STRATEGIES FOR FIGURING OUT WHAT IT IS THEY'RE DOING
Many of your clients are out there competing in the steeplechase, ignoring risks at breakneck speed. If their horse lands on them, it does not much matter that they are wearing their helmet: they're likely to get crushed. Meanwhile they are very determined not to tell you exactly what they're doing, lest you say "no"--and if you are outside counsel, lest you start billing them by the hour. Meanwhile, most of your contacts within the corporate client are safely siloed in little boxes. A lot of complexity they may well miss, say for instance, the unexpected future economic consequences of trying to lay off staff at that subsidiary they are planning to start in France. Or they fail to understand that the collaboration they have planned will leave them with no ability to patent the intellectual property and thus no means of turning the costs they are sinking daily into future profits. They're apt to say, "Oh, you're the lawyer, you'll think of a way to do it later." Well, from day to day, option to option, they're busy generating bad facts, and you will have to think of a way to get through to these people before bad facts can swallow them--even as they hide out from you and in-house counsel.
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