Legal
I am a human being
The department whose individuals you can’t be bothered naming to which you forward awkward queries you can't be bothered reading for yourself, let along taking the time to understand. You may never how much a lawyer resents that to-all email addressed: “Hi, Legal”[1].
Help me, Legal
The frequently heard, usually false, refrain, “I cannot opine on that, because it’s a question of law” drops like a scented jewel from the lips of that kind colleague who can’t be bothered — or is too scared — to make a simply decision because, well, no-one likes making decisions in modern multinationals. No individual good comes from it, however much collective good may follow. As any fule kno, individual good comes from taking credit, not taking a view.
But not all legal questions are beyond your grasp. By presumption of law, none of them are: the law deemed you know their answers comprehensively, however paltry your legal education. Ignorance is no defence.
Yet, within a modern corporation, ignorance is not only a defence but a virtue.
“Legal will need to say when the contract is formed. It is not for me to opine”. This is the sort of senseless thing you hear. “Legal” can opine, of course — nothing gives “Legal” greater pleasure than sounding off on offer, acceptance and invitation to treat; weighing in on the question of whether the intention to create legal relations is an independent ingredient of the consensus ad idem[2]. But contract formation is not alchemy: you do it without pause at the supermarket checkout and when you press a copper into your newsagent’s mitten.
It is binary, however, for — and this is a matter of logic, not law — there either is a contract or there isn’t; each state of affairs carries its own risks and rewards, but there is no purgatorial state between them. It’s like being pregnant: there is no third way. You must hitch your wagon to one train or the other.
References
- ↑ There is something worse: faux joviality, which conveys as finely honed sarcasm, in the phrase “Hi, Legal Eagles!!!”
- ↑ Whatever the learned academics and the courts may say it is not. Intention to create legal relations is the inference you draw from an accepted offer supported by consideration.