1) It was a mistake and it doesn't go to court.
2) It was intentional and it doesn't go to court because the attorney, while still being a piece of shit, understands what option 3 is.
3) It was intentional, it goes to court, and you produce the email evidence showing the attorney agreed to changeset N then sent along changeset N-1, and the provisions are thrown out because they were executed in bad faith.
Rare, but I've seen it happen.
FWIW I completely agree with both you and OP - it's a totally boneheaded move, but you should never underestimate how boneheaded some people (lawyers in particular) can be.
He didn't pay and promised to sue. His wife was then told that if he sues the kid is out the door. She paid. She never told him. He still thinks "he won". I know many people of all professions can be dicks, but it feels like Lawyers have a greater concentration.
Don’t think about in terms of money, but protection of his fragile ego. In this case, he was enabled by his wife.
I can imagine similar things could have happened in his childhood, people raking for him behind the scenes. (Incredibly entitled behaviour, “rules don’t apply to me”)
Not the law, not what is right or who has been virtuous. Just money. Or more specifically: who has the money.
If you are poor and you sue someone who is rich, they control that outcome. If you are rich and you sue someone who is poor, they (by default) control that outcome; there's nothing there. If you are both poor, a judge will often decide based who looks and sounds the less poor. If you are both rich, then (the equivalent of) actuaries decide the outcome.
Criminal lawsuits are similar. I do not care how much you fuck up in this country; The amount of time you spend in jail will be inversely proportional to the amount of money you can spend to fight it.
It's only the Americans that think they're the center of the world.
I used to watch this Japanese show "Why did you come to Japan?" where a camera crew hangs out at Narita Airport and ambushes unsuspecting foreigners with that question and try to tag along on the journey of people they think are there for an interesting reason. When everyone introduces themselves they say the country they are from, except Americans who always say which state they are from and never the country. I found that particularly interesting. So, I just assume it's a deeply ingrained cultural thing to treat "America as default".
I live in East Asia, which is by no measure a cultural or technological backwater, and was surprised to hear my mother say, two days ago, "you must get YouTube over there...".
For some more perspective, I'm the most successful member of my family (from a financial pov) and from the condo I live in to the car I drive, I have nicer things than my parents ever did. I'm the first in the family -- and this is something I only considered just now -- to sends his kids to a good / expensive private school.
Though I don't lord it over them, my life is way more advanced / cushy than theirs. But from their point of view I'm not in the US and therefore don't have access to what they consider the gold standard of civilization.
And this point of view has not changed even though my parents have experienced my life in Asia first hand. Truly bizarre blind spot.
These days most people just ask if I've eaten a dog.
If it helps, think of every US state as if it was a european country. You might lazily think they are all the same but scratch the surface and there's a lot of difference.
So yeah, its fine for someone to say they're from California. You already know they're from the land of High Fructose Corn Syrup so why be nasty about it?
Compare it to Europe, where a 3 hour drive gives you different food, language, holidays, religion, festivals, type of beer, different political system, different history going back 1000+ years... and another 3 hour drive does it all over again.
Yes, not all of us are in the SF Bay Area, but it's pretty reasonable to assume that most readers are.
Not sure "relocate" is the best word. I've been freelancer for 8 years and one of my client is a YC startup that is and has always been in Paris, France.
See https://www.ycombinator.com/atyc/ "We ask the founders of each startup we fund to move to the Bay Area for the duration of their cycle" and https://www.ycombinator.com/faq/#p3 "Of course, after the 3 month program, you can go wherever you want."
As for your downvoters: plenty of people believe they should downvote when they simply disagree. Others believe that downvoting without a comment is fine. These two groups make HN less interesting.
I actually want to know the reason why. Too many people hide behind a downvote and contribute nothing. Meanwhile they are making interesting posts disappear for no good reason. And other comments that are blatantly rubbish are not touched at all.
Totally agree with you ! But maybe some people misunderstood what you wrote.
I'd rather say that the crowd here is technically fit and policed enough to try to understand elaborate and forward-looking viewpoints, sometimes contrary to the doxa [0]. That makes comment so enjoyable to read. And it's also reassuring, that we can agree on some things on both sides of the planet .
edit : and some people who like to think of themselves as independent thinkers and live in SF by design or accident, will not like to see their opinions qualified as "SF" opinions. Works equally well for any part of the world.
> As for your downvoters
+1. This mechanism is a rather raw moderation system, people will abuse it to disqualify competing stances. There are options to refine it.
But how does a modern, complex and non-homogeneous society aribiter cases without turning "poisonous" or odious to some members?
To my knowledge much of Europe, M.E., Asia and even S. America are composed of largely homogeneous populaces with a smattering of outsiders at best.
There is no perfect society in this regard. Just because it's hard doesn't mean that such societies shouldn't strive to reduce the odiousness, and maximize the fairness in the administration of justice, regardless of the subgroup that the contending parties may belong to. Fair and equal treatment under the eyes of the law is a cornerstone of human rights.
> To my knowledge much of Europe, M.E., Asia and even S. America are composed of largely homogeneous populaces with a smattering of outsiders at best.
You've listed regions that contain some of the most heterogenous countries on earth in ethnicity, language, and culture, like the UK, France, China, India, Iraq, Lebanon, Indonesia, Brazil.
Some of these countries have multiple, sometimes contradictory legal systems, some sanctioned by the state, others by religious power structures.
The country that is often referred to as among the most homogeneous societies in the world, Japan, has a pretty well acknowledged dual justice system for citizens versus visitors. All societies fail at this, but if anything, the very homogeneous societies fail the most at offering equal justice.
Countries with a steady inflow of new migrants of all networths.
Countries that make real attempts to be fair to native born people and outsiders alike.
A country could speak 2 or 3 different languages and still a very largely monocultural way of doing things. Not to cherry pick but do you really think the Yighurs in China get a fair shake in a court? I really want to hear if you've read differently.
A country could have on paper very impressive law frameworks and yet in action be essentially meaningless since most of the population doesnt have access to fair representation.
Not mere grandiose legal frameworks with not an ounce of real world enforcement to back it up or go after bad actors in a legitimate way, without extra legal acts of justice or worse mob justice.
Pretty much any and every country you mentioned fails to meet atleast one or - in most cases - all of the criteria.
Definitely not. Multiethnicity is necessary, but insufficient condition
> Pretty much any and every country you mentioned fails to meet atleast one or - in most cases - all of the criteria.
That's obvious. I didn't say they were perfect, just far from homogeneous. And there's not much to learn from very homogeneous societies in this regard.
The question for the complex heterogeneous societies isn't whether they fail, but rather what direction they are moving in. Arguably both China and the US have moved backwards of late.
I'm sure I can point at legal systems across the globe that have examples of completely terrible injustice.
Which legal system are you referring to that is significantly not "poisonous"? And why?
Most legal systems are broken in some way to some extent. Unfair cases exist because people aren't perfect, make mistakes and/or have agendas.
I'm saying they are not actively poisonous, such as in US. I think it's related to how weaponized the legal system in US is compared anywhere else
Everything you said makes sense if it goes unnoticed until after signing, but I'm less sure about that scenario. Probably varies by jurisdiction, at least when both parties are well-resourced and sophisticated.
That so feels like a mistake because that's the sort of tactic that would completely and utterly remove their capability of ever working as a corporate lawyer ever again for any company.
If that genuinely happened, that lawyer needs to be disbarred, but that's a pretty damn egregious accusation.
Easy to test.
1. Send back the document he sent with a copy of your most recent edits and ask him to confirm if his document is correct.
2. But, make note of at ONE error, and see if he fixes all of them.
3. If he only fixes only the one, then he's either really lazy or trying to keep up the deceit.
4. Repeat steps 1 to 3, be sure to CC everyone involved. If he's lazy he will be ashamed and be more careful. If he's a sneaky bastard he will most likely get angry.
Not foolproof, but will sure make everyone aware of what is going on. (regardless of the motives)
Standing your ground while maintaining a logical and rational approach is the only way to deal with them.
Most of them like a fight, so you simply can't pick one with them.
I remember one time where I was discussing a problem with a manager in another team. Every single email he sent, he CC'd the management 2 levels up. Every single email I sent, I sent directly to him only. My colleague was panicking. He felt that I needed to show my side of the story to upper management or else I would be in trouble.
Eventually the management 2 levels up got frustrated: "Why am I getting all of these emails? Why can't you people sort out this problem yourself?" To which I reasonably replied, "I'm very sorry that you've been bothered, and I'm not sure why this person is being so difficult. Now that you are here, would you mind giving us a hand?" Problem solved.
Thanks for pointing this out.
They are likely to repeat the attempt if they think they can get away with it on you.
I'm betting that, if the lawyer was not acting maliciously, s/he used the wrong version of the document to accept changes.
There are some cases in which granting the benefit of the doubt is too much of a risk to be worth taking.
With a sufficiently big organization, it's common for some sort of higher precedence, non-negotiable appendix to render most of this stuff moot anyway. Corporate attorneys on the sell-side, even at surprisingly big companies frequently screw this up, often when making snide comments through the salespeople.
My buddy tells a story from when he was an SE many years ago and his company's attorneys were going to kill a deal over an NDA requirement. The customer ended up getting them to agree to "blah blah blah, subject to applicable law". One problem: the customer was a city, subject to freedom of information law in that state!
Experienced salespeople usually get it but eye-roll, as they have an incentive to STFU.
The attorney is the expert. I am not. If the attorney makes a mistake, I have no tools with which to judge whether it was stupidity or malice. I have to assume that it's both. My own attorney may better be able to make that assessment, and I'll respect their judgment. But until then, an opposing attorney has to be assumed to have all of the power and every reason to use it.
I was just saying that I tend to err on the side of stupidity. Most people are stupid. Very few are bad actors in their day-to-day lives.
He's an attorney. Contract version control is part of his job. Selectively discarding counterparty edits is blatant.
No, that's basically SOP for big corporate lawyers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_to_moderation
I'm often curious about the relationship between this concept to solipsism.
FWIW My wife and I were negotiating a commercial lease and we always did a diff between what they send back and what we sent them in case they pulled something like that. It may not be malicious (i.e. they updated a wrong version). They had integrity and they didn't do pull any stunts.
In spite of everything everyone on this thread thinks/says, it definitely wasn't an error. I spoke to another third-party vendor (over a beer) who were going through purchasing at the same time as us and he was doing the exact same thing with them.
Even if he is working for the most benevolent & generous of corporations right now, the temptation to switch to a firm or org with a significant to dominant ruthlessness component will always be there.
He was just keeping up his chops.
It's something I probably wouldn't do because the risk is too high, but I wouldn't be quick to assume the contract manager decides on his behavior based on feelings towards new companies.
The cable company’s attorneys changed several provisions that did not show up as redline changes, while intentionally making syntax and grammar errors that did show up as redline changes.
After I left I had a friend ask about the company, because they were about to a deal with them. I gave my honest opinion and suggested they be sure to get any money up front and be very careful to reduce their risk.
There are many points for a small business to tap into one or more of their streams in a way which everybody wins. But this usually requires that no disruption takes place. Without actually adding value (to natural resources) yourself, you are allowed to remove enough value to grow an operation having share price which can outperform the underlying monopoly.
This is a common strategy with oil & chemical companies.
They can also afford to not be a pain or make you wait until the end to be financially worth it.
The first group finds they eventually have to move to get back to progressing in their career (hopefully learning from their mistake). I've known guys who moved and did change, running into them again and finding them to be completely different people, settled into family life, and quite happy. I've known guys who moved and didn't change, found themselves needing to move again in 10 years, all while cursing the world for being against them.
The second group just never progresses in their careers. You see them try to move into positions that seemingly fit such behavior, like "serial entrepreneur" or "SEO consultant". They never really grow, always behaving like they're still in their early 20s. By the time they hit their 40s, they can't pick up chicks at bars anymore and it hits home that they've wasted their life. Unfortunately, I've never met anyone who changed and turned it around.
It does come around. It just takes longer than internet scale time.
No alternative is rare, so the ratio is the interesting measure. (And no, I don't know this one.)
Does it? It seems to have worked for the president of the USA just fine and that was his exact tactic in all of his business "deals".
How sure of that are you? One of the big proponents of this strategy is currently President of the United States.
IME it works only if the party is the only way in town and negotiation is only on scope and price (i.e., the other party cannot take their business elsewhere). Otherwise they get known as "assholes not to deal with" which is a very hard thing to shake off. My 2c.
For lawyers, at least, this might work...once. The second time they try it, you know there'll be no "give" in "give-and-take", so you're not afraid of going in for trench warfare. If they're assholes through-and-through, it's not unheard of for party B to ask party A to switch lawyers.
It's an excessively short-term view of "winning", and it doesn't benefit anybody in the long run.
Source: former corporate lawyer.
It always significantly deteriorated relations with that company. But I guess Americans think that's fine because "it's just business".
I am saying that as an American, one that works in America, and from my subjective experience working in b2b and consulting jobs, the business culture around me is full of contractual bullshit.
If it's not exclusive to America, you should have said "It's standard bullshit"
That's a really prejudiced and unwarranted view of Americans. If anything it says more about your biases and prejudices than it does about one nation.
I am an American citizen so you can take it from an American citizen instead. Companies have zero scruples whatsoever about screwing over others in business.
Then it isn't "standard American bullshit". It's just "standard bullshit".
After seeing it first-hand, I'm noticing this attitude even in fields like global politics, where burning goodwill to gain very minor advantages seems to be the policy these days.
But that's the thing... do you have access to a representative, uniform, random sample of US customers? Do you have a similar sample of customers from other regions to compare against? Are those samples based on your actual data rather than personal anecdotes? Have you eliminated hidden variables that could better explain this behavior than simply the place they are from?
If you answered "no" to any of the above, you're suffering from availability bias.
> After seeing it first-hand, I'm noticing this attitude even in fields like global politics, where burning goodwill to gain very minor advantages seems to be the policy these days.
And that one is called confirmation bias.
Sleezy as this is you wouldn't be able to show damages since you didn't sign the contract. The other lawyer can claim error and the burden of proof would be on you.
If you did accept, then you have a lengthy court battle ahead where a jury could very well rule "abide by the contract you signed you reneging moocher."
The real world isn't a school playground. Calling a teacher over is time consuming and expensive and far from a guarantee of justice. It is up to you to keep yourself safe from assholes like this by always doing your due diligence. Someone who pulls this kind of shit constantly will eventually lose their license, but many years down the road and after many victims.
[https://www.americanbar.org/groups/professional_responsibili...]
If it really was intentional, this very clearly meets the standard, and there's absolutely no requirement that there be damages for the lawyer to be disciplined. I'm not talking about a fraud or malpractice claim, so there's no reason this would involve a lengthy court battle, etc.
Further, Rule 8.3: "(a) A lawyer who knows that another lawyer has committed a violation of the Rules of Professional Conduct that raises a substantial question as to that lawyer's honesty, trustworthiness or fitness as a lawyer in other respects, shall inform the appropriate professional authority."
[https://www.americanbar.org/groups/professional_responsibili...]
Seems to fit as well if the behavior was repeated.
https://www.americanbar.org/groups/professional_responsibili...
> The ABA is not a lawyer disciplinary agency and has no authority to investigate or act upon complaints filed against lawyers. Each state has its own agency that performs that function in regard to lawyers practicing in that state. Locate your state agency from the Directory of State Disciplinary Agencies.
So you're not dealing with the ABA, but the underfunded and understaffed state board.
California's state bar even has a formal opinion calling out this or similar behavior:
"Had Seller’s Attorney intentionally created a defective “redline” to surreptitiously conceal the change to the covenant not to compete, his conduct would constitute deceit, active concealment and possibly fraud, in violation of Seller’s Attorney’s ethical obligations."
[https://www.calbar.ca.gov/Portals/0/documents/ethics/Opinion...]
I was dealing with the same purchasing lawyer on both contracts. The process was super-standard: someone sends a first draft, the other side redlines (proposes changes and makes comments), then the first team redline, etc, at some point you all compromise a bit and someone makes a clean copy of the document containing all the agreed changes for everyone to sign. So we got to the point we had all agreed and the purchasing lawyer on the other side produced the "clean copy" but he obviously thought we were a bunch of rubes so he produced a clean copy for us to sign by backing out all of our changes and only putting in his changes. This is a ridiculously low-integrity bush-league stunt and he did it on the zero-cost POC contract while we were still negotiating the >1m big contract.
Some people just want to win so bad it doesn't even matter to them that they are being total assholes, the prize is zero and it's outright harmful to their own interests. I bet he cheats when playing his own kids at boardgames.