Do you remember the old stories about coal miners forced to rent their homes from the company they worked for?
The tech industry is pulling the exact same scam on your firm today. We happily traded ownership of our software for the convenience of the cloud. We are stuck renting our own data back from tech monopolies who change the rules, raise the prices, and take zero responsibility.
Some years ago, I visited the Kennedy Space Centre and learned that our mobile phones have more computing power than the roomful of computers that launched the first spacecraft to the moon. That got me thinking about some people who I know who use these technology powerhouses for nothing more than checking their email, playing games, and laughing at videos about cats.
I did great legal work for Dr. Bob. He even said so. My service was impeccable. My fees were reasonable. It was a great relationship.
One day, Doctor Bob called to tell me that he had sold his clinic, and he asked me to provide the deal lawyer with any required assistance. And just like that, I found out that my relationship with Dr. Bob might have been a mile wide, but it was only an inch thick. You see, I was not his “trusted advisor.”
Chris was a client of mine who was in deep, deep trouble. I was brilliant, as usual. Following a period of intense stress for us both, Chris escaped with his business and fortune intact. He paid me handsomely, and without question. Seeing how appreciative he was of my efforts, I took the opportunity to ask him why he never sent me his easy stuff to do. I appreciated the challenging files, but being the greedy lawyer that I was, I also wanted his routine work to keep my juniors and clerks busy billing hours.
I am on a slow boat to Tokyo. Over the last few weeks, I have come to know Bill and Paul, both good looking guys in their early eighties. Bill is a pianist and music aficionado. He wears a baseball cap that says, “I’m old, but I’m cool,” which pretty much sums things up for both of them.
You will all remember Hansel and Gretel. Abandoned by their stepmother, they left a trail of breadcrumbs to find their way out of the forest. Birds ate the crumbs, and Hansel and Gretel got lost, and eventually fell into the clutches of an evil, cannibalistic witch. Imagine, with me if you will, that AI was around at the time. Had AI trained on those breadcrumbs before they were eaten, it could have produced a map to lead Hansel and Gretel to safety.
My firm had a thriving real estate practice in the 1980’s. When the real estate market tanked from 1989 until about 1996, they were not happy times. We did not hire any real estate lawyers in those days.
Career Announcement – Chat GPT is pleased to announce that Murray Gottheil has finally achieved his life-long ambition to be a partner in Big Law!
I was bored this morning so I entered the following prompt into Chat GPT: “Create a biography for Murray Gottheil Canadian lawyer.”
This is what it told me:
My wife likes to tell the story of the first file that she worked on for me when she articled for my firm. (Those were in the days when she did what I told her to do, because I was the boss. Things have changed.)
I had her work on a financing file. Back in the day, financing statements under the Personal Property Security Act were typed on a government form, and submitted over the counter.
Martin is a lawyer who has closed many residential real estate transactions. Back when he was starting out, Martin read the relevant statutes and regulations and prepared all the documents himself. For each transaction, Martin drafted a Statement of Adjustments, adding numbers in his head. Eventually he used a calculator, and then a software program. Then, he hired a law clerk and taught her how to do it. Should the situation arise where Martin needs to prepare a Statement of Adjustments manually, he can easily do so, because he knows everything that there is to know about them. When a dispute arises as to the accuracy of a Statement of Adjustments, he can resolve it.