Eight words that should be banned from the English language-at least when used in combination with one another. I was thinking about this post from Michelle Golden’s Golden Practices blog, when it hit me. BAM!!! Well, not really a BAM, but more a gentle reminder that these words and the mentality they represent should be the bane of every lawyer, but certainly of every inhouse lawyer. Why?
Good question. Here’s the answer. The world and everything about it is changing so much and so fast that ‘the way its been done before” is now frequently the wrong way, or at least an ineffective way. But even if TWIBDB is the right way, it ought to be done that way because fresh thinking yielded that conclusion-its a bad default position.
The problem is particularly acute among lawyers. If ever there was a profession made up of people who are generally change resistant, it has to be the legal profession. Stare decisis, precedent, chain cites and all that rubbish, don’t you know. I wish I had an antidote.
Come to think of it, while I don’t have it, there is an antidote. Inhouse counsel have it. You use it when you make hiring decisions. Stop hiring people who limit their thinking, who start off pleadings with “Comes Now Your Plaintiff” or other such gibberish (a personal pet peeve), who worry about being right all the time and are unwilling to float outrageous ideas. If inhouse counsel did that, all sorts of creative minds would waken from career-long hibernation.