Hacker News Reader

Comment by seanhunter | Hacker News Reader

I have an example. In a previous role was in a position where we were negotiating a large-ish (>1M USD) multi-year contract when our client asked us to also do a proof of concept about some topic. It was just 1 week or 2 weeks so I said it would be free but because of various regulatory stuff we needed a contract in place.

I was dealing with the same purchasing lawyer on both contracts. The process was super-standard: someone sends a first draft, the other side redlines (proposes changes and makes comments), then the first team redline, etc, at some point you all compromise a bit and someone makes a clean copy of the document containing all the agreed changes for everyone to sign. So we got to the point we had all agreed and the purchasing lawyer on the other side produced the "clean copy" but he obviously thought we were a bunch of rubes so he produced a clean copy for us to sign by backing out all of our changes and only putting in his changes. This is a ridiculously low-integrity bush-league stunt and he did it on the zero-cost POC contract while we were still negotiating the >1m big contract.

Some people just want to win so bad it doesn't even matter to them that they are being total assholes, the prize is zero and it's outright harmful to their own interests. I bet he cheats when playing his own kids at boardgames.

View on HN

Except this has been tried before and they typically end in one of three outcomes:

1) It was a mistake and it doesn't go to court.

2) It was intentional and it doesn't go to court because the attorney, while still being a piece of shit, understands what option 3 is.

3) It was intentional, it goes to court, and you produce the email evidence showing the attorney agreed to changeset N then sent along changeset N-1, and the provisions are thrown out because they were executed in bad faith.

4) Contract gets unknowingly signed and shelved, OP moves jobs and his/her replacement assumes the signed contract is legitimate.

Rare, but I've seen it happen.

FWIW I completely agree with both you and OP - it's a totally boneheaded move, but you should never underestimate how boneheaded some people (lawyers in particular) can be.

Anecdote/Sample of 1: lawyer friend skipped paying the fine for picking up his kid from the kindergarten 30mins after the closing time. His excuse was "come on what is 30mins?". Kindergarten warned "strike 1" and promised that he either paid the $10 'penalty' (textbook Freakonomics case) or be so much closer to expulsion (Edit: added the Or to conclude the Either).

He didn't pay and promised to sue. His wife was then told that if he sues the kid is out the door. She paid. She never told him. He still thinks "he won". I know many people of all professions can be dicks, but it feels like Lawyers have a greater concentration.

In a twisted way, he “won”. The world adapts to his ways.

Don’t think about in terms of money, but protection of his fragile ego. In this case, he was enabled by his wife.

I can imagine similar things could have happened in his childhood, people raking for him behind the scenes. (Incredibly entitled behaviour, “rules don’t apply to me”)

5. Company who hired boneheaded lawyer, gets sick of them. Apologises for their lawyer and gets rid of the lawyer

How I wish that were true!

* if you have the money and the people prepared for 3)

Civil lawsuits come down to just one thing in this country: MONEY.

Not the law, not what is right or who has been virtuous. Just money. Or more specifically: who has the money.

If you are poor and you sue someone who is rich, they control that outcome. If you are rich and you sue someone who is poor, they (by default) control that outcome; there's nothing there. If you are both poor, a judge will often decide based who looks and sounds the less poor. If you are both rich, then (the equivalent of) actuaries decide the outcome.

Criminal lawsuits are similar. I do not care how much you fuck up in this country; The amount of time you spend in jail will be inversely proportional to the amount of money you can spend to fight it.

Considering you're commenting in an international forum, what is "this country"?

It is supposed to be an international forum, but in practice it is a local group for San Francisco Bay Area. Consider how often articles about housing issues in Bay Area make it to the front page, compared to Vancouver, London, and Tokyo. HN is international in the sense that anyone can access and participate in it. But in practice, mostly SF Bay Area residents do.

I see participatants from all over the world here all the time. They usually qualify things with phrases like "where I'm from" or "in [insert country here].

It's only the Americans that think they're the center of the world.

I used to watch this Japanese show "Why did you come to Japan?" where a camera crew hangs out at Narita Airport and ambushes unsuspecting foreigners with that question and try to tag along on the journey of people they think are there for an interesting reason. When everyone introduces themselves they say the country they are from, except Americans who always say which state they are from and never the country. I found that particularly interesting. So, I just assume it's a deeply ingrained cultural thing to treat "America as default".

As an American expatriate I'm always shocked or bemused by the US-centric comments I get from family.

I live in East Asia, which is by no measure a cultural or technological backwater, and was surprised to hear my mother say, two days ago, "you must get YouTube over there...".

For some more perspective, I'm the most successful member of my family (from a financial pov) and from the condo I live in to the car I drive, I have nicer things than my parents ever did. I'm the first in the family -- and this is something I only considered just now -- to sends his kids to a good / expensive private school.

Though I don't lord it over them, my life is way more advanced / cushy than theirs. But from their point of view I'm not in the US and therefore don't have access to what they consider the gold standard of civilization.

And this point of view has not changed even though my parents have experienced my life in Asia first hand. Truly bizarre blind spot.

When I first moved to China ~10 years ago, I mentioned to whomever I was on the phone with back home that I needed to go grab some cash and that I might lose the call when I got in the lift. They asked where I planned to get money in the middle of the night, and were surprised to learn that ATM technology had indeed made it to "the Orient."

These days most people just ask if I've eaten a dog.

Guess there's a time lag. I was in China 35 years ago when they didn't have ATMs or anything like that and the west did. Times change.

I obviously wasn't around back then, but even today the pace of modernization in China is astounding; I can only imagine what it must've been like in Deng Xiaoping's later years.

I usually cut them slack unless they're jerks about it. A lot haven't even got a passport. That's usually fine as well: The USA is a big place. Not even talking just actual size. There are a lot of people with diverse ways of living and circumstances. But the place is so physically huge you could spend your entire life exploring it and still not run out of places to find new things and people to see and meet.

If it helps, think of every US state as if it was a european country. You might lazily think they are all the same but scratch the surface and there's a lot of difference.

So yeah, its fine for someone to say they're from California. You already know they're from the land of High Fructose Corn Syrup so why be nasty about it?

It really isn't so diverse though. Same language, same retail and restaurant chains, same cars, same TV channels, same currency, same political system, same sides in war back to 1800s (and even that is a large portion of remembered history).

Compare it to Europe, where a 3 hour drive gives you different food, language, holidays, religion, festivals, type of beer, different political system, different history going back 1000+ years... and another 3 hour drive does it all over again.

But still, I think it’s easy to cut murricans some slack. Their country IS one of the most interesting ones. If I weren’t living in my dream country I think I’d want to live in California.

For those downvoting this comment: this conclusion (that HN's reader base is predominantly based in the SF Bay Area) should be entirely unsurprising given that HN is itself the product of Y Combinator, an accelerator based in the SF Bay Area that (last I checked, and from what I recall back when I worked for a startup that applied) specifically requires its incubatees to relocate (if they're not already there) to the SF Bay Area during said incubation.

Yes, not all of us are in the SF Bay Area, but it's pretty reasonable to assume that most readers are.

> requires its incubatees to relocate (if they're not already there) to the SF Bay Area during said incubation.

Not sure "relocate" is the best word. I've been freelancer for 8 years and one of my client is a YC startup that is and has always been in Paris, France.

See https://www.ycombinator.com/atyc/ "We ask the founders of each startup we fund to move to the Bay Area for the duration of their cycle" and https://www.ycombinator.com/faq/#p3 "Of course, after the 3 month program, you can go wherever you want."

If the founder (implicitly the leader or one of the top leaders) has to relocate, even for three months, then I fail to see how "relocate" is anything but the best word, especially when a company is still in a stage that would benefit from incubation.

It's a fair assumption that a lot of people on HN have SF viewpoint or views at least that partially align with them. Even those of us on the other side of the planet.

As for your downvoters: plenty of people believe they should downvote when they simply disagree. Others believe that downvoting without a comment is fine. These two groups make HN less interesting.

I actually want to know the reason why. Too many people hide behind a downvote and contribute nothing. Meanwhile they are making interesting posts disappear for no good reason. And other comments that are blatantly rubbish are not touched at all.

> It's a fair assumption that a lot of people on HN have SF viewpoint or views at least that partially align with them. Even those of us on the other side of the planet.

Totally agree with you ! But maybe some people misunderstood what you wrote.

I'd rather say that the crowd here is technically fit and policed enough to try to understand elaborate and forward-looking viewpoints, sometimes contrary to the doxa [0]. That makes comment so enjoyable to read. And it's also reassuring, that we can agree on some things on both sides of the planet .

edit : and some people who like to think of themselves as independent thinkers and live in SF by design or accident, will not like to see their opinions qualified as "SF" opinions. Works equally well for any part of the world.

> As for your downvoters

+1. This mechanism is a rather raw moderation system, people will abuse it to disqualify competing stances. There are options to refine it.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doxa

I kind of like the approach on lobste.rs but ironically I'm too lazy to switch. But that is slowly changing.

I'd switch to lobste.rs in a heartbeat if someone would invite me.

Not a downvoter, but I believe it is people taking exception to American exceptionism.

Clearly the USA. What point are you trying to make?

To clarify, I think this comes down to: can you afford your lawyer. Maybe you find a lawyer willing to work on contingency? Most of the time you won't (unless its a big case like a class-action - as far as I'm aware).

This point only pertains in places with a poisonous legal system, such as US or UK.

Could you perhaps explain how it works in your country or other countries, in such matters? I'm not necessarily knocking any non-US or non-UK judiciaries or jurisprudence(s); in fact if anything I find US or UK systems poisonous too - as you describe it - to a high degree in some cases.

But how does a modern, complex and non-homogeneous society aribiter cases without turning "poisonous" or odious to some members?

To my knowledge much of Europe, M.E., Asia and even S. America are composed of largely homogeneous populaces with a smattering of outsiders at best.

> But how does a modern, complex and non-homogeneous society aribiter cases without turning "poisonous" or odious to some members?

There is no perfect society in this regard. Just because it's hard doesn't mean that such societies shouldn't strive to reduce the odiousness, and maximize the fairness in the administration of justice, regardless of the subgroup that the contending parties may belong to. Fair and equal treatment under the eyes of the law is a cornerstone of human rights.

> To my knowledge much of Europe, M.E., Asia and even S. America are composed of largely homogeneous populaces with a smattering of outsiders at best.

You've listed regions that contain some of the most heterogenous countries on earth in ethnicity, language, and culture, like the UK, France, China, India, Iraq, Lebanon, Indonesia, Brazil.

Some of these countries have multiple, sometimes contradictory legal systems, some sanctioned by the state, others by religious power structures.

The country that is often referred to as among the most homogeneous societies in the world, Japan, has a pretty well acknowledged dual justice system for citizens versus visitors. All societies fail at this, but if anything, the very homogeneous societies fail the most at offering equal justice.

I'm talking about diverse, complex and modern as in a jurisprudence that takes into account many ethnicities and still manages to produce a letter of the law that multinational corporations find agreeable to do business in and yet at the same time subjects those corps to tough penalties with an enforcement mechanism to back it up.

Countries with a steady inflow of new migrants of all networths.

Countries that make real attempts to be fair to native born people and outsiders alike.

A country could speak 2 or 3 different languages and still a very largely monocultural way of doing things. Not to cherry pick but do you really think the Yighurs in China get a fair shake in a court? I really want to hear if you've read differently.

A country could have on paper very impressive law frameworks and yet in action be essentially meaningless since most of the population doesnt have access to fair representation.

Not mere grandiose legal frameworks with not an ounce of real world enforcement to back it up or go after bad actors in a legitimate way, without extra legal acts of justice or worse mob justice.

Pretty much any and every country you mentioned fails to meet atleast one or - in most cases - all of the criteria.

> Not to cherry pick but do you really think the Yighurs in China get a fair shake in a court? I really want to hear if you've read differently.

Definitely not. Multiethnicity is necessary, but insufficient condition

> Pretty much any and every country you mentioned fails to meet atleast one or - in most cases - all of the criteria.

That's obvious. I didn't say they were perfect, just far from homogeneous. And there's not much to learn from very homogeneous societies in this regard.

The question for the complex heterogeneous societies isn't whether they fail, but rather what direction they are moving in. Arguably both China and the US have moved backwards of late.

Serious question: is there a legal system that works better in these kinds of cases?

As opposed to... where exactly?

I'm sure I can point at legal systems across the globe that have examples of completely terrible injustice.

Which legal system are you referring to that is significantly not "poisonous"? And why?

Try anywhere in Northern Europe

Name one. Genuinely interested.

Most legal systems are broken in some way to some extent. Unfair cases exist because people aren't perfect, make mistakes and/or have agendas.

Some legal systems are less biased towards people with more money than others. I think the ones in northern Europe tend towards that, but I don't have specific examples and wouldn't expect them to be totally fair either.

Finland/Sweden. I'm not saying they perfect, or that they have no flaws.

I'm saying they are not actively poisonous, such as in US. I think it's related to how weaponized the legal system in US is compared anywhere else

What does "actively poisonous" mean in this context? You've used that phrase numerous times as if we should know exactly what you're referring to.

Do those outcomes hold up if the innocent party caught the mistaken/bad-faith change before signing and knowingly proceeded to sign anyway?

Everything you said makes sense if it goes unnoticed until after signing, but I'm less sure about that scenario. Probably varies by jurisdiction, at least when both parties are well-resourced and sophisticated.

I think if you can prove both parties knew of the change prior to signing it's by definition signed in good faith.

> by backing out all of our changes and only putting in his changes

That so feels like a mistake because that's the sort of tactic that would completely and utterly remove their capability of ever working as a corporate lawyer ever again for any company.

If that genuinely happened, that lawyer needs to be disbarred, but that's a pretty damn egregious accusation.

> That so feels like a mistake...

Easy to test.

1. Send back the document he sent with a copy of your most recent edits and ask him to confirm if his document is correct.

2. But, make note of at ONE error, and see if he fixes all of them.

3. If he only fixes only the one, then he's either really lazy or trying to keep up the deceit.

4. Repeat steps 1 to 3, be sure to CC everyone involved. If he's lazy he will be ashamed and be more careful. If he's a sneaky bastard he will most likely get angry.

Not foolproof, but will sure make everyone aware of what is going on. (regardless of the motives)

You must have had your share of weasels during contract negotiations.

I have dealt with some horrible people over the years. It's incredible what they will do to get away with stuff.

Standing your ground while maintaining a logical and rational approach is the only way to deal with them.

Most of them like a fight, so you simply can't pick one with them.

Assuming there is an external person arbitrating (which is usually the case when dealing with internal politics at least -- one or two levels up from you), it's so important in these cases to stay reasonable. Virtually every single time, the person that likes to fight will cross the line in the hopes of goading you into a fight. But it's exactly at that time that you win. You send a very reasonable email to the arbitrating person saying, "I'm really trying my best to get this working, but I'm having trouble. Could you please give me a hand." Since the arbitrating person really would rather do nothing, they will look at the situation and say, "A is completely reasonable. B is not. B, you need to change."

I remember one time where I was discussing a problem with a manager in another team. Every single email he sent, he CC'd the management 2 levels up. Every single email I sent, I sent directly to him only. My colleague was panicking. He felt that I needed to show my side of the story to upper management or else I would be in trouble.

Eventually the management 2 levels up got frustrated: "Why am I getting all of these emails? Why can't you people sort out this problem yourself?" To which I reasonably replied, "I'm very sorry that you've been bothered, and I'm not sure why this person is being so difficult. Now that you are here, would you mind giving us a hand?" Problem solved.

You have a good point about CC'ing too many people. And that care should be taken when including others in a discussion that could affect their reputation.

Thanks for pointing this out.

Why the indirectness? Is there a downside to directly confronting the lawyer?

You may never know. "Oh, my mistake. Sorry, I'll have the correct draft for you this afternoon."

Exactly this. I want to know and reveal motives (it's not foolproof) not just escape one incident.

They are likely to repeat the attempt if they think they can get away with it on you.

It's not that easy to accept only your own changes though. You can accept all changes, or reject all changes, but accepting only your own and rejecting others, at least in Word, takes specific effort.

I attribute user error and stupidity when most people attribute malicious intent. 99% of the time, I am correct.

I'm betting that, if the lawyer was not acting maliciously, s/he used the wrong version of the document to accept changes.

Fair point. On the other hand, I'm not much more inclined to work with a stupid lawyer than a malicious one. If he opens by screwing up this badly, what's he going to do next?

There are some cases in which granting the benefit of the doubt is too much of a risk to be worth taking.

Be careful with how you as a non-attorney assess the intelligence of attorneys.

With a sufficiently big organization, it's common for some sort of higher precedence, non-negotiable appendix to render most of this stuff moot anyway. Corporate attorneys on the sell-side, even at surprisingly big companies frequently screw this up, often when making snide comments through the salespeople.

My buddy tells a story from when he was an SE many years ago and his company's attorneys were going to kill a deal over an NDA requirement. The customer ended up getting them to agree to "blah blah blah, subject to applicable law". One problem: the customer was a city, subject to freedom of information law in that state!

Experienced salespeople usually get it but eye-roll, as they have an incentive to STFU.

Unfortunately, as with all cases of information asymmetry, I lack the tools on which to assess them. But since it's required that I do make an assessment, I am going to have to take an extremely self-defensive posture.

The attorney is the expert. I am not. If the attorney makes a mistake, I have no tools with which to judge whether it was stupidity or malice. I have to assume that it's both. My own attorney may better be able to make that assessment, and I'll respect their judgment. But until then, an opposing attorney has to be assumed to have all of the power and every reason to use it.

Oh, absolutely. Making a stupid mistake isn't necessarily better than malicious intent. I wouldn't work with either of those people, especially if my livelihood is involved.

I was just saying that I tend to err on the side of stupidity. Most people are stupid. Very few are bad actors in their day-to-day lives.

I double read most of my emails with more than 3 bullet points.

"Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by stupidity."

No. This can't be attributed to stupidity.

He's an attorney. Contract version control is part of his job. Selectively discarding counterparty edits is blatant.

> That so feels like a mistake because that's the sort of tactic that would completely and utterly remove your capability of ever working as a corporate lawyer ever again for any company.

No, that's basically SOP for big corporate lawyers.

No it isn't.

You both have different experiences, and the reality is somewhere in the middle........

Be careful with this line of reasoning.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_to_moderation

I'm often curious about the relationship between this concept to solipsism.

No, it's not. This is something that is easily proven and could be a cause for disbarment. No big corporate lawyer is risking their career over this. Maybe something like this can happen by mistake or with some idiot with an office in a strip mall, but the idea that this is a normal stunt is silly.

you are badly naive here .. far, far worse is common in certain markets

What happened after?

FWIW My wife and I were negotiating a commercial lease and we always did a diff between what they send back and what we sent them in case they pulled something like that. It may not be malicious (i.e. they updated a wrong version). They had integrity and they didn't do pull any stunts.

We called him out on it, he sent a new version and we executed. On the big contract he tried several other small variants on this (going back and post-hoc altering wording that had been agreed, delaying things for no reason, just generally being an incredible pain in the ass to deal with in a million small ways) until we got a press release from the CEO of his (global) company saying how happy they were to work with us and his demeanor instantly changed and he became super-constructive and efficient.

In spite of everything everyone on this thread thinks/says, it definitely wasn't an error. I spoke to another third-party vendor (over a beer) who were going through purchasing at the same time as us and he was doing the exact same thing with them.

How much did you call them out? Did you escalate, as in "We really want to partner with you, but your legal guy is super hard to work with, can you have a talk with him"?

Maybe his pay was based on how hard he screws it?

His profession has some of the widest opportunities for unfair financial rewards which result from ruthlessness alone, and this has traditionally often been executable within a typical office structure not materially different from the fair dealers who actually want everyone to win.

Even if he is working for the most benevolent & generous of corporations right now, the temptation to switch to a firm or org with a significant to dominant ruthlessness component will always be there.

He was just keeping up his chops.

Maybe they made a cost/benefit analysis along the lines of "If we mess with 10 potential partners we may lose one or two, but the gains of completely fucking one over make it completely worth it".

It's something I probably wouldn't do because the risk is too high, but I wouldn't be quick to assume the contract manager decides on his behavior based on feelings towards new companies.

Ha. Our city council is dealing with that regarding a CATV franchise agreement.

The cable company’s attorneys changed several provisions that did not show up as redline changes, while intentionally making syntax and grammar errors that did show up as redline changes.

I had a famous company redline many minor changes that we had discussed, but in amongst it, they redlined a major change we hadn't discussed. They said, *we redlined it, you saw it, what's the big deal?" But I wouldn't deal with them after that.

I hope you cut that client lose. If they'll do something like that on the POC they'll do it on the big contract and in numerous other ways. You'll have to double-check everything with a client like that and not be able to trust them. Life's too short to put up with that.

It’s a common negotiation strategy to be a complete ass and wearing people down. A lot of people will give in just to keep the peace. It also works to ask for more concessions right before closing the deal. You just have to be shameless. I think that’s why sociopaths tend to do well in business.

The only time you can afford to have this behaviour is when you have leverage over the other party either by connections, dependencies or assets. People often forget that without leverage being rude will get you nowhere. Try this at work tomorrow and I bet you in no time your manager will show you the door. If both parties are on equal terms when it comes to negotiation power then it will either turn into a pissing contest or gets resolved quickly.

I often think that bullies get a lot of perceived leverage. They may not have real leverage but they intimidate people.

Once word gets around though, it starts to harm you in the long run. I worked for a company where one of the owners seemed to have a world view that everyone is trying to screw you over, so you better screw them over first.

After I left I had a friend ask about the company, because they were about to a deal with them. I gave my honest opinion and suggested they be sure to get any money up front and be very careful to reduce their risk.

I am not so sure about that. When I was consultant I had several clients that were a complete pain to deal with but they also had a lot of money to spend so it was worth it in the end. When I read business biographies I get the impression that a lot of successful people/companies like Gates, Jobs, Ellison or Walmart are really hard to do business with. They will exploit you as soon as you make the slightest mistake but if you play everything right you can make good money.

I would advise never to do business with Walmart, Apple, Microsoft as a small business. They have so much leverage over you, mistake or not things are out of your control from the start. The more work you do for them the more they take over the rest of your business. Get bigger then talk.

If the monopolist is huge enough, they control an enormous cascade of wealth transfer.

There are many points for a small business to tap into one or more of their streams in a way which everybody wins. But this usually requires that no disruption takes place. Without actually adding value (to natural resources) yourself, you are allowed to remove enough value to grow an operation having share price which can outperform the underlying monopoly.

This is a common strategy with oil & chemical companies.

They can also afford to not be a pain or make you wait until the end to be financially worth it.

This kinda seems like a just world fallacy. It might get around, it might not - I'm not sure its really known either way. But we like to hope people that regularly behave like assholes eventually get punished for it.

I've encountered two types of people who attempt the asshole strategy: A) those stick around in town and after about 10 years, eventually build a bad reputation that they can't shake, and B) those who have to move every 2 to 3 years to keep ahead of their bad reputation.

The first group finds they eventually have to move to get back to progressing in their career (hopefully learning from their mistake). I've known guys who moved and did change, running into them again and finding them to be completely different people, settled into family life, and quite happy. I've known guys who moved and didn't change, found themselves needing to move again in 10 years, all while cursing the world for being against them.

The second group just never progresses in their careers. You see them try to move into positions that seemingly fit such behavior, like "serial entrepreneur" or "SEO consultant". They never really grow, always behaving like they're still in their early 20s. By the time they hit their 40s, they can't pick up chicks at bars anymore and it hits home that they've wasted their life. Unfortunately, I've never met anyone who changed and turned it around.

It does come around. It just takes longer than internet scale time.

It does surely go around often. It also looks like it doesn't often (but this one is a negative, so one can not be sure).

No alternative is rare, so the ratio is the interesting measure. (And no, I don't know this one.)

>Once word gets around though, it starts to harm you in the long run.

Does it? It seems to have worked for the president of the USA just fine and that was his exact tactic in all of his business "deals".

> Once word gets around though, it starts to harm you in the long run.

How sure of that are you? One of the big proponents of this strategy is currently President of the United States.

> A lot of people will give in just to keep the peace.

IME it works only if the party is the only way in town and negotiation is only on scope and price (i.e., the other party cannot take their business elsewhere). Otherwise they get known as "assholes not to deal with" which is a very hard thing to shake off. My 2c.

> It’s a common negotiation strategy to be a complete ass and wearing people down. A lot of people will give in just to keep the peace. It also works to ask for more concessions right before closing the deal. You just have to be shameless. I think that’s why sociopaths tend to do well in business.

For lawyers, at least, this might work...once. The second time they try it, you know there'll be no "give" in "give-and-take", so you're not afraid of going in for trench warfare. If they're assholes through-and-through, it's not unheard of for party B to ask party A to switch lawyers.

It's an excessively short-term view of "winning", and it doesn't benefit anybody in the long run.

Source: former corporate lawyer.

Are you sure it wasn’t a genuine mistake?

He did a few things when he did it which made it clear it wasn't a mistake. He had to sort of go out of his way to do it.

No, I've had this happen when drawing up contracts with American lawyers way too many times for it to be mistakes. We've had lawyers try to sneak in one sided clauses after we agreed differently with business owners pretty much constantly.

It always significantly deteriorated relations with that company. But I guess Americans think that's fine because "it's just business".

IANAL, but if you have correspondence indicating that you wanted something removed and both sides agreed to it, then I'd imagine you'd have a case in court if they slipped something in. Contracts are never 'iron-clad' -- for example, you cannot legally sign away your soul. Lots of stuff can be invalidated in court.

Sure, but when they "fix" things like ticket/issue response times, SLAs, responsibilities of both companies, it can later be very hard to prove what you've agreed on a video call with a CEO/CTO. Especially when that other company decides that you'll be the one taking the blame for their internal politics.

Always get everything in writing. If you've been passing redlines back and forth, you should have that at minimum.

That sounds expensive.

> But I guess Americans think that's fine because "it's just business".

That's a really prejudiced and unwarranted view of Americans. If anything it says more about your biases and prejudices than it does about one nation.

> That's a really prejudiced and unwarranted view of Americans. If anything it says more about your biases and prejudices than it does about one nation.

I am an American citizen so you can take it from an American citizen instead. Companies have zero scruples whatsoever about screwing over others in business.

But other companies still do business with them, right? So they're getting away with it.

"It doesn't matter how we behave as long as they're still forced to do business with us." attitude is exactly what I was talking about :)

Being an American doesn't make it any less prejudiced. It's a gross generalization. Even assuming it were true, how is this an exclusive characteristic of America?

I wouldn't word it like this if it wouldn't be a very noticable pattern of behaviour comming pretty much only from US customers. Negotiations with customers from other cultures have been significantly more honest - it doesn't mean they weren't seeking an advantage, but this agreesive backstabing from legal departments right after signing up the customer was something that was very very US American.

After seeing it first-hand, I'm noticing this attitude even in fields like global politics, where burning goodwill to gain very minor advantages seems to be the policy these days.

> I wouldn't word it like this if it wouldn't be a very noticable pattern of behaviour comming pretty much only from US customers.

But that's the thing... do you have access to a representative, uniform, random sample of US customers? Do you have a similar sample of customers from other regions to compare against? Are those samples based on your actual data rather than personal anecdotes? Have you eliminated hidden variables that could better explain this behavior than simply the place they are from?

If you answered "no" to any of the above, you're suffering from availability bias.

> After seeing it first-hand, I'm noticing this attitude even in fields like global politics, where burning goodwill to gain very minor advantages seems to be the policy these days.

And that one is called confirmation bias.

And if you're sure, did you report this to the relevant disciplinary body?

What, the bar association?

Sleezy as this is you wouldn't be able to show damages since you didn't sign the contract. The other lawyer can claim error and the burden of proof would be on you.

If you did accept, then you have a lengthy court battle ahead where a jury could very well rule "abide by the contract you signed you reneging moocher."

The real world isn't a school playground. Calling a teacher over is time consuming and expensive and far from a guarantee of justice. It is up to you to keep yourself safe from assholes like this by always doing your due diligence. Someone who pulls this kind of shit constantly will eventually lose their license, but many years down the road and after many victims.

ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct, Rule 8.4: Misconduct: "It is professional misconduct for a lawyer to: [...] (c) engage in conduct involving dishonesty, fraud, deceit or misrepresentation..."

[https://www.americanbar.org/groups/professional_responsibili...]

If it really was intentional, this very clearly meets the standard, and there's absolutely no requirement that there be damages for the lawyer to be disciplined. I'm not talking about a fraud or malpractice claim, so there's no reason this would involve a lengthy court battle, etc.

Further, Rule 8.3: "(a) A lawyer who knows that another lawyer has committed a violation of the Rules of Professional Conduct that raises a substantial question as to that lawyer's honesty, trustworthiness or fitness as a lawyer in other respects, shall inform the appropriate professional authority."

[https://www.americanbar.org/groups/professional_responsibili...]

Seems to fit as well if the behavior was repeated.

But on the same site:

https://www.americanbar.org/groups/professional_responsibili...

> The ABA is not a lawyer disciplinary agency and has no authority to investigate or act upon complaints filed against lawyers. Each state has its own agency that performs that function in regard to lawyers practicing in that state. Locate your state agency from the Directory of State Disciplinary Agencies.

So you're not dealing with the ABA, but the underfunded and understaffed state board.

Of course you're dealing with your local licensing authority, but they'll all have a rule substantially the same as the model rule cited.

California's state bar even has a formal opinion calling out this or similar behavior:

"Had Seller’s Attorney intentionally created a defective “redline” to surreptitiously conceal the change to the covenant not to compete, his conduct would constitute deceit, active concealment and possibly fraud, in violation of Seller’s Attorney’s ethical obligations."

[https://www.calbar.ca.gov/Portals/0/documents/ethics/Opinion...]

I don't think this trick works. Also if he was a lawyer wouldn't this get him disbarred? Any chance it was just a screwup?

Not a lawyer, but have family that are: according to them it's really really hard to get disbarred. Permanent disbarment is basically reserved for stealing client money. Everything else is forgivable.

I was thinking the same thing, it's the type of thing that probably should be reported to the relevant bar. I don't know if it would get him disbarred, but there might be other disciplinary actions they can take if proven or it happens constantly.

this is the reason you include md5sum or sha1 checksum when you send the binary releases. plus it helps with version tracking.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com