insure real property titles/deeds comes with many (sometimes pages) of exceptions or disclaimers that depend on the state of the title history. Stuff they don't understand (confused records, muddled divorce/death histories, old easements, etc.) they will disclaim from the coverage.
Title companies provide a several page title commitment that describes the state of the world as they see it and given that state-of-the-world they craft and issue a policy. They don't guarantee against things not included in the title commitment they disclaim them away.
In most cases, especially in developed urban areas, the default works. But if there are edge conditions, the title policy often doesn't fix them because the policy disclaims around them.
But if you read and understand the title commitment and trace the title history yourself (or hire lawyer to do so), you can challenge the title company to remove unwanted disclaimers or add additional protections before you close. Also, you can identify potential chain of title issues and have the seller fix them before closing.
A one-percenter buying a million-dollar house might well consider it reasonable to hire a lawyer to help out with something as ordinary as a home purchase, but the rest of us aren't buying million-dollar houses and don't routinely get legal advice about anything. When I bought my house, I had $30k to spend as a down payment; no way would it have made sense to waste 5% of that on unnecessary legal work. (What would lawyers have even theoretically been able to tell me, anyway?)
Anecdata, but I spent about $30K in attorney and court fees during my divorce, and I got a reduced hourly rate and retainer because I was buddies with a guy that clerked for him.
It definitely didn't feel like a bargain, but so much of what you are paying for is the knowledge of what needs to be filled, when, maintaining the case docket, serving discovery, filing motions, etc. and all of these can be incredibly puzzling for someone not familiar with proceedings of the court.
Inhouse lawyers cost about ther same as grade A developers or sales people. Certainly less than most executives. Why do lawyers choose to work inhouse? Because working at white-shoe law firms means 90 hours a week.
You don't HAVE to use Wilson and $onsini to look at incoming NDAs, for example.
The whole point of writing fair form contracts is to remove legal burden when deals get done, without compromising the outcome or the rights of either party.
It's true that VCs have close relationships with certain white shoe law firms, so legal costs can be high when closing rounds of financing. Grumble about it, for sure. Consider it a tax on the money you raise. But don't fall into the trap of thinking that same law firm is "your lawyers," and you can't get help from other lawyers.
Except in the case of lawyers and doctors, the gatekeeping is explicitly enforced by law. You cannot write your own prescriptions, and while you can represent yourself in court, the lawyers who run the court do everything to ensure you will likely stumble. Guilds who control legally enforced gates require some kind of counterbalancing force to ensure that they don't work for their own interest rather than the public interest (for which they have been empowered by the government to work).
My point is that if your guild is entrusted with monopoly power by the government, the guild's behavior must be held to a higher standard (work must be in the public's interest, not in the guild member's individual interest). Unfortunately this point seems to be lost in modern culture.
> while you can represent yourself in court, the lawyers who run the court do everything to ensure you will likely stumble
Non-lawyers who represent themselves in court don't stumble because of a sinister conspiracy by lawyers to trip them up. They stumble because law is a really complicated subject, and no matter how smart you are it's impossible to replace years of full-time learning with a little reading on the side.
The saying "a man who is his own lawyer has a fool for a client" is hundreds of years old.
Yes but the complexity serves the interest of lawyers collectively and individually. I would argue that is precisely a conspiracy against the public interest.
Put another way: nobody individually profits when the law is made simple and clear.
Laws/legal procedures are complicated because the world and its actors are complicated. And not all actors are acting in good faith, with the same facts, or even rationally.
If you want to have rule of law relying on simple laws just doesn't cut it most of the time.
Now, legalese can and should be reduced, modern lawyers are working on that. But laws will always be used to enforce/define complex systems or relationships. This often requires complex rules.
I believe the argument "Laws/legal procedures are complicated because the world and its actors are complicated" is false because it confuses cause and effect. It's true the world is complex, uncomprehendingly so. But that bears no relationship to laws and policies, upon which man chooses to impose on his fellow man.
I do see how the application of simple law is complex. But that complexity could be seen as a trade-off. I'm willing to have a reasonable amount of injustice in exchange for simplifying the application of the law.
I have to ask if you are speaking from experience here or just dislike lawyers based on tropes in our culture?
Having been through a 2 year legal battle myself, I can tell you that the complexity is there for a reason, and that reason is lawyers arguing a client's case, the court reconsidering their previous opinion, and hopefully a more fair outcome going forward. The world is far more complex than we can imagine, otherwise we'd be able to write perfect, simple laws.
Let me give you a challenge: Say my wife and I are getting a divorce, and we are splitting up community property. I have options and RSUs (any equity asset on a vesting schedule really) that I was awarded before we were married, some that were awarded after, some awarded before that vested after our date of separation. These all have different vesting schedules, strike prices, and hypothetical future value (stock might tank, might leave before it all vests, etc). What is a simple law to determine what dollar value I owe my ex for her interest in this community property?
Let me ask you a related question: how much injustice would you personally tolerate in exchange for simplicity?
For instance in your divorce question: why not excercise everything at the date of divorce and split the proceeds 50/50? Is that outrageous? Or simple?
It's way too simple. Let's say I was awarded 1000 shares of stock that vest over the next 4 years. Let's say I was awarded these stocks only 2 weeks before date of separation. Does my ex have the same community property interest in these 1000 stocks (spoiler: they don't) as in 1000 stocks awarded 2 years previously, before the marriage ended? Does it matter how long I worked at the company during the marriage (yes, it does)?
What if one of the parties doesn't want to sell the stock, or it doesn't make sense because the stocks are currently underwater (but may not be at some future date)? What if many of the assets in question are Restricted Stock Units, with no agreed upon value since they cannot be priced until they are released?
"Just sell it all and split it 50/50! DUH!" is not something that works in the real world, where the law is meant to operate.
Also, you didn't answer my question... What's your beef with lawyers? Have you ever had to actually hire one for something? You view of how simple the law could/should be seems very naive.
Individuals do profit when the law is simple and clear. Often to the point where problems arise and people start proposing minor adjustments to the law... wherein it eventually ceases to be simple and clear.
You think hanging them up from yardarms would deter them?
You want to ensure proper behavior; you have to take away the tools that let them aggregate power in the first place; and prevent it from re-occurring.
There is no "higher" standard. There is only one standard; functional, competent, accountable, just.
If you don't have a legal system that can accomplish those. Then you need to scrap your legal system. Not "hold them to a higher standard", which often is just an escape clause for preferential treatment ("Chevron deference").
Wouldn't help with perpetual corporations owning most of the assets. Globalism was just an extension of capitalism, to escape to other jurisdictions.
It is not an accident that the GINI coefficient, is so drastically out of whack in the US.
The mortgage system, was meant to break the original land grants (which had to be honored under British-American common law).
The corporation both a shield for the rich; and a sword against the middle-classes as it disenfranchises citizens from the bill of rights.
Intellectual property is just a more extreme form of corporations. The notion that idea can be owned for decades, with the cost of enforcement out-sourced to the public, and private profits insourced.
Same with the public schooling system (ready workers). Etc.
Just about every Western institution ("improvement") you'ld care to name, has an ulterior motive moving us one step further along to what amounts to perpetual slavery.
I think if you sent back a person from this era, 120+ years ago, to try and "improve" the American system, they'ld have burned him alive. Such is the level of degradation inherent in todays "modern" governance.
While I don't disagree with much of what you said, I think it misses the point of the article, which is that the legal industry has a hard time using new tech, because they don't trust anything not created in-house. Breaking into the market is difficult, even if the gains the tech would bring are enormous.
I've seen this first hand, as I had a brutal two year long divorce case, and in spending time with my attorney, got to see many opportunities for technology to improve their jobs. I actually wrote some Python to calculate something called the Hug/Nelson formula to figure out community property interest in options/RSUs. I was really surprised that nothing existed to do this for me, and even played with the idea of making an app to sell to lawyers, because they are seeing more and more divorce cases with these types of assets being split. But where to start? How do you "certify" something to the degree that a lawyer will trust it? It's a huge market potential I think, but the status quo seems pretty entrenched.
This is a fascinating point. I suspect it also has to do with the DIY mentality of the typical American (which can be a good thing of course).
But there's nothing like seeing an expert walk into a situation where a bunch of amateurs are squabbling, and seeing the expert just take over the situation. Expertise is still supremely valuable, even if it's unfashionable.
> It's rare for a real in-house lawyer to tell the business, "we can't do that." More often, it's "here's how we do that."
I've found the opposite. Saying "no" is almost always a safe answer, or at least an answer that won't get them fired, which seems to create a bias that direction.
I'm sure it's a bit different when the CEO asks, but most of us unfortunately have to go talk to the company lawyers without running things.
In my experience, it is the good business lawyer (whether in-house counsel or outside counsel) who will tell you what the risks are, and then it's the choice of the business to decide which risks they want to take.
However, there's also the case where the shitstorm is so bad that they lawyers have a legal and moral obligation to tell you (and the CEO, and the Board of Directors) that what you're doing is wrong and illegal, and maybe even quit over grossly inappropriate or negligent activities.
It's almost a right of passage to be part of the "trade", so to speak. Same thing goes for doctors. When a doctor recognizes the counterparty is a a fellow physician, the conversation changes to reflect that. There are exceptions (as do all things in the world), but this professional courtesy happens regardless of whether the two parties have ever had a prior relationship.
Is that really any different than a python developer explaining a piece of code changing the conversation when they realize they're speaking to someone else that's also a python developer?
Yes but in that case disputes between developers can ultimately be resolved by examining the source code. In the case of lawyers nobody can really give you an unambiguously correct answer except in a judgement in court for one case and one set of circumstances.
I noticed this "getting to yes" attitude with my lawyer , and realized after a while it was because all the back and forth communication, discovery, on and on... it all took forever, and at pretty much any point the other side could choose to throw a wrench in the works. It's something I really tried to internalize after my divorce finally ended after two years and many thousands of dollars in legal fees, finally settling for near what the ex and I had discussed before we brought lawyers into the picture.
> In my experience as an entrepreneur, when I've played lawyer I've generally overdone things to my detriment.
This seems interesting. Do you have examples? I know I once got stuck on a clause that was not 'fair' but my advisor said it's a minor and the other side probably didn't want to involve their much more expensive lawyer (firm) to change that paragraph.
Lawyers, are incompetent. If you haven't come to that realization yet; its because you haven't dealt with enough of them. It is -extremely- rare, even at the higher levels of pay, to get a lawyer, who actually knows the specifics of your case.
In a very real way, its all ad-hoc expertise. A series of one-off's you try, to get a compromise your client can accept.
The difference between a lawyer on the one hand, and a "jailhouse lawyer" (an engineer who does legalish work) on the other, are these:
The lawyer knows how to get things done to support the business. It's rare for a real in-house lawyer to tell the business, "we can't do that." More often, it's "here's how we do that."
The lawyer knows how to write a form contract (sales, lease, nondisclosure, etc) so other lawyers will read it and say "ok, that's fair" and sign it.
The lawyer knows how to read an incoming form contract to see if it's fair.
The lawyer has real relationships with her counterparts at customer and vendor companies. When a vendor tries to change terms, she calls her counterpart and asks, "what's this about? My business has problems with this. How can we get to yes?"
The lawyer knows that if a dispute gets to a judge, the remedy will be money. With very few exceptions there's no way for a judge to repair a business deal that's gone sideways. So the lawyer says, "anything but court."
At some level, the law is like computer code. But the computer code has been around for many centuries and it has been patched over and over and over again as needed to solve real-world problems: in the US and English system that's called "case law.". There's an adage that "hard cases make bad case law." Lawyers know the ins and outs of this stuff.
In my experience as an entrepreneur, when I've played lawyer I've generally overdone things to my detriment.
The US is definitely litigation-happy. That makes things tough.