One Inviolable Rule
mattmaroon.com
mattmaroon.com
if you have a legal question, you should ask a lawyer, and only a lawyer
I agree, but what is a "legal question"? Only lawyers are qualified to answer that!
Many of those who pose legal questions to the web, rather than to a lawyer, do so because they don't recognize that their question crosses the boundary where they need a lawyer. It's not as if such edge cases are particularly rare, nor are they easy to resolve. Every post that I make to news.YC is a potential libel action; every quote that I cut and paste could be the subject of a copyright suit. (Just ask the folks who post about Scientology... and note that I just substantially increased my legal risk, and YCs, by using the word 'Scientology' in this context. Perhaps my lawyer would have suggested a different example...)
Everyone who writes software tiptoes around legal issues of patent and copyright. Should I consult lawyers every time I use Pastie?
Everyone who downloads a piece of software risks a lawsuit. Click a link that installs Firefox: legal. Click a link that installs a P2P client? Depends on what you do with it. What about HD-DVD ripping software? If I install it, am I committing a crime?
Yes, the ultimate arbiter of all of these issues should be a lawyer. I'm certainly not qualified. But we can't afford to pay lawyers every single day. In the end, we all have to develop our own sense of when we need professional legal advice and when we don't -- and the web is helpful for that, even though any individual anecdote (even the ones told by bona fide lawyers!) may be unreliable or inapplicable to your individual situation.
I don't think you need a lawyer to know what's a legal question. Should I incorporate and if so, what type of entity is obviously one. What should be in my terms and conditions? Etc.
Well, yes, once you've decided to ask that question it's obviously a question for a lawyer. But who should ask the question?
Should your personal blog be incorporated? Is that question worth asking a lawyer about? What if your personal blog is Boing Boing? What if you're Michael Arrington? What if you're Craig Newmark?
The point where you decide to seek investors is a pretty clear boundary: You need to talk to a lawyer. But if you're self-funding, and you're planning on releasing a free iPhone app for kicks, do you need a lawyer or not? I don't think it's all that obvious.
you simply can't
I see how much money is wasted on IT consultants, why should it be different with lawyers? Except with IT consultants I can tell when shit is happening, with lawyers I can't.
On the plus side, if you really do get screwed, a lot of states have funds set up to compensate you. But if you pay for some legal work that might not have been completely necessary, you're on your own.
This would be particularly important in corporate law for small businesses, where the lawyers have ongoing relationships with clients (as opposed to, say, personal injury law, where some guy hit by a truck picks an attorney out of the Yellow Pages and may never deal with the lawyer after that case is resolved).
Of course, I'm making suppositions based on my knowledge of economics. Maybe I should consult an economist.
I am also not saying that lawyers in general screw you over. But it seems very hard to find a lawyer I could trust.
I didn't invent that heart-bypass example; it was a running scam exposed on 60 Minutes a few years ago.
I've been a client to maybe five or six independent civil lawyers over the years, and they all did pretty much nothing more or less than what I asked for going in.
I had a free consultation with a corporate criminal defense lawyer recently, not realizing she was a trial lawyer, so it would really only have been appropriate to meet with her had I been charged with something -- I was just looking for advice on how to avoid committing a corporate crime in a tricky situation. Not only did she listen to my story and not bill me for anything, she gave me the most cautious advice possible under the circumstances -- the advice least likely to cause me to need her paid services.
(I've been happy with the doctors I've had over the years as well, for that matter. I once saw a dentist who seemed both incompetent and fraudulent, but I didn't go back.)
Your bypass example: yes, as it happens I have repeatedly read that bypass operations are complete nonsene, and there is actually a business of doctors referring patients to each other. Of course if they tell you you are going to die in one minute, there is no time to research the internet about the suggested treatment, which I would normally do.
With medicine I would do so - but with law, we have just learned that searching the internet is no good, because only a real lawyer should be trusted?
I have also had encounters with nice lawyers, who gave me free advice over the phone. However, it also seems common that lawyers don't want to be upfront about the costs they will incur. Also, I am in Germany, things might the different here than in the states.
Especially in corporate law. If they do a good job at drafting your contracts and defending you in court against copyright infringement suits, you'll come back, and recommend your other business-people friends to that attorney's practice.
Of course, your attorney will want to disembowel the opposing side, but that's what you want.
If you're worried about an attorney, look at their track record; unlike a lot of other professions, you can get all of it from the courthouse in the district where they practice. If you don't know where to start looking for a lawyer, call your local bar association, and ask them for a referral.
Or, if you've got very little money, look at Pre-Paid Legal Services. Yes, yes, it started as an MLM company, which looks pretty scummy, but they actually do provide a very, very useful set of services, and the total cost is less than twenty bucks a month.
It just makes me sad to see lawyers catching all the flack for the problems in our judicial system, when it's our elected officials who created the whole nightmare in the first place.
I did not even mean to knock lawyers, maybe they all mean well, but they might be used to a different kind of level for their operation.
Not that I had so much experience with lawyers so far, but so far I found it hard to find good ones. I just happen to have no connections in lawyer circles.
Of course just like doctors, it cannot hurt to get second opinion, because lawyers are of course not all ethical or infallible.
I must admit that it often freaks me out to consider that other professions are just as messed up as the software world. For example, in medicine there is in all likelihood an equivalent to LISP and an equivalent to Java. Many hospitals might have invested in useless expensive machinery (Bea Weblogic, Oracle...), and now use it on their patients, even though better treatments are already available.
If not, I wonder how medicine has solved the problem that the IT world can't seem to get a grip on.
Also, anyone can just call themselves an IT consultant. You have to go through schooling and pass a test to become a lawyer. The barrier to entry is a lot higher.
If you go to parenting site they ask questions about the best schools and those who answer are not teachers. Visit teenagers sites and you will see a lot of questions from young girls who are very confused with their bodies and want medical advices, those who answer are not doctors.
Good thing you included the word "almost"... :~)
Eating a child is wrong regardless of how one would justify it.
I cannot see any biological advantage of not eating your children in emergency situations -- i.e. where you need to eat the child (survival, extortion, ...) and she won't survive anyways.
Our standards have changed, too -- not even a century ago, holocausts were considered absolutely appropriate (even by scientists!).
Plenty of societies, both ancient and modern, have legalized, or even encouraged, what we define as 'murder'.
And note that I'm not arguing that murder is acceptable; rather, that the definition for it changes so much between societies as to make the statement "Murder is wrong in all human societies." a completely meaningless phrase.
A likely explanation for the prohibition against the killing of other humans is strictly pragmatic: Societies where members can kill each other freely will self-destruct. This has nothing to do with 'murder being wrong', as much as free homicide not being a very stable evolutionary path.
Lets break it down. Is killing children always wrong?
In many countries it's legal (today) to kill children. In some cultures surplus children were left to die of exposure (Sparta for example).
And once the child is dead - well some cultures eat the dead as a form of burial.
There goes your absolute.
Just so you know: it's not possible to create a moral system from first principles. It always has to be imposed from outside. In most countries the bible serves as the starting point.
If you want, you can have one guy decide, and use his ideas. But you can never defend them as absolute and correct. Another person, just as logical, can come up with conflicting ideas, and you can never prove one is right and the other wrong.
You are captain of a cruise liner full of children. The ship is boarded by pirates. These pirates are utterly evil and utterly truthful. They demand that either you eat one child, who happens to be about to die of a congenital heart defect, or they will blow up the ship and kill hundreds of children.
What do you do?
I can, without hesitation, not delaying for one second, not second guessing myself whatsoever, with certainty as broad as the universe itself...
Also, though, in reference to the silly pirate example below, something being absolutely wrong does not prevent the possible necessity of doing that thing to prevent greater wrongs. Its still wrong, just possibly less wrong.
So I would agree that eating children is wrong.
Only, Matt's advice is correct. You should not ask for legal advice on HN, even if it is possible that in one of the many parallel universes there exists an entity you trust more than a lawyer.
Nonetheless, I believe it is incorrect to state that one would be putting one's self in harms way by discussing legal matters with a non-lawyer, as the article implies.
Here's an example: My neighbor has a large tree bordering my yard, from which a branch is hanging over the fence and interfering with my shit. Is it legal for me to chop the branch? Maybe in some jurisdictions, but who knows? Should I call a lawyer right away? Let me see what my wife thinks.
Me: "Hey honey, what should I do about this branch? Should I call a lawyer?"
Honey: "A lawyer?!?!? For God's sake why would you do that? That's just Ethel's tree. Just cut the damn thing down."
-- or --
"Umm, Johnny Cochrane, Jr. lives there. Call five lawyers."
I have often discussed legal matters with experienced businesspeople and investors. Of course, when the conversation turns to "Ok, what is the next action step?" the consensus is nearly always "Talk to a lawyer" :-)
When you consider the legal questions that are asked, his advice seems very sound.
(Sorry, it was there, I had to...)
But sometimes you aren't looking for specific legal advice - you're looking to educate yourself as an entrepreneur. I've learned quite a bit about contracts, business formation, tax law, etc. from my attorneys - but I've also learned a bit from other entrepreneurs.
Would you post a question here asking for medical advice?
I don't believe every case is that different though, and there are some common threads, as can be seen in the recent advice-wanted article (LLC's are cheap and easy, definitely get a lawyer if there's more than one person). Would anyone here recommend that people use Cobol or Forth to make a web site with, unless the user has some really outlandish requirements?
In other words, advice here may be good for getting the 'gist' of how things are or ought to be. Clearly, when you want to get serious, at that point you should consult a lawyer. For example, I think pretty much anyone can tell you that forming a partnership instead of an LLC or corporation is likely to be a bad idea, or that people aiming for investments are likely better off with a C corporation. Of course, there are lots of underlying details that need to be looked after by a professional.
Furthermore, I like learning about this stuff, and it's not rocket science. Complex, in some cases, certainly, but this isn't a group of people that shys away from tough or complex things. The important thing is to keep in mind that we aren't experts in it, simply learners.
I can think of a few times where a lack of proper legal advice cost me more than a million dollars.
Once burned, twice shy.
People commonly discuss everything from depression to motivational issues.
The law is not logical and the outcomes are not reasonable. This is a hard thing for the engineering mind to come to terms with given how much these seemingly random outcomes can affect peoples' lives.
The law is a system that's nearly completely hacked at this point. Think of it as a RedHat linux 5.0 system with wuftp enabled that's been running on the net since '97. Do you really think that ls is still ls?
Although the decision may not always go to the side with the deepest pockets and the most theatrically convincing lawyers, that's the way to bet.
When you execute a legal document twice, the same results both times would be fall-out-of-your-chair unexpected.
Even simple, clear-cut legal documents like wills are at best, probability functions.
Only choosing a non-sharky Lawyer is much easier than a non-sharky VC. Go to some reputable law firms, tell them about your company, listen to them, and go with the one you like. If you haven't figured this out yet then it probably means that you have very little to be "screwed" out of anyways so you won't have to worry about them doing that.
Mentally masturbating over legal issues you'll never understand in a bootstrapped startup is just as impractical as not trusting landlords and insisting on building your own office.
If done right you will get a rough feel for legal issues as you go. And it will come from your lawyers.
Jack Sheridan's talk at startup school (http://omnisio.com/startupschool08/jack-sheridan, a good talk that's not a sales pitch) was an eye-opener for me -- I've become much more disciplined about simply documenting agreements.
The only argument is about what mechanisms can be considered scientific explanations. If you don't believe me, read what the key ID thinkers actually say, instead of what the media says they say. The ID people explicitly make this point in Expelled.
So, even though Matt picks out this position to show his clear thinking skills in a controversial matter, it doesn't really pick out a controversial position. Matt's position on evolution is just empty rhetoric for those who don't know the debate. Alternatively, Matt doesn't get it either.
Lawyers go through a lot of schooling to learn how to examine your situation and come up with the right answer
I guess that's relative. As far as graduate programs go, the law degree isn't really that long. They have probably haven't had many specialized courses; their expertise will come from experience.
Often, the work that's done in their office is done by someone without much training at all. You learn about business entities and how to form them in a sophomore undergraduate class.
But while the law can be hacked, it is rather complicated. Whether or not the person you asked had an understanding of precedents in your particular area would be a key factor in getting a quality response.
Many of the comments here are underestimating the technical (although perhaps not technological) training a lawyer receives, at least a good one. If you look at the first year of law school, it is often about learning how to think like a lawyer. That, to respond to the comment below, is logical thinking, but within the legal system. Legal research, even the use of LexisNexis or Westlaw is an ability not easily mastered by the novice, no matter how brilliant their startup idea or programming acumen.
The truth is that almost everyone underestimates the difficulty of other's expertise. I could point to (hundreds of) thousands of blog posts about individuals who think it is easy to whip up a good website, program, etc and how stupid those people are. The parallel to that is programmers who think the law is easy.
Matt's key point, to address other comments, at least in my view, is not necessarily that you have to go to a lawyer when you have no money, but 1) when you have some money, go to a good lawyer and 2) know that you're ignorant. Know that you, your friends, the people you often talk to, likely have no idea what they are talking about where the law is concerned, and do not under any circumstance forget 1) because you did not realize 2).
Short of someone who's done all three degrees, my estimate is probably pretty good. I had room-mates and friends in graduate school (Ph.D.) who were law students, and a friend of mine went on to get a JD after his Ph.D. My wife is an MD. You could say I have a bit of knowledge about this.
Perhaps you didn't mean to reply to my post, but rather to someone else's. I am not saying the law is easy, I'm saying that being a lawyer is not enough of a qualification for getting your hard questions answered. Experience matters.
Consider accounting: you can do the numbers yourself, but an experienced accountant can bring more to the table than just how to classify expenses.
(You could, of course, make the same arguments for the other degrees in various situations.)
Law firms often work the same way, with junior lawyers spending a few years 'learning the ropes' before they get put in charge of anything truly important.
I think I'm supporting your post, but I'm not sure. :)
I did not interpret this to mean doctorates. When you said graduate programs, I took you mean, all post-undergraduate programs. Since there are many master's programs out there of the one to two year length (especially professional degrees that can confer "expertise") I took a three year law degree to be fairly long. I have no doubt that you have a lot of knowledge about this, and obviously the number of years you state for the length of degree programs is accurate (although I guess, even more on your side would be the argument that although an MD is four years, medical education is much longer), I just had a misunderstanding of the sample space we were talking about.
Obviously you're correct that three years is not that long when compared to six.
I did mean for some of my reply to be in response to your post, obviously, but by no means was everything I said a reply to your post, but rather the thread at large.
My guess for the one inviolable rule was, "Have enough cash to pay your bills each month or die."
Could there possibly be two inviolable rules?
Unfortunately, you've tripped on Paul Buchheit's rule. You are overgeneralizing from your own risk profile. There may be some real cowboys on HN who are optimizing for different values and may be willing to accept significantly more legal risk in their lives in the process of launching their businesses.
(I'm not one of them.)
Because lawyers are magic people who never make mistakes? Who are completely trustworthy? Because the act of simply discussing a legal matter with friends will somehow cause irreparable harm?
I'm leery whenever someone tells me what I can and can't discuss with whom.
Let's say I'm having car trouble. I'm not stupid, I know I'm going to have to take it to a mechanic. But, first I discuss the problem with some friends and family. I get a couple uninformed opinions on what it might be, what it might cost to fix, etc.
When I take the car into a mechanic am I worse off for getting a few uninformed opinions?
It's more akin to feeling a sharp pain in your chest and asking a friend rather than a doctor.
There's no variability? There are no minor legal issues? I should consult a lawyer about, say, a parking ticket?
Let's say I were to ask for advice about X. Someone posts, "Oh, when I went through X, my lawyer advised me to do Y and I think it really helped." So, then when I talk to a lawyer I can ask about Y. I don't see how opening a dialog hurt anything?
How does a little extra knowledge lead to disaster? Note: I'm not talking about forgoing a lawyer's advice in favor of listening to an internet nutjob.
You seem to be advocating ignorance and/or blind faith lawyers. How do you recognize a bad lawyer if you don't make any effort to educate yourself?
Weeding out bad lawyers is not something that posting here will help you with (unless maybe you ask for recommendations, which I would encourage). Every legal advice post here gets 100 differing opinions. If you assume any lawyer who tells you something other than what you heard here is a bad one, then all of them will be.
The best route might be to do what you do with a doctor or any other professional: get a few opinions. Do a few consultations. They're generally free, and at least will give you some idea.
The problem with "extra knowledge" is that you're getting some amount of information and some amount of misinformation, and you likely have no good way to choose between them.
I don't advocate blind faith in anyone, but legal advice from a lawyer is orders of magnitude more likely to be correct than legal advice from a non-lawyer.
Let's say you ask your friend, he says it's ok (which he is absolutely certain is true) and you go ahead with the deed. I mean, she was totally hot, and looked like she was at least 20, so I understand. Then you find out the hard way that your friend was wrong. Now you're a registered sex offender (which I think is B.S., but that's beside the point). You spend the rest of your life paying dearly.
Even if you were to assume going in that your friend is most lilkely right, the small possibility that he is wrong multiplied by the truly disastrous outcome makes it well-worth having just spoken to a lawyer. I don't know about you, but I'd gladly drop a couple hundred to prevent even a 1% chance of becoming a registered sex offender.
almost certainly they must have asked for professional opinion, but equally certainly if they weren't sufficiently aware of the legal knowledge required they probably wouldn't have exploit it.
(I hate to post something that is essentially "+1", but in this case I think it really needs to be said.)