You know how I know that? Because if I was more mature, I would not be sitting here telling you about how I had breakfast yesterday with a client and his girlfriend. I would certainly not tell you that the girlfriend has been featured a couple of times in Playboy (Brazil) and was on the cover of Playboy (Italy). Nope, I would not tell you about that at all. By the way, she was, in addition to being gorgeous, a delightful and lovely person.

I was the only man in the room who did not look when she got up to go the bathroom -- I kept my eyes firmly fixed on my client's face. That said, I did happen to be behind her as we walked out of the restaurant.

Some days, I love my job.

Posted by: Random Penseur at 10:24 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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An article in the NY Law Journal (a must read for everyone, I know) caught my eye a moment ago. A lawfirm filed a preemptive lawsuit against a former employee, a secretary, who has threatened to bring a $9 million sexual harassment suit. The lawfirm/plaintiff denies that she was raped but admits that she gave a partner a "consensual lap dance" in the privacy of his office.

Consensual lap dance. In his office. The lucky recipient has been practicing for 32 years and is a former assistant district attorney. Old enough to know better, you see.

When you hire a lawyer, you want someone with good judgment. Not someone getting free lap dances from the staff.

You cannot make this stuff up.

Posted by: Random Penseur at 10:25 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Let's say you worked your butt off on a set of motions in a case that is now something like 19 years old. The motions were marked submitted by the judge back in May or June. It is now December. You have not heard anything about the motions. Indeed, you have practically forgotten about the entire existence of the case, not just the motions. Then, it is 1:00. You get a call from the Part Clerk saying that the judge wants all the lawyers to come in at 9:30 tomorrow morning. When you ask why, you get the impression that the Part Clerk has no idea but is merely speculating when she tells you that "there are motions outstanding and maybe the judge has some questions".

Hit the panic button. Run around like an idiot for a half an hour. Now, pull the huge stack of papers you have on this case and try to prepare yourself for whatever the judge might be wondering about since he got the papers back in the spring.

Pat, Vanna, I would like to buy a clue, please.

Posted by: Random Penseur at 01:35 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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1 I can't give you a clue, but since I played the role of Howie Mandel at this year's Christmas party, I can give you a shiny briefcase. Hope it went well...

Posted by: Howard at December 10, 2007 04:50 PM (u2JaN)

2 Well? Did you win or what? Don't keep us in suspense.

Posted by: Kathy at December 11, 2007 12:10 PM (7f9Tx)

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One of my partners is withdrawing from the firm. This happens pretty regularly at big firms but it doesn't happen everyday at smaller firms, much less at small firms like ours. In one way or another, this partner has been associated professionally with the firm for at least 25 years. The other partners are hashing out the terms of his amicable departure in the conference room across the hall from my office. I am not attending this conference, I am happy to report. Just because I never liked the guy doesn't mean I am sorry that he is leaving -- I am, kind of.

I imagine things are going to be unsettled around here for a bit.

This is, or was, a rather intimate relationship in a small firm. When someone leaves, it changes the dynamics substantially. In a big firm, you're really just another number. In a small firm, you are a person.

We are now one person less.

Posted by: Random Penseur at 12:50 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Getting retained on a $100 million piece of business creates, without question, an observable halo effect -- it makes you, the guy who got retained, look beautiful to other potential clients. No question about it.

I told one father at a birthday party I took the Boy Child to on Sunday that I got retained on Friday on a $100 million dollar deal gone bad and the next thing I knew, I was being quizzed about my experience defending sexual harassment cases in the financial products industry (the answer was not only yes but I was able to talk intelligently about a Court of Appeals -- NY's highest Court -- decision that came down on Friday right on topic). We're having lunch soon.

I told another guy about this retention in the gym this morning and I was asked about my experience doing employment law. I have a lot. I am about to get retained to handle a problem for him at his shop and he wants to pass my information along to a buddy of his.

There appears to be a lot of reflected light an attorney can bask in as shed by $100 million. A lot of light indeed. I just didn't realize it. Now, honestly, that I am alert to it, I will be trying to work it into conversation wherever I can do it without looking like I'm pushing. Well worth giving up my Saturday, now that I think about it.

Posted by: Random Penseur at 08:30 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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1 It seems your few hours on Saturday have been a profitable investment indeed. BTW, finessing that $100M case into a conversation is an art you have obviously mastered.

Posted by: Michele at April 02, 2007 11:40 PM (xerWZ)

2 OK, so now maybe the mail position doesn't look so good.

Posted by: Monica C. at April 05, 2007 05:42 PM (PaLQU)

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Well, it is Saturday morning and here I am at my desk. Taking a quick second between emails with a client. He retained us (me) yesterday after receiving a notice from his lender that things were not going well with his $100 million loan. He (my client) also signed, I am so sorry to say, a personal guaranty on that $100 million loan. The collateral securing the loan may be, shall we say, impaired in terms of value. I don't want to say that the loan is upside down. Yet. But I spent the entire day yesterday plowing through several 100 plus page loan agreements. There is nothing more byzantine, and deliberately so, than a commercial loan agreement. Also, probably, nothing as restrictive and cumbersome and burdensome and odious. Scary stuff, really.

I printed out all of the documents (as far as I know) associated with the loan transaction. They have covered the surface of a conference table that can seat about 18 people.

I am alone in the office today trying to determine, under some pressure, what wiggle room my client has, if any.

Yup, days like this, when I have a client with a huge problem, a conference room table full of 100 plus page documents, a headache, and I cannot find an out for him, are days I dislike my job. I would be happier if I could find just a little out. A teeny little mistake made by the drafter of the loan documents. It don't look good. For him or for me today.

Hasta.

Posted by: Random Penseur at 09:26 AM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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and the briefs, notices of motion, affirmations in support, volumes of exhibits, and the request for judicial intervention are all then going to be bound. The briefs (not very brief) total over 70 pages. This project has consumed my professional life for over a month. That's what happens when you come into a 20 year piece of litigation completely cold on the facts and the prior proceedings and those prior proceedings include at least two appellate decisions.

I think that the papers are pretty good. I think that some of the arguments are going to give the other side fits.

But here's the thing. I have been running so hard and so long on adrenalin that I feel drained and let down now that the papers are ready to be served. Anyone else get like that at the end of an intense project?

Posted by: Random Penseur at 11:09 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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Don't ask, please, what I was researching earlier this week when I discovered that while NY Law prohibits messing about with explosives and explosive gasses, the following exception applies:

This provision is not to be construed to prohibit or forbid the manufacture and sale of soda water, Seltzer water, ginger ale, carbonic or mineral water, or the charging with liquid carbonic acid gas of such waters or ordinary waters, or of beer, wines, ales, or other malt and vinous beverages in such cellar, room, or apartment of a tenement or dwelling house, or any building occupied in whole or in part by persons or families for living purposes.

Seriously, thank goodness, can you imagine NY without a seltzer bottle?

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Easy.

Have a senior partner call you and say: "Excuse me but I was reviewing this draft complaint and I noticed that these transactions go back to August of 1999. Do we have a statute of limitations problem?"

GULP. "Um, boss, er, uh. [pause to think for a second] What case are you talking about?"

"Oh, sorry. Rang the wrong guy"

Right. Thanks. Put heart back in chest.

Posted by: Random Penseur at 03:44 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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1 Ouch. At least it was the wrong guy. You'll recover, sure it'll take several adult beverages, but you'll recover. The other guy, possibly not so much.

Posted by: phin at July 27, 2006 03:55 PM (X42kM)

2 Good to see that your stress level is staying at a nice, even keel...

Posted by: TeaFizz at July 27, 2006 06:26 PM (n8Etn)

3 hope you're fully recovered!

Posted by: michele at July 29, 2006 08:10 AM (oeZuZ)

4 Anything to make a lawyer's heart stop is a good thing. The less, the better.

Posted by: Shawn at July 29, 2006 02:28 PM (1nHnP)

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So, we get there for our inquest. Legal bags full of important legally looking documents with captions and pretty backers, folders full of urgently yellowed research with cryptic notes at the tops of pages [note to self: in about a month, try to remember that the notation "punis" refers to punitive damages and is not a word coined to describe a judge as being a small penis (wonder what kind of google searches this one is going to pick up!)]. All dressed up, polished up for the inquest.

The judge's courtroom deputy looks at us and says, "uh, you guys have witnesses to put on? Live testimony?" And we say, "well, yeah". "Oh", says he, and "I'm going to have to reschedule you until September". "Oh", says we. And then "shit".

The good news is that nice pre-judgment interest keeps acruing at 9%.

And the defendant, in the hallway, acted like such a jerk that when I got back to the office I wrote to the Court to request an emergency conference to discuss how to guarantee my and my client's personal safety.

Yup, a real interesting day.

Posted by: Random Penseur at 03:39 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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I sit here finishing up my opening statement to the Court for an inquest on damages. An inquest is simply a trial where liability has already been proven and the Court is going to determine how much money it is going to cost the defendant. I am happy to be representing the plaintiff on this one. This inquest, this mini-trial, has been all me. I have had zero help from day one on this case, from the initial interview with the client through right now as I ready myself for the conclusion. No doubt, I will be opposing the appeal, too. I am feeling a little like how a sole practioner must feel. The only scary thing about it is that I worry that I am missing something big. Hence my taking a moment to write about it so as to either purge the feeling or prefigure the result.

Hopefully, I will return from this with a nice big judgment for my client. If not, well, it won't be because I didn't try hard enough.

This case, by the way, is responsible for the paucity of posting of late.

Posted by: Random Penseur at 05:54 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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I defended a deposition in the afternoon, yesterday. It is a small case involving commissions owed to a former salesperson for a major media company here in NYC. The deposition was taken at the offices of the defendant's attorneys located in the same building as the company. While I was waiting for my habitually late client to show, we were meeting in the lobby, I was treated to a display of young models signing in for a cattle call upstairs. All young, all trying to look young while still looking world weary and sophisticated, all bravely clutching their portfolios. Nice way to pass the time. The only thing that distracted me from the parade was the vision of the New York City tow truck towing a quarter of a million dollar new Bentley coupe. Ouch. That's gotta hurt.

Anyway, client arrives (late but not too late) and deposition commences.

The lawyer for the defendant was really pretty bad at this. She asked lots of circular questions, lots of questions attempting to restate my client's previous testimony (and by previous I mean from 5 minutes ago), lots of questions assuming facts not in evidence, lots of questions which were irrelevant and dealt not at all with the complaint or her client's affirmative defenses. I objected a lot. I was forced to. All to the form of the question. I doubt that much of what she asked will be admissible. Oh, and don't get me started on the marking of exhibits.

Well, you had to go and get me started, didn't you?

Exhibits and documents, same thing sometimes, get marked at deposition and questions are asked about them. Experienced and careful attorneys understand how crucial it is to examine on documents in such a way as to authenticate them and make them admissible for trial or for summary judgment later. Why summary judgment? Well, lots of times lawyers forget that a summary judgment motion has to be made on admissible evidence. I regularly can knock out parts of other attorneys' summary judgment motions by attacking the admissibility of the evidence. Judges love to be reminded of stuff like that. If you don't lay a foundation for the admissibility of your evidence at deposition, you are in big trouble later. You should only have to make that mistake once in your career before you never make it again.

This attorney has not had that experience, I guess. She laid no foundation for her documents. She may have some trouble later. Oh, and without a foundation, I'm going to move to strike whatever testimony she got from my witness with regard to any particular inadmissible document.

Anyway, my favorite objection of the afternoon:

Examining Attorney ("EA"): Now, is it my understanding that you did the following thing after your termination meeting?

Me: Objection, instruct the witness not to answer the question. [By the way, that instruction may not have really been totally proper, but still, I did it anyway]

EA: What! How can you instruct her not to answer? What is the basis?

Me: I thought you said you didn't want speaking objections. Now you want me to explain?

EA: Yes.

Me: Ok. Your question didn't just call for the witness to testify to the operation of another's mind, it called for her to testify to the operation of your mind! Totally improper. You want to restate the question?

EA: No. The question was fine. I want to take a break.

*break taken, EA leaves room*

Court Reporter to me: You were right. That was a totally fucked up question.

The whole deposition was kind of a waste, really. Let's just say that at the conclusion, we had some meaningful settlement talks.

Posted by: Random Penseur at 12:59 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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Some day, I intend to look back at the last several days and laugh. Probably not for a really long time, mind you, but one day. Stands to reason, right? I mean, it kind of has to be that way. If not, I will be very sorry indeed.

Anyway, a bright spot on the horizon. I am off to have dinner with Simon, that exceptionally smart, erudite and all around good guy from Hong Kong. We're off for Austrian food way downtown. I'm very much looking forward to this and have been for weeks. And right now, at least, it looks as if I will not have to cancel on him, which is nice since he came all this way. Anyway, I'm pretty excited.

Finally, in lieu of any other post today, I will leave you with the words of the Girl Child from this weekend informing her mother and me about her plans for the future:

GC: When I grow up, I want to be a ballerina and a butterfly. The only problem is that I don't know how to make a cocoon.

Posted by: Random Penseur at 05:09 PM | Comments (8) | Add Comment
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Some friends have checked back in to see if I updated from the Bay Day post of Thursday. I would have, but I didn't feel like whining. So, instead, I opted not to post. Let me just note that Friday was actually worse than Thursday. I was actually despondent, a word I do not use lightly. Indeed, I actually, in the little cracks of time I could find, managed to get out 6-8 job applications to places all over the country -- Phoenix; San Diego; and at least one or two other places I can no longer recall. May have been an act of desperation, beats me. I am not going to examine it too deeply or too closely. Instead, I'm just going to roll with the punches and see what happens.

I think I'll know better by Monday end of day or Tuesday morning how its gonna shake out. Right now, I guess it could go either way.

Anyway, thanks for caring enough to check in and request an update.

Posted by: Random Penseur at 09:16 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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Expect no posts today.

Having one of those bad days with respect to a case I have an emergency in wherein one alternates between vertigoes feelings of despair, complete with desire to vomit and feelings that legal research reveals a glimmer of hope through which the needle can be threaded, the rocks and shoals successfully navigated, and the ship brought home safely without foundering on issues better left to the imagination.

I think I want a new career. Just saying.

Posted by: Random Penseur at 01:00 PM | Comments (8) | Add Comment
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My desk is a lovely shade of reddish/brownish wood. I had forgotten it was so lovely. It only took just under five hours today to clean it up enough for me to see it again. Also, while on the subject of good news, I do not appear to to have buried anything of a time critical nature such that I have defaulted on something, let a statute of limitations run, missed an important deadline, or otherwise committed malpractice per se. That's always the really big risk with having a messy, messy desk.

Yup, looking mighty shiny and clean in here today. I can practically see my reflection in the surface of the desk.

What the hell. Beats working!

Posted by: Random Penseur at 04:24 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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Thanks to some guy in Missouri, vicarious liability is dead in NY. Vicarious liability ("VL") is a really interesting concept. It has to do with ownership of a conveyance -- a motor vehicle now but a carriage before. VL means that liability for the damage caused by the motor vehicle is imputed to the owner of the vehicle and not merely the operator. This meant that car companies were on the hook if a leased car got into an accident. NY was one of the only states with this law.

VL dated back quite some time and came into being when horse and carriage travel was popular. It made a lot of sense. Horses and carriages were very expensive things but they were generally driven not by the owners but by a poor and poorly compensated carriage driver. If the driver hurt someone, there was no recourse. So the NY State Legislature provided recourse to the owner of the horse and carriage, generally a person of substance.

The concept was simply carried forward to motor vehicles later.

At the time, it seems to me that VL was not particularly revolutionary. I recall from my days studying Roman Law (literally, the laws and legal system of Rome and the Roman Empire) that it provided for VL. If you threw something out of a rented apartment and hurt someone, the injured person had recourse against the owner of the apartment building, whether or not the owner had anything to do with throwing the object out the window. VL, no?

However, VL in NY has made leasing cars very, very expensive and caused all sorts of havoc in terms of insurance and in terms of indemnification of the car companies by the lessee. I know because I got involved in one of the cases once. Went all the way to the Appellate Division where we lost.

Representative Sam Graves, put an unexpected end to the issue.

The provision is in the federal transportation bill under "Title X: Miscellaneous Provisions." It states that people who rent or lease motor vehicles to others "shall not be held liable under the law of any state" for any harm their vehicles cause, as long as they are not guilty of "negligence or criminal wrongdoing."

Representative Graves's amendment passed the House in March by a vote of 218 to 201, mostly along party lines, and it stayed in the bill through the conference committee process. When the full bill went to a vote, it passed overwhelmingly, because it included billions of dollars of spending on transportation projects that lawmakers in both parties wanted for their districts.

If the president signs the bill, officials said, the federal law will take precedence, and New York's vicarious liability law will no longer apply.

No matter what you think of VL, it was the law of NY and has been hotly debated, again and again in the Legislature. For some schmuck from Missouri to come in and change NY law is, to me, an abuse of the federal system. I may not have liked the law, but I resent like hell this hick coming in and usurping the powers granted to the dysfunctional NY State Legislature by the equally dysfunctional citizens of the State of NY.

Posted by: Random Penseur at 10:30 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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Sometimes I am amused by my colleagues, all of whom are wicked smart. Here is the comment made by one of the senior guys when he changed a "will" in a letter I drafted to a "should".

I want it to be unclear whether it is "should" in the normative sense or "should" in the predictive sense.

Are we all clear?

I walked out of his office with a small smile on my face. The games we lawyers play sometimes.

Posted by: Random Penseur at 03:44 PM | Comments (9) | Add Comment
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1 Heya lawyerman This is off topic but what do you think about this ruling in Connecticut about the Supreme Court ruling 5-4 in favor of eminent domain, favoring the Pfizer corporation? Worldchanging.com - Land rights hits home

Posted by: Oorgo at June 23, 2005 05:31 PM (lM0qs)

2 Wicked smart or just wicked? (Certainly elegant.) If it were a contract, no doubt it should (normatively and predictively) also be armed with the clause that suspends the interpretive rule of ambiguities being construed against the drafter. Only a lawyer would, indeed...cheers.

Posted by: Chan S. at June 23, 2005 06:02 PM (7kycG)

3 Oh, you whacky lawyers and your knee-slapping sense of humour!!!! I am not ashamed to admit that I don't get the joke. Would you like to hear a construction-oriented joke? Liuke the one about the guy who ordered Low-E glass instead of regular glass in his windows? It's a real scream!!!

Posted by: Mark at June 23, 2005 10:20 PM (eE0oW)

4 Dare I ask how much you charge an hour to deal with this sort of thing?

Posted by: Kathy at June 24, 2005 10:54 AM (yCuZO)

5 I for one am all about the "wickedness"

Posted by: Wicked H at June 24, 2005 12:08 PM (BQhBn)

6 I would have just thrown a thesaurus at him. xoxo

Posted by: Margi at June 24, 2005 01:14 PM (nwEQH)

7 LOL Funfun. By the way, my new blog is at www.confuzzled.nl Hope you come look!

Posted by: Hannah at June 25, 2005 03:24 AM (DlnyL)

8 Great, now I really feel like an idiot. Can I get in on the joke, too?

Posted by: Mark at June 25, 2005 10:29 PM (DL/ki)

9 I just want to know what the original sentence was just for to find out how the normative and predictive senses of "should" make a difference to that particular sentence. If you wrote "will" then you obviously meant the predictive sense. Why does your colleague want it so foggy? Can you tell us? Can ya, huh?

Posted by: Tuning Spork at June 30, 2005 12:05 AM (xs9jx)

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Remember my post from two days ago, about how a strong finish can redeem a whole bad day? It's two posts below this one, if you don't recall it. Well, I was wrong, sometimes your bad day/week can overwhelm your ability to finish.

I'm not really sure where this post is going. All I know for sure is that this has been a very difficult week. I have swung between two opposite poles -- one really enjoying what I do and one loathing what I do so much that I almost walked out (no joke).

Enjoying: it is beyond cavil that it is great fun sitting for three hours with a finance professor who is on everyone's short list for the Nobel Prize and parsing a complicated multi-party international economic transaction in order to stress test your assumptions at each step of the transaction in order to conclude that the transaction was a fraud, ab initio. Seriously. I love that. It was a mix of practical mechanics and theoretical finance conducted at a pretty high level. High enough to make my nose bleed. This was a part of my yesterday. The day before was spent in meetings with the possible plaintiff and his lawyer, the guy who referred the case to me. I feel a smidgeon of guilt for taking their money since it was so much fun, I'd have done it for free.

Detesting: there may have been a mistake made by co-counsel in a case I have. I did not catch the mistake and it may result in great unhappiness. Certainly, I feel like shit. I think it is fixable, but still, there will have to be some quick dancing and some interesting decisions. I have no idea how it will come out. I do know that I have not been very happy about it. How unhappy? Verge of quitting unhappy, anxiety attack symptoms unhappy, heart pounding unhappy (not exaggerating at all), bottom dropping out of stomach unhappy. Why? What if it wasn't a mistake on his part, what if we were getting set up to take a particularly nasty fall? And I didn't catch it. I have been running to try to fix it, but still, there are times and this week is one of those times, I really do hate my job.

Quite the dichotomy, no?

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Today, I would like to write about work, sort of as an outlet for the frustrations creeping up over the edge of desk and jumping into my coffee while I'm not looking.

But I can't.

I cannot write about how annoying it is to have two different sets of lawyers between me and my client, both sets thinking it's ok to modify my firm's retainer agreement. It isn't. Neither of you idiots understand the intricacies of my firm's retainer. You may be good bankruptcy and corporate lawyers, respectively, but you aren't litigators. Your suggestions contravene the rules of ethics, the disciplinary rules, and the Rules of the Appellate Division, First Department, of the Supreme Court of the State of New York. This is a big ass case these idiots are potentially pissing all over. I wish I could write about it.

I cannot write about how much fun it is to be caught, with my cousin, between my father and my uncles and attorneys in two other states as the family attempts to put together a shareholder agreement for a family concern. This is way too annoying. Let me content myself with this, because I actually feel myself physically getting angry, a buy out provision in a shareholder agreement that calls for an accountant to value the interest being bought out at generally accepted accounting principles (mostly meaningless, by the way) but lacks a requirement that the corporation's books and records be kept in accordance with GAAP is downright dangerous. I think that this is going to make people very unhappy.

Getting into a business with your family presents issues that don't exist in most negotiations. There are sensitivities and sometimes grudges that have to be taken into account. The agreement will be less than perfect and all will have to trust to the good faith of everyone else. That shouldn't be a problem, but you never know. Ultimately, as I tell my corporate clients, a corporate agreement or contract is only as good as the people signing it, no matter what any lawyer tells you about how iron clad the protections are.

Trust, my friends. Without that, you're already f*cked even before you sign the contract. With it, you may not be f*cked until later.

Sure is ugly here in my office today. I'm going to throw away the rest of my coffee and see if I can get rid of some of my frustrations with it.

Posted by: Random Penseur at 10:48 AM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
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1 A Virtual Hug for you my friend. {{{{HUG}}}}} Hope that helped!

Posted by: Wicked H at June 09, 2005 11:38 AM (iqFar)

2 Did you have to go and use the "T" word, RP? Did you? Damn, son, now my head's all messed up again and I thought I'd had it figured out. Not your fault...just PMSing...

Posted by: Howard at June 09, 2005 02:20 PM (vYCZY)

3 I was only trying to HELP. Honest!!!!!

Posted by: Wicked H at June 09, 2005 03:58 PM (BQhBn)

4 I have come to believe that trust and contracts were mutually exclusive. I once worked as a temp for an "Estate Specialist" attorney that was the creepiest man on the f'n planet. And you know, that image has stuck with me. I can't help it. So I sympathise. Why is it that everyone is COMPELLED to re-write EVERYTHING? This I loathe about the legal field. More sympathy: Get everything in writing. And I'm saying this from my own perspective -- because I'm particularly pissed off at the car dealership that sold us our new Beetle. Reneging bastids. I'm hoping that the coffee replacement and the semi-rant helped. This one sure helped me. Love, m

Posted by: Margi at June 09, 2005 05:28 PM (nwEQH)

5 Lordy, Legalese makes my brain hurt.. Doing it for a living would no doubt have me contemplating a gainer with a half-twist straight off the tenth floor. I feel your pain..

Posted by: Rob at June 09, 2005 08:26 PM (Gkhif)

6 Not only did I understand completely what you wrote, I empathize. Especially with the second situation, where I refused to sign until several issues, (one being similar to the example you pointed out) made me weary enough to be assertive. Having worked with lawyers a better part of my life (since I'm related to so many), helped me stand my ground. One of the lessons I learned from them was that trust gets you to the bargaining table and can be a basis for a good agreement, but not even the contract can protect you if you or the other party don't act in good faith. I now how tedious the back and forth can be. Good luck with it all!!!

Posted by: Michele at June 10, 2005 12:39 AM (ht2RK)

7 We try to anticipate every possible scenario in our contracts to ensure that they are fair to both parties and cover every eventuality we can think of. We tailor each contract to each job depending on conditions. But the bottom line is, I ALWAYS trust my gut to tell me whether I,m entering into a relatively painless agreement or whether I'm going to get screwed. My instincts have yet to fail me. So yeah, trust is a HUGE part of contractual agreements no mat6ter how careful you are. Have a better afternoon!!!!!

Posted by: Mark at June 10, 2005 07:52 AM (otuY5)

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