Comment by lionhearted | Hacker News Reader

Comment by lionhearted | Hacker News Reader

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Context matters. In the author's context (disclaimer: I know him and think he's a good guy), the lawyer is representing a businessperson who is bankrolling them usually in order to help get the businessperson's way in business/money.

In that case, forcing the businessperson to run their lawyer clock and lose money by hour and getting nothing pragmatically useful back goes a long ways. In your case, you're up against bureaucracies with deep pockets, so that strategy wouldn't work as well. Also, savvy businesspeople tend to recognize "intelligently crazy" and become a lot more wary when coming across that personality type.

Someone at the HR/legal department might not flinch at at burning $20,000 in legal fees for a moral victory if they're antagonized, but in the commercial real estate world, they'd back off from that. You gotta understand the context and leverage and desires of everyone involved - in this article's case, it's not about antagonizing the lawyer so much as sending a clear message to their client ("I'm going to force you to pay lots of money in legal fees and not even flinch") - usually at that point it's not worth bringing a case, because the opportunity cost of many burnt hours and running your lawyer clock while the other side isn't running theirs is scary. And it doesn't even guarantee you'll get anything. Context, leverage, motivations - always gotta consider those. This advice is very good in the relevant contexts.

This article is so chock full of speculation and all around horrible advice it's hard to pick just one thing to criticize. If this guy's crap has worked in the past, its probably worked because he actually facts of the case in his favor, not because of these shenanigans.

I feel sorry for those who take legal advice from people who are not lawyers.

> This article is so chock full of speculation and all around horrible advice it's hard to pick just one thing to criticize.

I always thought "This is so wrong I'm not going to criticize it" was a pretty lame way to disagree. Also, there's no speculation - it's real world stuff that worked for him from a guy who is rather successful...

Edit, one more:

> I feel sorry for those who take legal advice from people who are not lawyers.

Actually, I disagree with this. Don't just take advice from lawyers on dealing with lawyers - their advice tends to skew a certain way (usually towards more billable hours). Advice from successful businesspeople on dealing with lawyers is very valuable too.

Well there are no real details or specifics of any kind in this article. So that right off prevents me from making any type of analysis of the merits of what this guy is actually doing.

Then there is the speculation as to the mental state of the opponent and the attorney. The part about attorney's hanging up on the guy because he's "crazy" and it's "not worth pursuing legal action" is just complete crap. The facts, the potential damages, and most importantly, this guys ability to pay determine whether or not it's worth the time. If an attorney has hung up on him, its because he's a crank.

Look, it's a simple cost-benefit analysis. This guy probably has situational facts that support his case, such that it's not worth it for the opponent to pursue litigation. Or it's possible he couldn't pay the damages anyway and the opponent couldn't take possession of the property. There's lots of possibilities... depending on the facts. You would never know that from the frothy tone of this piece.

Finally, there's the speculative gem that it will never get in front of the judge. Trust me, all those pesky "case numbers" and "laws" that the attorney has been compiling are really going to suck for this guy once a judge sees them.

I could go on and on, and take this one paragraph at a time. But it's not worth it. Long story short, take legal advice from lawyers. Likewise, accounting advise from accountants, design advise from designers, and so on.

I think we're in agreement on a lot of things, but maybe you missed the context that it's about commercial real estate? In those kind of deals, legal threats are really common.

> Finally, there's the speculative gem that it will never get in front of the judge.

But it's not speculation - we're talking about a guy who made millions of dollars as a broker for massively large deals for half a decade, who never saw a case go all the way to court. In this context, forcing the other side to keep paying legal fees while you laugh it off works well.

I agree with the rest of your comment - context matters - but I think you might've missed the context written about here.

> I feel sorry for those who take legal advice from people who are not lawyers.

You've kind of missed the whole point of the article. He's not giving legal advice; he's giving practical advice regarding a situation that at heart has nothing to do with the law.

There are cases where the law really matters, but the kind of bullshit 'lawyering' he's talking about is probably 90% of what certain types of contract lawyers do for a living.

The main thing to be aware of here is you have to know when you're dealing with that other 10% that might in fact be a real, legitimate legal dispute that could in theory go all the way to a trial. [edit: and if you don't realize before you get the call that you're in that situation, then I really do feel sorry for you...]

I showed this article to my girlfriend, who is a lawyer, and her response, to paraphrase, was 1) it sounds like the guy got lucky and ran into some crappy lawyers, 2) if someone treated her like that she'd give away hours just to fight him -- "because now my heart would be in it," and 3) he's going to be f---ed the first time he makes a legal mistake.

She did agree that one shouldn't be intimidated by lawyers (or anyone else) but this isn't the way you go about it.

Your girlfriend would only be treated `that way` when she's the type 3 lawyer in the article.

My take was he was saying to use these techniques exactly when the "facts are in his favor," or at least when he is pretty sure the other side is just bluffing. He does say, near the end, If you have clearly done someone wrong, then you deserve to pay for it. I’m not writing this to help assholes.

correct

> its probably worked because he actually facts of the case in his favor

I think that's the point. He makes it pretty clear that he considers the chances of this actually reaching court as close to enough to zero.

> not because of these shenanigans.

The 'shenanigans' obviously saves at least a short consult and by refusing to dignify the claim with a proper legal response (and doing so confidently) he may be saving an extended and costly engagement.

Of course if the claim actually does go to court you've disadvantaged yourself considerably.

Not that I enjoyed this post that much, but when you says 'all around horrible advice it's hard to pick just one thing to criticize' it sounds to me like you don't have any valid criticisms. If the criticisms were strong, you would think the weak points would stick out clearly no?

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