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On 3 Aug 2001, at 10:07, Sandy Sandfort wrote:
> Apparently, James did not understand the thrust of Aimee's post at all. The
> important thing to understand about legal precedents is that they may show a
> TREND in the law. ]
There is a trend to making everything illegal. Your qualifications to read tea leaves
are no better than my own.
By the time "spoilation" reaches the condition that you anticipate, we will not be
hiring lawyers for their knowledge of the law, but for their knowledge of connections.
As everything becomes illegal laws to cease to be laws. Increasingly legislation is
not a rule, but merely a desire, rendering lawyers irrelevant. For example biotech
companies usually do not hire lawyers to deal with the FDA, instead they provide FDA
bureaucrats with girlfriends, "consultancy
payments", and the like, because the FDA does not obey any fixed set of rules or
principles in dealing with biotech companies.
At the company I work for we have a big problem with a piece of legislation whose
meaning is far from clear. Every few lines of this legislation there is reference to
"children", or "the children". My interpretation of this legislation is "We care
very much about children, and we feel so
deeply we are going to bust some internet company for not caring as deeply as we do."
Our company lawyer has no clear interpretation of this legislation, and suspect we
would be a lot safer if we opened direct communications with the bureaucrats charged
with intepreting and applying this
legislation, rather than communicating through someone whose speciality and training
is in finding and making trouble. We need someone whose speciality is being nice,
making friends, and trading favors. Even better would be to do like the biotech
companies, and open communication through a
compliant woman, and throw in a few consultancy fees.
In Mexico, lawyers are fixers, matchmakers that guide your bribes into the right
pockets. The time is coming for American lawyers to stop pontificating about the law
and make the same transition.
--digsig
James A. Donald
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