[conspire] conspire Digest, Vol 155, Issue 20

Sat Oct 1 22:21:44 PDT 2016

WOW , that was tricky , so far away from any idea of ' law ' subjects of the romans could recognize . 
[ Except possibly the god of the slave market part . ]  - Bruce

--------------------------------------------
On Fri, 9/30/16, conspire-request at linuxmafia.com <conspire-request at linuxmafia.com> wrote:

 Subject: conspire Digest, Vol 155, Issue 20
 To: conspire at linuxmafia.com
 Date: Friday, September 30, 2016, 12:00 PM

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 Today's Topics:

    1. On communication with lawyers (Rick
 Moen)
    2. Re: On communication with lawyers (Don
 Marti)

 ----------------------------------------------------------------------

 Message: 1
 Date: Fri, 30 Sep 2016 02:35:50 -0700
 From: Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com>
 To: conspire at linuxmafia.com
 Subject: [conspire] On communication with lawyers
 Message-ID: <20160930093549.GE2412 at linuxmafia.com>
 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8

 Quoting a pair of lines from a wonderful cult film:

   Rex O'Herlihan:  You're not a good guy at all!

   Bob Barber:  I'm a lawyer, you idiot!  
   [shootout occurs]

 -- Rustler's Rhapsody, 1985, w/Tom Berenger
 http://funny115.com/movies/rustlersrhapsody.htm

 (And by the way, the reviewers are dead-wrong with their 18%
 Tomatometer
 score:  This is one deeply hilarious albeit obscure
 movie.)

 For differing reasons, Deirdre and I aren't spooked by
 lawyers (unlike,
 e.g., the way many techies freak out when you remind them of
 the basic
 truth that anyone may sue anyone over anything, and that it
 could cost
 serious money).  Both of us have a good gut-level
 understanding of how
 lawyers work and communicate -- such that we sometimes
 forget how damned
 peculiar they are, and how most people don't 'get' Lawyer
 101 at all.

 This will be a bit of Lawyer 101.

 Here is the really important bit to not just understand, but
 also follow
 its ramifications:  Any lawyer is a hired gun whose
 main weapon is words.  
 If you're hearing in professional context from a lawyer, and
 he/she
 isn't _your_ lawyer, then _everything_ that lawyer is saying
 to you 
 is either (1) something he/she is required to say or (2)
 something whose
 sole purpose is to manipulate you.

 Towards this end, there will frequently be some mixture of
 barefaced
 lies, misrepresentations, lying through omission,
 deliberate
 non-sequitur logic, tactical vagueness, and selective and
 misleading
 truths.  You will learn to no longer be surprised when
 your questions
 are routinely ignored, the things you broadly hint should be
 explained
 remain mysterious, and there continues to be an utter
 absence of the
 normal give and take people otherwise have in
 conversation.  It's _all_
 weaponised.

 And that's their _main_ job skill.  Yes, they're also
 legal technicians,
 but mainly what they do is bullshit and manipulate people.

 And sometimes, even with my long experience, I teeter on the
 edge of
 falling for this sh**.  (I _hope_ I seldom actually
 fall for it.)

 There's a story about recent matters that ideally I'd post
 fully here,
 but I have to elide many of the details for people's
 privacy.  It's the
 lingering aftermath of my mother's estate, following her
 death in 2011.
 Part of her estate ended up in a trust to benefit one of my
 relatives,
 with me as the 'remainder beneficiary' -- a gruesome concept
 meaning
 that if I'm still alive when my relative dies, I get
 everything in that
 trust.

 The trust is administered by (of course) the trustee, a
 gentleman who's
 also a lawyer (among other things).  The
 lawyer-as-trustee also of
 course _has_ a lawyer.  So, when I hear from this lot,
 I get a 
 double-lawyer effect -- for starters.

 The lawyer-as-trustee recently casually lobbed in my
 direction a
 proposed modification of my mother's trust terms that would
 have
 eviscerated key part of Mom's trust plan, asking me to
 please consent to
 this.  To his evident surprise, I wrote back 'no',
 explaining why in
 some detail and attempting to suggest better ways to
 accomplish what I
 guessed he was aspiring to do.  (He can petition the
 court for changes
 without my approval, but then runs the risk that I'd show up
 with hungry
 attack lawyers of my own, objecting and arguing against.)

 Some other stuff followed, and then The Letter.  The
 Letter was written 
 to me by the lawyer-as-trustee's lawyer, condescendingly
 telling me
 what I had said (twisting it into what I did _not_ say),
 making a number
 of remarkable representations, and reaching some even more
 remarkable
 conclusions -- all with the obvious aim of
 reality-distortion.  Hidden
 in that pack of lies, obfuscation, and manipulation were two
 actual bits
 of data:

 1.  Lawyer-as-trustee will drop the proposed
 modification (not file
     it as a petition in Probate Court).
 2.  In the future, lawyer-as-trustee will seek my
 'consent' in 
     writing to certain major disbursements from my
 relative's trust.

 I came close to falling for that.  I thought, 'Well,
 it's a nuisance, but
 I suppose I can sign and send back that I'm OK with
 distribution for 
 X, then distribution for Y, etc.'  And I sighed,
 because I'd thought I
 was done with all this bullshit when Mom's estate finally
 was wound up,
 and I didn't actually want to get sucked back into it.

 But then I stopped and thought 'Wait, what?'

 Things you sign for a lawyer (someone else's) formalise an
 agreement.
 You give something up; you get something in return. 
 Mom taught me:  
 Always think about what it is you're giving up, and what
 you're getting.

 In this case, lawyer-as-trustee would at intervals send me a
 'consent'
 form to sign, each time signing away a legal right (the
 right to object
 in Probate Court to a trustee action).  In return, I
 would be getting...
 nothing at all.  Also, I'd be doing this gratuitous
 work, signing away
 my rights, for free.

 And, if you don't stop and think such matters through, you
 might
 mistakenly think it's something you 'had to' do, or
 alternatively 
 make the even bigger mistake of being flattered over being
 consulted on
 trust decisions -- which is not actually the case at all.

 Having thought the matter through, I sent lawyer-as-trustee
 a two-page
 letter back that boiled down to 'I'm liking "no",
 here.  I hope that
 works for you, as it does for me.'

 Because, as it turns out, I don't work for him -- free or
 otherwise.
 Nor is he offering anything I want.

 But lawyers routinely make cheeky, brazen requests --
 because doing so,
 very often, works.  And because, as John D. Rockefeller
 said, 'The meek
 shall inherit the earth, but not the mineral rights.'

 ------------------------------

 Message: 2
 Date: Fri, 30 Sep 2016 11:34:11 -0700
 From: Don Marti <dmarti at zgp.org>
 To: conspire at linuxmafia.com
 Subject: Re: [conspire] On communication with lawyers
 Message-ID: <20160930183411.GA12307 at rosmarinus>
 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8

 begin Rick Moen quotation of Fri, Sep 30, 2016 at 02:35:50AM
 -0700:

 > Things you sign for a lawyer (someone else's) formalise
 an agreement.
 > You give something up; you get something in
 return.  Mom taught me:  
 > Always think about what it is you're giving up, and
 what you're getting.

 I'll meet with or exchange documents with a live
 lawyer any time -- but what gives me the willies is
 all this "by taking this ordinary action you agree to
 become a party to a contract written by some lawyer
 you have never met" jive. (I guess that's why I
 get music by paying cash for a CD from the stack
 by some musician's instrument case instead of on
 the Internet.)

 -- 
 Don Marti <dmarti at zgp.org> 

 http://zgp.org/~dmarti/
 Are you safe from 3rd-party web tracking?  http://www.aloodo.org/test/

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 End of conspire Digest, Vol 155, Issue 20
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