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Vitamins and painkillers: Difference between revisions

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Vitamins and painkillers (view source)

Revision as of 18:27, 11 January 2024

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'''Vitamins''': Those that prevent problems over the medium to long term.</ol>
'''Vitamins''': Those that prevent problems over the medium to long term.</ol>


This is a threadbare view of the medical profession, let alone the commercial world at large. To indulge what may be just a bad [[metaphor]], it overlooks important medical functions such as, you know, ''diagnosing'' patients and then ''curing'' them.  
This is a threadbare view of the medical profession, let alone the commercial world at large.  


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 substitute for the boring work of living a healthy lifestyle — a vitamin — and overlooking important medical functions such as, you know, ''diagnosing'' and ''curing'' patients seems like the classic legal-tech take.
Still, let us extend what may be just a bad [[metaphor]].
=====Painkillers=====
=====Painkillers=====
{{quote|
{{quote|
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The cynical view — one, by the way, the JC largely shares — is that most sticky legal problems ''aren’t'' all that difficult, addressing not real-world risks, but the interests of legal nest-feathering. Lawyers tell their clients ghost stories and then charge them for formulating outcomes should their phantasmagoric contingencies come about.  
The cynical view — one, by the way, the JC largely shares — is that most sticky legal problems ''aren’t'' all that difficult, addressing not real-world risks, but the interests of legal nest-feathering. Lawyers tell their clients ghost stories and then charge them for formulating outcomes should their phantasmagoric contingencies come about.  


But this being so, the challenge is not “optimising how one caters for absurd outcomes” — any bozo can do that — but demythologising, untangling knotted organisational threads, sorting wheat for chaff, and delivering simple advice that clearly allocates risk and keeps the lawyers out of the picture.
But this being so, the challenge is not “optimising how one caters for absurd outcomes” — any bozo can do that — but demythologising, untangling knotted organisational threads, sorting wheat from chaff and delivering simple advice that clearly allocates risk and ''keeps feather-bedding legal eagles out of the picture''.


Diagnosing this, like chronic vascular disease, is ''hard''. When the patient is a sclerotic institution, forged through countless regrettable mergers, siloed, recombined, spun out, reverse-merged, riven by turf wars, haunted by past catastrophe and silted up with poor practice, bad process and superfluous policy and it presents with persistent a consumptive wheeze, — treating it is even harder.  
Diagnosing this at the best of times is ''hard''. When the patient is a sclerotic institution, forged through countless regrettable mergers, siloed, recombined, spun out, reverse-merged; when it is riven by turf wars, wracked with ancient personal enmities, haunted by past catastrophes; when it silted up with decades of slurry from lackadaisical management, lazy tactics, bad process and superfluous policy — when all presents as persistent consumptive, hacking wheeze  — ''treating'' it is even harder.  


This is no place for bozos who recommend popping a couple of tramadol and calling in the morning.
This is no place for legal ops bozos who recommend popping a couple of tramadol and calling in the morning.


=====Vitamins=====
=====Vitamins=====
{{quote|Most people do not need to take vitamin supplements and can get all the vitamins and minerals they need by eating a healthy, balanced diet.<br>
{{quote|Most people do not need to take vitamin supplements and can get all the vitamins and minerals they need by eating a healthy, balanced diet.<br>
— ''[https://www.nhs.uk/common-health-questions/food-and-diet/do-i-need-vitamin-supplements/ NHS Common Health Questions]''}}
— ''[https://www.nhs.uk/common-health-questions/food-and-diet/do-i-need-vitamin-supplements/ NHS Common Health Questions]''}}
Painkillers have at least make a quick, demonstrable difference. Vitamins are more oblique in their quackery. Their instant appeal is that they ''sound'' technical. Since, by design, they are not ''meant'' to work immediately, there can be no disappointment from the patient when they don’t.
Painkillers, at least, make a quick, demonstrable difference. Vitamins are more oblique in their quackery: the instant appeal is that they ''sound'' technical. Since, by design, vitamins aren’t ''meant'' to work immediately, patients are usually not disappointed when they don’t. This is excellent news for bozo: it gives plenty of time to make good your escape.
 
The beauty of the long timeframe for treatment is its scope for intervening causes: by the time your vitamin “effects” kick in the patient might have mended its dissolute ways, in which case you can take the credit.  


Of course, it is more likely the patient won’t be any better, and may well be worse. Here the time horizon gives plenty of room for (a) responsible legal ops personnel to scarper, and for those who don’t, (b) for alternative causal explanations to intrude. Macro geopolitical events — COVID, Brexit, Ukraine, climate change and so on — are easy to cite and magnificently ''unfalsifiable''.
It offers, too, great scope for intervening causes: by the time the vitamin “effects” kick in, the patient might have mended its dissolute ways by itself, in which case ''you can take the credit''. Magic vitamins!


Again, the real business of achieving the health benefits vitamins supposedly provide is less convenient and less glamorous.  
In the more likely case the patient has got worse, even where you haven’t seized the chance to scarper, time allows alternative causal explanations to intrude. Geopolitical events — COVID, Brexit, Ukraine, climate change and so on — are easy to cite and magnificently unfalsifiable.


Patients don’t want to be told to lay off the booze, cut out the fags, go jogging three times a week eat more vegetables and fewer pies. Nor do clients.
The real business of really causing the kind of benefits vitamins are meant to provide is much more work and much less glamour: No patient wants to be told to lay off the booze, cut out the fags, go jogging and eat more vegetables. This is what prudent counsel recommends.  


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.
{{Sa}}


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.
* [[Legaltechbro|Legaltech bro]]
* [[Legaltech startup]]
* [[Legal operations]]
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