the Zealous

Mine is the maxim that every word and clause in a contract is presumed to have meaning, and to have a purpose for being included. Reyes v. Metromedia Software, Inc. (S.D.N.Y. 2012) (a court must evaluate the disputed language "in the context of the entire agreement .... [to] safeguard against adopting an interpretation that would render any individual provision superfluous.").
 
As a deal lawyer, this maxim is what makes my job challenging and intellectually rewarding. It serves to remind me that words matter, and that precision and concision are the tools of our trade.
 
What's your favorite?
 
 

Knocking down a false, weak or misleading characterization of your opponent's argument is to engage in strawmanning. This kind of argumentation fallacy "requires that the audience be ignorant or uninformed of the original argument" to be successful.

The opposite of strawmanning is steelmanning:

You know when someone makes an argument, and you know you can get away with making it seem like they made a much worse one, so you attack that argument for points? That’s strawmanning. Lots of us have done it, even though we shouldn’t. But what if we went one step beyond just not doing that? What if we went one better? Then we would be steelmanning, the art of addressing the best form of the other person’s argument, even if it’s not the one they presented.
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This is the title of an actual Reddit discussion. My favorites:

• you can't unring the bell
• the judge will probably split the baby
• I won't negotiate against myself
• it's a belt-and-suspenders approach
• out of an abundance of caution

Nixon v. Hex (decided May 10, 1893). And it was a unanimous decision. 

Botanically speaking, tomatoes are the fruit of a vine, just as are cucumbers, squashes, beans, and peas. But in the common language of the people, whether sellers or consumers of provisions, all these are vegetables which are grown in kitchen gardens, and which, whether eaten cooked or raw, are, like potatoes, carrots, parsnips, turnips, beets, cauliflower, cabbage, celery, and lettuce, usually served at dinner in, with, or after the soup, fish, or meats which constitute the principal part of the repast, and not, like fruits generally, as dessert.

From the film Lincoln Lawyer (2011) --

LA Detective Kurlen (played by Michael Pare):
How does someone like you sleep at night with all the scum you represent?
 
Defense lawyer Mick Haller (played by Matthew McConaughey):
I had a client once. He decapitated his ex-wife. Kept her head in the refrigerator.
 
Detective (sarcastic, hostile):
Nice, sweet.
 
Mick:
The DA got greedy. Tried to pile on two unsolved murders. Tricked up the evidence to make it look like my guy did it.
 
Detective:
But you got your boy off. And he's out walking around now right? Well f*ck you Haller.
 
Mick:
No f*ck the DA. And the cops who helped him. It's called the justice system Kurlen. It's not the way it's supposed to work.

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Born in 1860 in Xiangshan, Guandgong Province, China, Hong Yen Chang eventually made his way to America to study as part of the national China Educational Mission. He was 13 years old. His father died three years earlier.
 
For the next nine years, he lived and studied in the US, residing with different families in various states. While at Yale College, the Chinese government abruptly terminated Hong Yen Chang's educational mission, and he was recalled back to China.
 
This was a temporary setback for Hong Yen Chang. A mere two years later, he found his way back to America. He later graduated with honors from Columbia Law School. In 1888, Hong Yen Chang was admitted to the bar of New York. He became the first Chinese immigrant licensed to practice law in the US.
 

Admittedly, it feels disconcerting to freely disclose legal text that you've grown quite proud of over the years. It's your IP, your know-how, your craft. You feel like you are somehow giving away a piece of you, and for seemingly nothing in return.
 
But here's the lesson to be learned from Redline: you are not your legal text, but the counselor and advisor behind it. Your years of accumulated experience and wisdom cannot be reduced to a mere indemnification clause, or a MFN provision, or a redlining tactic. We share what we consider to be extremely valuable legal text on Redline because we know that we're never as good as we think we are, and that there's always someone who can teach us something.

This notion is validated by the quality of the work product on Redline. It far surpasses anything available in any online or offline form libraries or repos, and it continues to improve as more seasoned lawyers join us, increasingly from members inviting in trusted colleagues. We've had our mistakes corrected and our assumptions challenged, and we are far better lawyers because of it.

When I was a young law firm associate back in the day, I was second chair on a complex, lucrative (for our client) and acrimonious technology/patent license negotiation. We were holed up in a conference room with buyer's counsel, in the dead of a typical brutal Colorado winter, groping our way towards final agreement. The legal negotiations were excruciating. We were the smaller party going up against a huge computer manufacturer, and the buyer's counsel, on the junior side of the experience scale, simply kept repeating the same mantra that corporate policy forbids any flexibility, even on what clearly should be uncontentious points.
 
My boss (senior partner at my firm) eventually lost his patience -- but never lost his cool. I can hear his words to this day: 

Enter Morris Grant. The most lethal lawyer in New York.
Bradley Cooper playing Eddie Mora in Limitless (2011)

Do you realize the kind of flesh-eating lawyers this guy is going to have?
Denis Leary as detective Michael McCann in The Thomas Crown Affair (1999)

I got great lawyers for cops so dress warm
Charges don't stick to dude, he's Teflon.
Jay Z, The Ruler's Back (2001)

Here’s to the writing lawyer – to all you lawyers out there who blog, tweet and publish.

Most lawyers don't bother to write. They just do their jobs or bill their hours. You, however, take an interest in a topic, research it exhaustively, and provide valuable scholarship on that topic. You make yourself an expert, and in doing so, make a valuable addition to the collective knowledge of our trade. Remarkably, you share this work publicly and for free, on firm blogs, discussion forums, or journals.

In short, you elevate yourself and your profession. You are exactly the kind of lawyer we're looking for.

Experts are experts first and competitors second. Experts share knowledge all the time if they are truly experts.

Take software engineers - they are paid or valued by the hour, exercise technical judgment on a daily basis, words are their tool, and they, and their clients and employers, are extreme competitors. Just like us. And yet they freely share tremendously valuable work in open source communities, and always with robust management encouragement.

Why? Because collaboration produces better code.

Be open and willing to put it out there and defend it, and then learn in the process. You'll be a better lawyer by defending your work. And then you'll be making better law.

No profession on the planet manifests power, knowledge, and wisdom the way lawyers do. The world's governmental powers are the result of lawyers' daily work. The planet's conflicts, between powerful private and public interests, are adjudicated via the lawyer class. We represent the awesome power of the state and the might of billion dollar mega-corporations; yet we also provide the dignity of representation to the low-income housing tenant facing forcible eviction. All while being bound by a strict code of ethics rigorously enforced.

We are the gatekeepers to justice in all its forms - whether in the boardroom or the courtroom, we make it happen. We make it legal.

It's about time we had a research and collaboration tool worthy of our profession.