Litigation lawyer: Difference between revisions
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In a well-run firm, therefore, you might expect [[litigation]] to be an unglamorous backwater. | In a well-run firm, therefore, you might expect [[litigation]] to be an unglamorous backwater. | ||
And, indeed, this is how it used to be. | |||
But, after the dislocations of recent times, many a [[litigation department]] has, like [[human resources]], come to resemble some kind of [[military-industrial complex]]. Teams have gone from half a junior lawyer, on flexi-time, between spells of maternity leave, to fully weaponised Death Stars of fusty, censorious [[Mediocre lawyer|solicitors]] who will decline to make any call, however safe, or sanction any risk, however remote. | But, after the dislocations of recent times, many a [[litigation department]] has, like [[human resources]], come to resemble some kind of [[military-industrial complex]]. | ||
Teams have gone from half a junior lawyer, on flexi-time, between spells of maternity leave, to fully weaponised Death Stars of fusty, censorious [[Mediocre lawyer|solicitors]] who will decline to make any call, however safe, or sanction any risk, however remote. | |||
===Litigation advisory=== | ===Litigation advisory=== | ||
But as the world shakes off the malignities of the last decade; as the business environs drift back to the benign, the pendulum might at last be falling back. So, to keep themselves in silk in times of fair fortune, {{t|litigation}} teams have | But as the world shakes off the malignities of the last decade; as the business environs drift back to the benign, the pendulum might at last be falling back. | ||
So, to keep themselves in silk in times of fair fortune, {{t|litigation}} teams have confected an ''advisory'' function. In this guise they encourage their transactional colleagues to ''consult'' them, ahead of time, to avoid future angst. | |||
They have contrived “risk radars”, invoking a of sixth sense for trouble that has proven so far elusive, and “[[Risk taxonomy|risk taxonomies]]”, by which they subdivide the [[future]] by reference to their bitter experiences of the past — all this despite their regular admonitions [[Past results are no guarantee of future performance|not to regard it as any kind of guide to what is yet to come]]. | |||
“Litigation advisory” is thereby a theoretical but not actual function, because no-one in their right mind would ask a litigation lawyer to bless any course of action more contentious than sitting cross-legged in a padded cubicle having first signed a [[disclaimer]]. | |||
Signing off hypothetical risk scenarios in the abstract is just not how [[litigator]]s roll: they are are short the same [[option]] as is any other [[risk controller]], only they know in detail what goes down when that option is exercised: they know better than anyone that there is no upside from signing off any [[risk]] that has not been fully diffused in a [[circle of escalation]], underwritten in blood by someone else (such as a [[Sullivan and Cromwell]] partner)<ref>Who, thanks to a crafty assumption on page 73 of its [[legal opinion]] ''won’t have underwritten it at all.''</ref> and [[socialise|socialised]] to the [[General Counsel]]. | |||
===Litigators as contract consultants=== | ===Litigators as contract consultants=== | ||
Nor are litigators any better a source of advice about contract ''drafting'' than are trauma surgeons about motor-vehicle engineering. For what better insight can a [[litigator]] give than, “for Christ’s sake, don’t wind up in court?” | Nor are litigators any better a source of advice about contract ''drafting'' than are trauma surgeons about motor-vehicle engineering. For what better insight can a [[litigator]] give than, “for Christ’s sake, don’t wind up in court?” | ||
Show me a commercial lawyer who doesn’t know ''that.'' | |||
For if you ''do'' wind up in court, hasn’t your [[contract]] ''already'' failed you utterly? To be sure, it might be a nice surprise to find the deckchair to which you are clinging floats, even as the ship whose name is stencilled on it descends to a watery tomb a mile below you, but how much ''nicer'' would it be, were it still sitting on the sun-deck of that very vessel, with you on it, steaming sedately towards the New World? | For if you ''do'' wind up in court, hasn’t your [[contract]] ''already'' failed you utterly? To be sure, it might be a nice surprise to find the deckchair to which you are clinging floats, even as the ship whose name is stencilled on it descends to a watery tomb a mile below you, but how much ''nicer'' would it be, were it still sitting on the sun-deck of that very vessel, with you on it, steaming sedately towards the New World? | ||
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[[Contract]] design should ''avoid'' icebergs. A litigator can only help sort out whose fault it is when one has been ''hit''. | [[Contract]] design should ''avoid'' icebergs. A litigator can only help sort out whose fault it is when one has been ''hit''. | ||
===The good times are a-comin’=== | ===The good times are a-comin’=== | ||
But as the world wakes up to the enormity of war, inflation, stagnation, [[cryptobabble]], tech collapse and the wholesale annihilation of the [[HR|HR woketariat]] | But as the world wakes up to the enormity of war, inflation, stagnation, [[cryptobabble]], tech collapse and the wholesale annihilation of the [[HR|HR woketariat]] by [[Chatbots|GPT-3 chatbots]] with social conventions harvested from petabytes of Q-ANON chat on the dark web — look, every cloud has a silver lining, doesn’t it? — we expect litigation to shortly roar back into fashion. | ||
Redundant regulatory change lawyers: ''now'' would be the time to start swotting up the difference between ''mens rea'' and ''actus reus''. | |||
{{sa}} | {{sa}} | ||
*[[Risk controller]] | *[[Risk controller]] | ||
*[[Cryptobabble]] | |||
*[[Chicken licken]] | *[[Chicken licken]] | ||
{{ref}} | {{ref}} |