Yet Another Reminder For Why You Don't Let Your Lawyers Make Business Decisions
from the hammers-and-nails dept
One of the common themes around here is that it's bad when you let your lawyers make business decisions. Why? Because lawyers understand the law, and they understand how to use the law -- but they don't often think through the business consequences of using the law. Often, in fact, it's better for business not to use the laws -- even if you can. This has only gotten worse in the internet age -- where using the law to bully is all too often exposed for ridicule, making the impact on business even more negative. However, many companies still have a hard time learning this lesson, and the lawyers are still looking at every situation with their legal hammer as if it's a nail.The latest such example occurred over the weekend with the Consumerist blog. Last week, the site had an informative, but not particularly earth-shattering, post about 22 "confessions" of a former Dell sales manager, basically providing some good advice for people buying Dell (or, in some cases, other) computers. On Saturday, a Dell lawyer threatened the Consumerist and demanded the site take the message down. Of course, what happens? For all the hype it got, you probably already know: Digg, Slashdot and Fark all picked up the story of the takedown request -- and Dell was forced to apologize and admit it had screwed up (yet again). Of course, this is the type of situation that companies should know enough to avoid already if they stopped focusing on having the lawyers do what they can do under the law, and focused more on what's best for business. This isn't to say that lawyers can't make business decisions -- but that just because you can do something under the law, it's important for anyone (lawyer or not) to take into account the overall impact on the business.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
Do Lawyers Run the Twinkie Business?
You can find Starbucks stores in the most unlikely places in backwoods Alabama, but not Twinkies. Did lawyers do something funny to "outlaw" them here?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Do Lawyers Run the Twinkie Business?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Do Lawyers Run the Twinkie Business?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Do Lawyers Run the Twinkie Business?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
deciders
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
He chose to not run a big corporate slime pit, but he hired a business manager to deal with business decisions and strategy for him. He openly admitted, he knew the law - but as an intelligent person, he knew it was wise to leave business to a professional.
I guess it's what separates a good, successful law practice from the bad ones.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Who made the decision?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Who made the decision?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Who made the decision?
Lawyers are trained to err on the side of over-stating the client's case on the theory that you can always back off an over-stated position but it is much harder to recover from under stating your position. On top of that "aggressiveness" is seen as evidence of being keen and well motivated. Combine all of that with a lack of maturity and the arrogance that most law students have and no one should be surprised when lawyers write that kind of letter.
(Some of my best friends are lawyers but there is no reason I can't be realistic about them).
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
You need a new title....
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Lawyers DO understand business
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
sword, lash, voice, cash
At no point does he mention using lawyers.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
You're missing the big picture!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Give Dell some credit
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Some Lawyers Get It
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Just WHICH side are you on?
Didn't you mean "use the lawyers"? Or was this some sort of freudian slip?
Of course, many modern incarnations of burning Rome...er, corporations (e.g., Enron) didn't "use laws", at least not the ones that weren't in their favor.
BTW, weren't the imperial lawyers the first in line for "the blade" during that everso snippy French Revolution? Maybe they had the right approach...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Just WHICH side are you on?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Yeech
[ link to this | view in chronology ]