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Now as you know readers, the [[JC]] likes to argue the toss about every little thing, with every little person, any time day or night. Every so often the [[JC]] even finds himself getting in an argument with ''himself''. This is one such occasion. | Now as you know readers, the [[JC]] likes to argue the toss about every little thing, with every little person, any time day or night. Every so often the [[JC]] even finds himself getting in an argument with ''himself''. This is one such occasion. | ||
For | For however odious, however mealy-mouthed, however ''derogative'' of an attorney’s basic professional calling — “[[for the avoidance of doubt]]” ''does'' have a use, and a deliciously subversive one at that. | ||
“[[FTAOD]]” is a dead man’s code: a message in a bottle; a trail of breadcrumbs; a final message to the hereafter from a doomed Tommy on the Front | “[[FTAOD]]” is a dead man’s code: a message in a bottle; a trail of breadcrumbs; a final message to the hereafter from a doomed Tommy on the Front. It is the perishing hope that, perhaps years later, someone might come across it and his labour will not have been in vain. This is [[Private Eagle]]’s last, mud-stained letter to his sweetheart back home, saying “don’t worry, my love: everything will be all right,” the night before he was sent over the top. | ||
How so? Well, cast your mind forward eleven years from the battlefield. The contractual skirmish in which [[Private Eagle]]’s parting shot was fired is but a memory, as is [[Private Eagle]]. The [[contract]] bearing it witness, once executed, was faxed, scanned, crushed, buried in peat, smudged, mislaid, sent by mistake to Colchester and eventually routed to its final resting place deep in an electronic document repository a server somewhere in Gdansk. This is where master contracts go once they have fulfilled their main purpose, which is injecting gravity and commitment to the onboarding ritual. They are sent there in the hope — usually justified, in fairness — they will never again be required. Except, ha ha, in case of catastrophe. | How so? Well, cast your mind forward eleven years from the battlefield. The contractual skirmish in which [[Private Eagle]]’s parting shot was fired is but a memory, as is [[Private Eagle]]. The [[contract]] bearing it witness, once executed, was faxed, scanned, crushed, buried in peat, smudged, mislaid, sent by mistake to Colchester and eventually routed to its final resting place deep in an electronic document repository a server somewhere in Gdansk. This is where master contracts go once they have fulfilled their main purpose, which is injecting gravity and commitment to the onboarding ritual. They are sent there in the hope — usually justified, in fairness — they will never again be required. Except, ha ha, in case of catastrophe. | ||
But a decade on, there is just a catastrophe. The client is in trouble. The [[credit]] team are running around with their hair on fire. Suddenly, everyone up and down the chain of command | But a decade on, there is just such a catastrophe. The client is in trouble. The [[credit]] team are running around with their hair on fire. Suddenly, everyone up and down the chain of command to and including the [[chief risk officer]] is feverishly interested in that contract. They want to know, in forensic detail, with utter [[certainty]] and ''now'', what it ''means''. | ||
The file is retrieved, packaged up and sent to some poor [[legal eagle]]. She must do that analysis, faultlessly and at the double. She must categorically advise that the risk team has the necessary rights to plunge their detonator. Young [[eaglet]] gets out the agreement template, sets it beside the executed document and does her best to compare this smudged, pixelated horror-show against what, according to the playbook, it was meant to say, and would have said, had it been a perfect world. But, [[eheu]]: it is ''not'' a perfect world. It is one inhabited by pettifogging [[buyside counsel]] and customers who like winning points on the docs for the sake of it. There are, accordingly, dozens of textual additions and excisions. | The file is retrieved from Poland, packaged up and sent to some poor [[legal eagle]]. She must do that analysis, faultlessly and at the double. She must categorically advise that the risk team has the necessary rights to plunge their detonator. Young [[eaglet]] gets out the agreement template, sets it beside the executed document and does her best to compare this smudged, pixelated horror-show against what, according to the playbook, it was meant to say, and would have said, had it been a perfect world. But, [[eheu]]: it is ''not'' a perfect world. It is one inhabited by pettifogging [[buyside counsel]] and customers who like winning points on the docs for the sake of it. There are, accordingly, dozens of textual additions and excisions. | ||
Now parsing a mutilated legal text on a good day is a fraught business: that is why lawyers get paid so much. But it is orders of magnitude worse in a crisis. Things that ''look'' straightforward in daylight rear up like hellish stallions in the black night of client distress. Words thrown carelessly into a draft take on a ghoulish aspect. | Now parsing a mutilated legal text on a good day is a fraught business: that is why lawyers get paid so much. But it is orders of magnitude worse in a crisis. Things that ''look'' straightforward in daylight rear up like hellish stallions in the black night of client distress. Words thrown carelessly into a draft take on a ghoulish aspect. | ||