Software Reliability and Contracting Best Practices
In some sort of antipodal professional-criticism synchronicity, I find myself critiquing lawyers while Alan Brain points to an article critical of software developers.
Interesting to me is the linked article's enthusiasm for developing a modular approach to coding. I look at contracts as business algorithms. And I have some modules or "subroutines" from other agreements ready to plug into current agreements. I sometimes need to tweak them for the needs of the immediate deal, but rarely do I need to develop an entire agreement from scratch to suit my client's needs. Lawyers learning from computer programmers. What will they think of next?
When I first encountered lawyers attempting to do this, they didn't understand templates, so it was just cut and paste. So my first wife's attorney tried to give our children to someone else. It would have been funny if I dodn't have to pay them to fix it. My corporate attorneys were more successful. But I always had a feeling they charged me the same as the old days, even though only a few items were customized.
Posted by: anselm at February 22, 2005 05:13 PM