General systems unit
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Purpose
- What is the purpose of the legal department? Wider: what is the purpose of any part of the federation?
The “client”
The Client may not be who you think it is.
What is a “client”?
Someone who gives you things to do.
Business clients: Clients may be imposed by business imperative to sell stuff — in which case your internal client is the internal representation of the client to whom the firm is selling something — Sales — or the internal representative of the firm in that transaction with the client — Trading.
Infrastructural clients: Client relationships are also imposed by the formal infrastructure of the firm. Here you may be “service provider” to another “client”, or you may be “client” to another “service provider”.
Who is your client?
The “business” — front office; sales and trading; the revenue generators are not your only client. In fact, it is barely a client at all. It would rather it didn’t give legal anything to do, since legal only slows it down: “Sure, do whatever you must do, but just be quick about it and don’t upset my client”. More important client stakeholders :
- Line management.
- Other horizontal siloes who hold a stake in your work product: credit, tax, compliance etc: here you need their consent to carry on your task for someone else (usually the business).
- Other horizontal siloes whose work product you hold a stake in: operations, chief operating office. Here, they need your consent to carry on their function.
Who, within your client, is your client?
Are you getting calls from contractors in Hyderabad? Rather than throttling legal demand by charging for it, why not do that structurally, but limiting who — what grade — is allowed to seek it?
The “product”
The product may not be what you think it is
What is your product? A document is not the product. A lawyer is not the product. Technology is not the product. The product is the task to be achieved; the problem to be solved. Documents are symptoms of the problem.
What will your product look like in 100 years=
This is a thought experiment to separate the essence from the substrate. Imagine all the accoutrements of today no longer apply: you know, when there are flying cars, teleportation, we live in a virtual matrix and the analogue world has been conclusively proved to be an optical illusion. You don’t need paper, you don’t need email, you don’t need humans: The AI embedded in the General Systems Vehicle Just Because You’re Paranoid Doesn’t Mean No-one’s Following You can automatically configure agreements by itself. What would your process look like then? What is its platonic essence?
what is the problem
- What is the problem: distinguish between problems and symptoms. Inanimate objects — like documents, and templates — are rarely problems: they are symptoms of problems. Formal structures are rarely problems (or even all that relevant). Problems arise in interactions For example: a crappy document
- Is what we focus on really the problem?
What is the general systems unit?
- A source of knowledge on how to optimise human processes and systems.
- In scope: use of language, legal,
What it isn’t
- A plain-English drafting service
- A legal technology platform