Vitamins and painkillers

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The theory goes, so say any number of thought-pieces, that there are three kinds of business:

1. Painkillers: Those that address acute immediate problems
2. Vitamins: Those that prevent problems over the medium to long term:
3. Candy: Those that do nothing, but distract us from the existential horror of our daily lives, what the doctor is about to do to us, the dawning realisation that this is all there is, and so on.

This seems a rather threadbare view of the world. Dare we say a bit cynical? To stick with the medical metaphor, it overlooks some important categories of medicinal function — such as, you know, curing patients: rectifying discordance. Advising our patients to live better lives, and therefore avoid the need for quack palliatives, quick fixes and cute misdirection.

Seeing legal service as something that either masks a deep-seated malaise without addressing it - a painkiller - or a quick, cheap and hard-to-prove-or-falsify substitute for the hard work of maintaining a healthy lifestyle — a vitamin — is the classic legal-tech take.

It is excellent advice in cynicism: the last thing you want to do is heal your client, much less advise her about her diet of lifestyle, because by these you do yourself out of a regular stream of income. Sad face.