Wanna feel smarter today? Sign here please.
I had to go through a new exercise that I’m not used to. I’m working with a couple people on a website, and I needed to write contracts for everything, in order to protect and benefit everyone. I looked at the task as a necessary evil. It was time consuming and something that I needed to do before anyone even agrees I can get paid, so every minute working on it, is in hopes that it will result in a closed deal. There’s no guarantee that what I write, can in effect kill the intention of the contract in the first place. One or both interested parties could back out. Then I’m left with an unsigned useless piece of paper. Whew I’m tired…
Regardless, I had to do it, thinking positively about it. Turns out something happened that I didn’t expect. While writing a contract, you have to search for words with the right meaning, not just kind of the right meaning, you have to consider what you can and can’t agree to, and how to present it. You also have to go back over it multiple times, removing problems with the logic. I know no one would go for this just as an exercise by itself, but I actually doing it was quite valuable, in that after completing it, I think my brain has grown some new neurons or connections. I actually think I got smarter writing contracts. And that’s not to say my contracts are perfect, or bulletproof. I’m sure they are flawed. I was constrained by time and experience. But I did however start to see new things, and again just logical thinking, using factually descriptive and consistent language to create these documents was even satisfying at the end.
I can see how lawyers can get quite good at this. Much of a contract is repetitive sort of lingo. Words used and understood inside this special framework that, once you know, turn into words as we know them, like emotional or logical tags of sorts. Some of it feels very foreign as if from an older different culture. I think by thinking this way, by exposing yourself to the limits, or benefits or extensions a contract creates, you then take from that a slightly more logical brain perhaps. You look at how to use exceptions, and what you can and can’t include according to your status and how the contract affects someone’s ownership of an actual tangible thing, or in property of an intellectual nature.
Now, based on this experience in any discussion in the future I may be more aware of the consequences of a certain type of argument and whether it was presented responsibly.
So men, let’s go out there and write some contracts!
2 Responses to “Wanna feel smarter today? Sign here please.”
January 17, 2008 at 7:47 pm | learning, writing | 2 comments
i love you mike….are you ready to work on my website?
mike i love you.
When are you going to work on my website?