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by pydry 2791 days ago
I worked with some lawyers on some legal (finance based) automation based work and they weren't overtly resistant to automation at all, but it was fairly self evident that they were used to over-complicating everything - e.g. creating legal work to counter entirely hypothetical risks or explaining really simple things in a overly complicated way.

They would habitually take 5 minutes to explain something in a hard to understand way that could be explained in 30 seconds clearly with zero loss of information.

It reminded me of the software engineers I've worked with who manufactured job security with dizzying levels of technical debt.

2 comments

Lawyers may lose their license if their explanations to clients are not complete.

Generally, I find non-lawyers are often lazy, sloppy, or indefinite when speaking or writing. When I was a software engineer I didn't notice it, now I see or hear sloppy/lazy language everywhere and it bugs the crap out of me.

When you're dealing with anything involving more than a few zeroes, those edge cases are the point of hiring lawyers, because those edge cases are usually what lawsuits turn on.

If you don't believe edge cases matter, just ask Cleveland how it feels about losing the (original) Browns...