[Editor’s Note: Original version has been modified on or about February 5, 2007.]

Lawsuits are messy.  Whether it’s the RIAA versus Napster, the impeachment trial of a President, the world against YouTube, Microsoft against the World… sometimes you sort of ask for it, oftentimes you don’t.  Regardless, what comes out of legal proceedings is nothing short of, well, to quote Jerry Seinfeld, out of the bizarro world.

I think diplomacy and tact are underrated in our culture.  No, not just the business world, I mean western culture altogether.

When two corporations go at it, it’s called strategy and it boils down to a line item in the old income statement.  Sometimes, legal expenses are bundled in administrative expenses.  We just accept it.  That’s wrong.  Much like the cost to a corporation is a rounding error; to a lawyer, a win or loss is a rounding error. 

But when a corporation sues you, an individual or a business, you really have two choices: bend over or strike back.  When bully organizations lie, fabricate things and go in to impose their will, they end up walking away weaker.  Look at how the US is doing in Iraq.  The US is a shadow of itself if you compare the US in the 1990s vs. the US in the 2000s.  I could think of numerous large IT, media, manufacturing, retail etc. companies who walked away battled and bruised after litigation as well.

There are good/nice and bad/evil lawyers just like there are in any other profession. Lawsuits tend to get messy, and nothing is as messy as a big ball of oil (We quoted Jerry Seinfeld before, it just felt right to quote George Constanza as well).  It’s up to the one paying the lawyer to be wise and avoid the courts as much as possible.

[Editor’s Note: Original version has been modified on or about February 5, 2007.]

• Digg this Blog
• Share on Facebook
• WatchMojo on Twitter
• WatchMojo on YouTube
• Add to Favorites
• WatchMojo Newsletter