Lawyers and Writing
I’ll phrase this as a question for comments: Should lawyers ever be in positions of power, or should they be contained as tools useful for specific tasks? Generically, does a law degree and the professionalization of legal professions afford a scalable grasp of increasing power inside organizations? Are their pointers to this? My skepticism of organizational operations and the functionality of certain professions in the workplace hopefully does not betray my own attempt at openness.
I am gearing up for writing a few big chunks right now, and for some reason these thoughts are rolling around in my head.
Also, if anyone is interested, I want to start a project and or follow any leads on what I’ve been calling, Experimental Law, or the practice of experimental law. What might that be, you ask? One idea is minimalist contracts where the aim is to increase legal exposure for the parties. NOTE: This is my personal blog and not one of the entities that pays me. I’m sure there is a practice like this, but I’m not aware of it.
That link lost me at ‘richest person in open source history’; anyone who actually knows a damn thing about anything knows that at 1/2M a year (or whatever) Mitchell is still about 1/2*B* away from the early RH employees, and no one (not even Mitchell) is ever making that kind of money in open source again.
To the bigger question: I guess I fail to see why lawyers are, in this respect, any worse than MBAs, or more generally worse than the grasping/scheming people who frequently inhabit the upper reaches of power in any human organization. To somehow generalize that lawyers are particularly ill-suited for leadership seems… very odd to me. But maybe I’m not understanding the question.
Comment by Luis — December 5, 2007 @ 8:02 am
I pretty much see lawyers as civilized world’s knights or mercenaries. They’re the ones defending a company/organisation and also the ones sent to attack the other ones. Think about it, the parallels are strong.
Now, try to imagine what happens when knights or mercenaries are in power.
Comment by Xav — December 5, 2007 @ 12:27 pm
“Should lawyers ever be in positions of power, or should they be contained as tools useful for specific tasks?”
Well, I don’t think these are necessarily mutually exclusive. Though there are a lot of counterexamples to this - lawyers can make great congressmen, if they are actually dedicated to involvement in the legislative process. But in a corporate setting? Dunno that it should be necessarily a disqualifier, but also not clear that it adds much value in and of itself.
“I want to start a project and or follow any leads on what I’ve been calling, Experimental Law, or the practice of experimental law. What might that be, you ask? One idea is minimalist contracts where the aim is to increase legal exposure for the parties…”
This is similar to the ideas about reform of corporate law that Robert Reich makes in Supercapitalism; basically, doing away with corporation-as-person and making both corporate officers and shareholders legally responsible for the actions of the corporation. That’s obviously a pretty audacious (though worthwhile) goal, but this sounds like it’s heading in the same direction.
Comment by jkd — December 5, 2007 @ 1:16 pm
I think Luis’ second paragraph is right on.
I bet there will be more open source billionaires, depending on how pure of a play one is willing to consider.
Comment by Mike Linksvayer — December 5, 2007 @ 3:04 pm
Yes, I agree with all the above statements. Luis, thanks for pulling me out of my knee jerk reaction about lawyers, especially considering there are some good ones, and others studying to be good ones (you)
Possibly the combination of scheming/grasping selfish individual pursuits teamed with a potent skillset focused on accomplishment of goals at any cost makes for a vicious combination.
In the end, I’m also into strategy, positioning of resources, in order to accomplish some specific and general goals. I guess it has more to do with when you are on not on the successful strategy side when this becomes more problematic.
Regardless, there are some high-level ideals that we hopefully hold ourselves to in various (social) contracts which will make certain things better for groups.
Ok, nevermind much of this out-loud, imprecise language. I’m working through some thoughts about organizational structures.
Comment by jon — December 9, 2007 @ 4:49 pm