A recent post by Don Peppers, founding partner at Pepper & Rogers Group, posted on LinkedIn and entitled “First, Kill all the Lawyers” caught my attention today. After all, hasn’t everyone had that thought, our knowledge of Shakespeare notwithstanding? Of course, Mr. Peppers’ title is not literally advocated. Rather, his contention is that heavy-handed legal processes typical of most business transactions may be detrimental rather than beneficial to solving problems.
Mr. Peppers notes the approach of Toro, a lawn machine and snow blower manufacturer. Toro, it appears, made a corporate decision to treat personal injury claims resulting from use of its products by considering them from the viewpoint of the claimant rather than from a shock-and-awe litigation approach. If it is true, I am impressed by this bold and counterintuitive policy. Moreover, such a strategy has been extremely kind to Toro’s bottom line. Some might argue that Toro is taking advantage of claimants by obtaining releases against litigation. Certainly no one with serious or potential future injury would be wise to relinquish his legal recourse. However, settlement is not necessarily detrimental to the interests of all injury victims. That is a discussion for another day.
When I consider Toro’s method in the context of my experiences, I find that I have also seen similar results. I once worked for a major multi-national oil company in its marketing department. I was as an environmental engineer dealing with contaminated ground water and soil resulting from leaking aboveground and underground storage tanks. When a call would come in threatening legal action, the law department’s typical response was along the lines, “Go ahead, we get sued everyday!” And while every threat did not result in a civil suit, those that did often dragged on for long periods of time, subjecting the claimant to great financial and emotional toll. I also wonder sometimes how much extra it cost the company simply because the claimant was upset by such an arrogant attitude.
Then I consider the approach I took with my environmental consultants and the state regulatory agency with which I dealt in resolving contamination issues. Upon first taking over my area from my predecessor, my company was involved in a number of contentious cases, some of which were under administrative consent orders issued by the state agency. Over time, by partnering with our consultants and taking a more conciliatory tone with the state, more contamination was remediated and more neighbors were satisfied than likely would have been the case had the opposite approach been taken.
And so in legal matters, the key is to solve the client’s problem to the greatest possible extent in the full context of the client’s interests. Perhaps sometimes one’s ends are more fully, beneficially and conveniently achieved when the means are more empathetic to the other party. To put it in the language of our forebears, maybe
“you can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.”
Lowe Law Solutions 