Molesworth self-adjusting thank-you letter: Difference between revisions

Molesworth self-adjusting thank-you letter (view source)

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 ===Modern applications===
 And here, in the new world, we find wondrous new applications. We even have a [[law firm]], those collective sparrows of finance, [[Simmons + Simmons]], who stumbled upon the idea but [[Simmons TOBS offensive|executed it so badly]] that, far from solving the problem of negotiating [[tedious]] [[Contract|contracts]], they made it worse.<ref>See the [[Simmons TOBs offensive]]</ref> Let the [[legal starling]]s for ever be [[Alfred Russel Wallace]] to the JC’s [[Charles Darwin|Charlie Darwin]].
+Here's the idea. Take a common, but unstandardised [[contract]], that [[legal eagle]]s are in the habit of sending each other on the premise that it manages a risk that can, and really ought to, go without saying. In [[Simmons]]’ case it is the [[terms of business]]; let us take that [[iatrogenic]] staple the [[confidentiality agreement]].
+Let us say you are about to embark on a “[[project]]” with one of your clients. The project is simple, workaday, its [[purpose]] easily articulated, and it carries an appreciable, but containable, risk of harm — mainly embarrassment, if we are honest<ref>The notion that much of what passes between the legal departments of modern financial institutions is clever, much less [[proprietary]] or sensitive, is one of the great [[canard|canards]] of our age.</ref> — should information passing between the participants in pursuit of it be treated without care.
+Your client’s [[legal department]] sends you a [[confidentiality agreement]]. The [[evolution]] of [[legal technology]] being what it is, you would expect this to be a standardised short form, addressing the four of five points a confi must, you can nod it through so you and your counterpart’s legal departments can be on your respective ways to get on with the far more pressing matters of legal risk which face us in these modern times.
+It won’t be, of course: it will be a fantastical, paranoid, weaponsing tract. It will comprise seven pages of closely-typed 10 point text, which will purport to commit you to all kinds of [[exclusivity|exclusivities]], [[indemnities]], and open-ended [[covenant]]s to mount legal defences to see off polite requests for regulators and the like.
+This will oblige you to engage in close combat. You will have to sift through the text looking for buried innuendoes. You will mark it up and send it back, and settle in for a 2 two week pitched battle where you and your client’s legal shell each other with thrust and counterthrust.
 {{sa}}