Sometimes justice and a good result don't require a lawyer

When you’re highly trained in one area and spend most of your life focussing on that way of thinking you can end up forgetting what else counts in life.

Take law for instance. A lawyer has not just studied the law in [...]]]>  

Sometimes justice and a good result don't require a lawyer

When you’re highly trained in one area and spend most of your life focussing on that way of thinking you can end up forgetting what else counts in life.

Take law for instance. A lawyer has not just studied the law in depth but has also been soaked in the legal world view. What do I mean by that? I’m not suggesting I fully understand how lawyers think, and certainly not that all lawyers are the same, but here is one of the messages that has come across from my experiences with them:

If you don’t word a contract exactly right then you’re at serious risk of losing out or being sued, and you need a lawyer whose expertise is in the right area to check the contract for you.

Let’s examine what’s being said here. If a contract is sloppily worded then there is a possibility that someone will try to use the law to take unfair advantage. Fair enough, but how likely is this? Well, says the legal guy, it’s possible so you must be ready. Well, says the average guy, the contract looks okay to me and I really can’t afford a lawyer. In fact not only can’t I afford it, but when I tried to get a quote every legal practice I contacted said they didn’t have a specialist in that area. Also, I wanted to get the contract signed, and the other party threatened to withdraw if I didn’t get on with it.

Contracts are like taking school kids rock climbing. You do a risk assessment. You do this loosely in your head based on training and experience. Or these days you probably do it in writing in far more detail than is needed because you’re scared some nit-picking lawyer will catch you out in court if an accident happens.

(Note to ambulance-chasing lawyers: accidents do happen. It’s life. There is not always someone to blame. And if there’s no permanent damage then get a life and stop fussing.)

The idea of ’written risk assesments’ moves us towards my point. You don’t just look at what might happen (one of the kids might fall off the cliff and die). You also look at how likely that result is (given my training and experience virtually impossible), and then you sort of multiply the two numbers together. Probability is already a number between 0 and 1 (or it is if you understand maths enough). Just express the seriousness of the possible result as a similar number, between 0 and 1 too.

Kid falls of cliff and dies: seriousness = 1 (ie to the non mathematical 100%)

Likelihood of this happening: probability = 0.000001 (ie to same 1 in a million – conservative estimate)

Multiply the two together and you get total risk = 0.000001, which is a very small result. Conclusion, the risk is very low indeed. Playing rugby for the school is far more dangerous. Let’s climb.

OK, now to apply that to consulting a lawyer over a contract.

Estimated problem to me if the contract’s faulty against me: seriousness = 0.4 (which is significant)

Likelihood of this happening: probability = 0.001 (I’m estimating one in a thousand contracts cause major problems)

Multiply them: total risk = 0.0004 (which is 4 in 10,000, a lot better than my chances of dying from swine flu)

No problem. I want to have a friendly, trusting relationship with the other person involved with the contract. I’m signing. If we find there’s a fault in the contract then we’ll almost certainly just agree to either ignore the problem or modify the contract. We’re okay.

Trouble is that most lawyers will only see the seriousness value, and not do the maths. That seems to be the way they’re trained.

And yes, I am expecting a rapid response from commenter Chris. (He gets this blog on RSS feed, and is the first person I consulted a while back about a contract. Smile Chris )

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