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The ''content'' of legal services is entirely opaque to them. The actual law is — by the careful design of generations of nest-feathering<ref>Did I say “nest-feathering”? I meant “[[noble, fearless and brave]].”</ref> lawyers — baffling, long-winded and obtuse. It is quite incomprehensible to the management layer. Management must therefore take the lawyers at their word, and thus they must take the [[pizza]] as they find it it: whole, ineffable, immutable, and stuffed with odd things like artichoke, pineapple and anchovy:<ref>For the record: artichoke yes, anchovy, utterly. But ''pineapple'', a ''never''.</ref> basically, an unsolvable brute fact of the universe. A manager cannot say “[[cross default]] is stupid” (though it is). She cannot say “you do not need that absurd [[indemnity]]; you would never use it, and a court would never enforce it,” however much these things may be true. | The ''content'' of legal services is entirely opaque to them. The actual law is — by the careful design of generations of nest-feathering<ref>Did I say “nest-feathering”? I meant “[[noble, fearless and brave]].”</ref> lawyers — baffling, long-winded and obtuse. It is quite incomprehensible to the management layer. Management must therefore take the lawyers at their word, and thus they must take the [[pizza]] as they find it it: whole, ineffable, immutable, and stuffed with odd things like artichoke, pineapple and anchovy:<ref>For the record: artichoke yes, anchovy, utterly. But ''pineapple'', a ''never''.</ref> basically, an unsolvable brute fact of the universe. A manager cannot say “[[cross default]] is stupid” (though it is). She cannot say “you do not need that absurd [[indemnity]]; you would never use it, and a court would never enforce it,” however much these things may be true. | ||
A manager knows that only [[Legal eagle|one with magic powers]] can say those things. A manager can only focus on | A manager knows that only [[Legal eagle|one with magic powers]] can say those things. A manager can only focus on what she ''does'' understand: the ''price'' of [[pizza]], not its ''value''. | ||
But there is a dark inversion to this ignorance. For such is the inscrutability of the legal craft — so ''impenetrable'' | But there is a dark inversion to this ignorance. For such is the inscrutability of the legal craft — so ''impenetrable'' is it — that a manager knows only that one ''has'' this magic, or one ''has not''. Those who ''have'' it are interchangeable; substitutable; switchable; ''[[fungible]]''. Any of them will do, and the cheapest is best. Hence the manager’s regular reconnaissance missions to those parts of Manila where the streets have no name. | ||
===The irony of the ineffable=== | ===The irony of the ineffable=== | ||
Thus, our manager arrives at the notion of ''delivery''. “I must have this ineffable magic,” she realises, “but it could be delivered from London, or Belfast, or Gdansk, a someone rifling through a [[playbook]] on his lap from a service centre | Thus, our manager arrives at the notion of ''delivery'' as being her only yardstick. “I must have this ineffable magic,” she realises, “but it could be ''delivered'' from London, or Belfast, or Gdansk, a someone rifling through a [[playbook]] on his lap from a service centre in the outskirts of Hanoi.” | ||
A manager cannot rationalise legal product, nor simplify it, nor cauterise it and expunge the [[tedium]] with which all legal product overflows — but she ''can'' parcel it up and offshore it. This is the tragic irony of the law’s ineffability. | |||
But | But unitised legal product is one of two things: either it really is commoditised, in which case it is a commercial product, not a legal one at all — a widget; see above — it may have some legally-relevant content, but all legal mysteries have been solved and myths exploded: the value in that product is not in its nuanced legal advice, but it has some other value (else, why “deliver” it at all?) — or it really ''isn’t'' commoditised; there really is some residual legal doubt, uncertainty or risk, in which case, how is handing it off to the proverbial [[school-leaver from Bucharest]] going to help? | ||
{{sa}} | {{sa}} | ||