Or startups could just hire him as their lawyer. Parse did and they are happy customers.

I did as well, and I found Grellas and his team to be fantastic to work with. I probably owe it to him to submit a more thoughtful, in-depth write-up.

Those of us now shackled to a different team of lawyers will have to make due with tokens of our appreciation. :)

The point of non-mandatory tipping though is that it feels good for both the sender and the receiver. It gives the sender the warm fuzzies for giving even a trivial amount, and the receiver gets a concrete demonstration that their efforts are appreciated. Hiring someone to do a job certainly pays better, but its transactional nature negates the mutual emotional benefit of a token of appreciation freely given.

I don't have the reference (or a link) but I remember pretty clearly that (might have been Cialdini or similar) a principal where attorneys would do for free what they wouldn't do for, say, $50 per hour.

As an example I serve on the board of a condo and I'm paid $0. Most likely if I was told I would be given $25 for every meeting I would think "my time is worth more than that" and it would actually be a negative (figures arbitrary.)

As soon as you bring compensation into the equation, people measure it against what they expect they should be compensated.

I saw a thread on reddit earlier discussing Dennis Rodman's entreaty for Kim Jong Un to "do him a solid" and release the American who was arrested for photographing homeless children in North Korea. One of the commenters argued that this actually could work, due to the Korean principle of "Jeong", or helping out friends simply for the sake of helping. An appeal to Kim's rational best interests would be measured against his own appraisal thereof, but a personal request from a friendly acquaintance doesn't carry with it that baggage of zero-sum gamesmanship, and so is more likely to be heeded. It was an interesting argument, and I certainly don't think the concept is limited to Koreans.

""do him a solid""

"or helping out friends simply for the sake of helping"

To expand on this and bring in the theory of reciprocity to the discussion. By doing the solid for Rodman, Kim Jong Un gets access also to something money or power can't buy that he may want going forward (other american basketball players).

But here's an interesting thing that I have learned over time about doing "solids" for people. You have to cash in the solid rather quickly in general. That small thing [1] that you helped someone out with 10 years ago isn't as likely to get you a return favor as something you did two weeks ago.

I'm trying right now to get something that <large co you've heard of and most certainly use> controls that money can't buy because they don't need money. So I'm working another angle whereby I try to find something that someone else needs that has some influence over them to get them to give me what I want in exchange for the favor that the party that has the influence wants. I suspect that when Bill Clinton tried to get Led Zepelin to play the concert he might have succeeded if there was something that the group needed that he could help out with. (Say theoretically an issue that access to key legislators could help with.)

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/bill_failed_zep_lomacy_ow...

[1] Meaning you didn't save someone's life I'm not sure how this would apply to Rodman and hostages it's all a matter of situation and degree.

> The point of non-mandatory tipping though is that it feels good for both the sender and the receiver. It gives the sender the warm fuzzies for giving even a trivial amount, and the receiver gets a concrete demonstration that their efforts are appreciated.

Note, though, that for tipping systems where the tip is not cash or something reasonably equivalent to cash, the receiver might find the tip annoying.

For instance, I would overall be unhappy if someone on Reddit gave me Reddit Gold. Sure, I'd be flattered that they liked my comment enough to want to reward me, but I've looked at Gold and did not really see anything in it that I was interested in. I'd certainly get much less out of Gold than the giver thought I'd get, and I'd end up feeling that I had just wasted their gift, and I'd feel bad. I actually wish Reddit had an option one could set to disable the ability of one's account to be given Gold.

PlanGrid did as well! Highly recommended.

Grellas has been our lawyer since 2008, we also highly recommend.

Same here!

I'd throw in .01 or .02 BTC (what are we to call these, Bitcents?) for that, I tried to read the complaint but simply don't know enough about law, especially CA law, to interpret this until I read his comment. HN's greatest attribute is the wealth of experts in different fields that are here to help elucidate these complicated things for we the confused.

I believe the preferred naming for 0.01 BTC is a Satoshi [1]. They were named such to honour the author of the original paper.

[1] Third sentence: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin

0.01 BTC is in fact a bitcent, and a Satoshi is much smaller (0.00000001 BTC)

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/FAQ#What_do_I_call_the_various_de...

Thank you for clarifying that. My mistake!

Round two!

A Satoshi is defined as 10 ^ -8 BTC. Actually, it's more accurate to say that a Bitcoin is defined as 10^8 Satoshis, as the Satoshi is the actual atomic unit of exchange.

Ahh thank you for clarifying that. My mistake.

The sidebar on the right mentions that a Satoshi is actually 0.00000001 BTC

Thank you. Round 3 =]