Reason #177 Why I Dislike Lawyers

March 12, 2009

The recent Skype announcement reminded me why I dislike lawyers.

I will keep my rant short.

In a past life, I worked for a company negotiating on their behalf the first open API license known to mankind. It proved to be a pretty good idea and it created a win-win for my company and the computer manufacturer.

I worked with an in-house attorney to draft the legal documents and along the way, in layman’s terms; he came to understand the importance of API. He saw that what we asked for in the deal was good for our business, as it protected us from forced obsolescence.

About 18 months later, our in-house attorney wrote an article published in a well-known Law Journal. The topic? You guessed it: Structuring API agreements to avoid application software obsolescence.

Here is what I leave you with…do you suppose there was any mention of the intellectual contributions of the rest of the company employees? Even in a footnote?

What he did was ethically wrong, but he was coming at it from the legal standpoint of what he could get credit for.

And that’s wrong with lawyers.

Written by Dave Rusin - Telecom Executive
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