Enough said: George Wilkinson's blog
"Sometimes I sits and thinks, and then again I just sits"
My current transaction has been brightened (is that the right word?) by this email exchange. The context is the tabling of documents at the completion board meeting, and how to record this in the minutes.
Me: documents are usually “produced to the meeting” not “reproduced to the meeting”.
Reply: the documents were produced at minute 4 and are merely produced a second time when being considered individually (hence “reproduced”).
You couldn’t make it up if you tried!
More posts in the world of blawgs, particularly Never mind the billables by Jordan Furlong in Law 21, following the article Killable hour in the latest Economist. Regular readers of this blog will know that selling time is one of my pet hates.
Furlong puts it very well in his post,
Your client doesn’t care how much profit you make for yourself; the client only cares that you delivered excellent value in a cost-effective (to the client) manner. How you bill your services is between you and your client; how much it costs you to deliver those services has to be your number-one business priority.
Selling time is the antithesis of selling value. Read Stefan Stern’s article Focus on value or pay the price in the FT (now some three months old). I liked his closing paragraph,
But for most businesses protecting margins in the next few months is going to prove extremely difficult. Cynics, Oscar Wilde once said, know “the price of everything but the value of nothing”. You know things are tough when the cynics don’t know the price either.
Notwithstanding my injunction to cultivate a habit of optimism, the legal press continues to provide some element of corrective. It is some comfort, though not a lot, to know that lawyers across the piece are having the same problems, contemplating the same actions, and, quite possibly, making the same mistakes.
A sobering article in the FT last month, Redundancy and the threat of a great depression, caught my eye, and in particular the section on employees having to take on an increased workload. Now I have colleagues who think that this is no bad thing, but . . .
The potential for working harder, he [William Shanahan, medical director and lead addictions psychiatrist at Capio Nightingale Hospital] says, is exacerbated by technology: “BlackBerries and mobile phones mean that people are not managing their time well. They cannot relax even on a holiday, which can create problems with families.”
Managing time well is itself one more pressure on lawyers. It is one most of live with and, by and large, we learn how best to do it. It is, however, not just working harder, but also finding yourself with little or no work – and more time than usual. Having said that, writing this post is one way of dealing with the delay in replies from two of my clients on transactions where there is nothing more I can do until I hear from them further.
It is all too easy for lawyers in the West to be oblivious to the fact that the access to justice and the rule of law that, by and large, we enjoy in the Western democracies are not available to millions of our fellow citizens elsewhere in the world. With the Beijing Olympics now little over a fortnight away, Jamil Anderlini’s article in FT.com, Rewards and risks of a career in the legal system, offered a corrective to our all too often blinkered outlook.
In it he highlights the position in China, contrasting the very different professional experiences of Teng Biao, an activist lawyer on the outskirts of Beijing, and Tao Jingzhou, a partner in Jones Day’s Beijing office.
The realities of living in a totalitarian state also lend uncertainty to the legal system. Opportunities abound for powerful individuals to intervene, says He Weifeng, an outspoken legal professor at Peking University. “Actually, there is no real legal system in the western sense in China,” he declares.
Enforcement of existing legislation is often lax – something that becomes apparent when you compare China’s excellent environmental laws with the reality outside the window or read the country’s constitution, which guarantees all citizens freedom of religion, freedom of speech and freedom of political association. In criminal cases and high-profile civil cases, political interference is rife, while in smaller cases bribing judges and prosecutors is the norm.
“The biggest problem with China’s legal system is that politics and the law are not separate,” says Mr Teng. “An independent judiciary is not possible under the current system because the law is regarded as a tool to serve the party.”
Lucy Kellaway’s Monday column in the FT always brightens up the start of the week. This week she ended with Words to the wise, ‘the sinister things that people say to each other in offices – the little phrases that look perfectly innocent but are actually toxic’.
I liked in particular
“We haven’t made any final decision about this.” This means we have made a final decision and you aren’t going to like it. An alternative, even more sinister variation is “We want to consult you about some possible changes . . . “
Given the reports about the travails of Bevan Brittan in both Thelawyer.com and Legalweek.com, one wonders which of the two phrases was used when the men in grey suits walked in to Stuart Whitfield’s office last week?
Enough said: George Wilkinson's blog 