82,976
edits
Molesworth self-adjusting thank-you letter: Difference between revisions
Molesworth self-adjusting thank-you letter (view source)
Revision as of 14:58, 10 December 2020
, 10 December 2020no edit summary
Amwelladmin (talk | contribs) No edit summary |
Amwelladmin (talk | contribs) No edit summary |
||
| Line 11: | Line 11: | ||
Let’s say you are about to embark on a “[[project]]” with your client. The project is a simple, workaday thing; its [[purpose]], though easily articulated, 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 you not treat the information your client sends you with suitable care. | Let’s say you are about to embark on a “[[project]]” with your client. The project is a simple, workaday thing; its [[purpose]], though easily articulated, 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 you not treat the information your client sends you with suitable care. | ||
Your client’s [[legal department]], thus, sends you a [[confidentiality agreement]]. The [[evolution]] of [[legal technology]] being what it is, you would expect this to be a standard, short, utilitarian communiqué, rather like a [[telex]]: it will succinctly address the four | Your client’s [[legal department]], thus, sends you a [[confidentiality agreement]]. The [[evolution]] of [[legal technology]] being what it is, you would expect this to be a standard, short, utilitarian communiqué, rather like a [[telex]]: it will succinctly address [[Confi Anatomy|the four or five points an NDA must]], and you can nod it through on a cursory glance, and thereafter you and your counterpart’s legal departments can be on your respective ways, allowing the business folk to get on with whatever unseemly business people of commerce do, in these straitened times. | ||
It won’t be anything of the kind, of course: it will be a fantastical, paranoid, weaponising tract. It will comprise fifteen pages of closely-typed 10 point text, by which your client 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. | It won’t be anything of the kind, of course: it will be a fantastical, paranoid, weaponising tract. It will comprise fifteen pages of closely-typed 10 point text, by which your client 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. | ||