Education/advocacy

  • Systems for good (meadows) and bad (gall)
  • The role of legal
    • The two modes of legal: farming and building a frontier
    • Farming: Toyota production system
    • Frontier: normal accidents
    • The line betwixt: triage
  • Philosophical battle of reductionism versus pragmatism. Plays out in the view we can manage every risk by policy.
  • Commitment signalling: understanding the psychology of negotiation
    • Getting *their* business onside, and reframing the debate between their business and their legal
    • The power of interpersonal relationships. Go see the client. Build rapport. Call them. Then put it in writing.
  • The nature of catastrophic risk is that it is not what you are looking at
  • Legal documents as tools of persuasion
  • Drafting hacks to make something more agreeable

The basis between risk management systems and legal docs

  • The value of standardisation of operational controls

The smart contract concept and how it is a metaphor The division of labour: a process that requires manual checking is a bad process.

    • Example: termsheet/contract/closing memo. If you're rekeying you're wasting effort. Structure your agreement so it is a closing memo.
  • How to turn legalese into plain language
  • Meetings
    • As lazy/selfish by convenor
    • As inefficient/wasteful
    • As defusing of responsibility
    • As being uneasy peace/timid consensus
  • Legal documents and policies as doing the same