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Okay, let's say you're a judge and you get a commercial real estate case in Boston Massachusetts, in which the defendant broke their lease early and is refusing to pay a pro-rated lease break fee in their contract on the grounds that it's unreasonable and violates established precedent. The plaintiff argues that the defendant signed the contract, knew what they were getting into, and needs to pay the fee. You discover that the plaintiff has not made any effort to find new tenants and has not listed the building as being available, and has not fulfilled their "duty to mitigate." You discover that some portion of the defendants precedent is based on residential, not commercial cases. What other questions do you ask? Should the landlord be allowed to charge any lease break fee, or write any penalties into the contract that they want? What if the lease is a 5 year term, the lessee broke the lease in the first 6 months, the lease break fee is the remainder of the 5 year term, and the landlord found a new tenant within a month of the old one leaving? These are the sorts of cases that judges rule on all the time. There may be no clear "right and wrong" where you can sort of go "Oh yeah, clearly, that's illegal and the harm lies here, and your evidence sucks, and so my ruling is this" The cases may involve layers upon layers of state and local laws, and precedent going decades back -- for good reason. I would argue that someone who wasn't trained in "the law" wouldn't be able to _consistently_ ask the right questions and evaluate each party's argument appropriately. Do residential landlord/tenant laws apply to commercial cases? Does the landlord have a duty to mitigate in this situation? How many rights are people allowed to "sign away" in a contract, and which rights are protected? Is the harm to the tenant weighed appropriately against the harm to the landlord within the boundaries established by law? I consider myself to be a pretty logical and rigorous thinker, but I certainly wouldn't be confident in my ability to correctly and efficiently handle cases like this, and ask the right questions, day in and day out. Sure, maybe spend a week of research and get back to you, but if you're seeing multiple cases a day? Forget about it. |