If you want to know what it’s really like to practice my kind of law, you might want to spend some time thinking about what it would be like to read someone else’s e-mail. A lot of someone else’s e-mail. For instance, if you were investigating whether or not a key employee engaged in some sort of a wrongful act, you would look through every piece of e-mail you could find, because you can’t know for sure where some mention of the wrongful act might come up.
To get a taste of what it’s like, imagine that you were investigating whether or not Tom Brady should be suspended for four games because of allegedly conspiring with an equipment manager to underinflate footballs. You’d read all of Tom Brady’s e-mails, including these dealing with the purchase of a $8,300 pool cover. But really, about the only thing that’s even remotely interesting about this exchange is the price tag for the product and the fact that a personal assistant, rather than the homeowner himself, arranged for the purchase.
Then, imagine what it’s like to read thousands of e-mails like that, only not even involving expensive things like a $8,300 pool cover with the color selected by a Brazilian supermodel. Now you have some idea of what it’s like to be me.
Burt Likko is the pseudonym of an attorney in Southern California and the managing editor of Ordinary Times. His interests include Constitutional law with a special interest in law relating to the concept of separation of church and state, cooking, good wine, and bad science fiction movies. Follow his sporadic Tweets at @burtlikko, and his Flipboard at Burt Likko.
You need to hire someone to do it for you. Profit center!Report
Like the guy who outsourced his work to China for 1/5 of his salary?Report
Thanks for this. I have found my new hero.Report
Do you want more outsourcing to China?
Because this is how we get more outsourcing to China.Report
Do I get to keep 4/5s of my salary, while turning in better work than anyone else in my office, yet doing nothing?
If so, then put me down as a “Shì de”.Report
Until you’re caught, fired, and they outsource THE DEPARTMENT.Report
Is THE DEPARTMENT that old Jack Lemmon comedy about the guy who tries to rise up in his company, by letting Chinese people do his work?Report
(More seriously, I am fully aware of the unacceptability of what this guy did; the security breach alone is bad, even if it had been to nationals of a country less likely to want to spy on us than China. Still, I can’t help but admire his moxie, and the fact that “his” work was consistently deemed the best in the building is hilarious).Report
On an purely individual level, yeah. That was quite a grift he had going on and it gets me to shake my head in vague disapproval/admiration the same way that I shake my head at Dillinger or Bonnie/Clyde.
But, at the end of the day, he got more people fired than just himself.Report
Set aside the egregious security breach for a second. If the department got outsourced because the company discovered it could get better code for less money by directly employing Chinese nationals, then the other U.S. employees got hurt by losing their jobs – but that occurred because the truth that they produce inferior work for more money has been exposed (in and of itself, this exposure should be a good thing.)
I don’t know if it’s exactly fair to *blame* him for the rest of the department getting outsourced, though he was the (or a) *cause*, by getting caught.
In a weird way, you could almost look at him like an unintentional whistleblower.Report
As I age, I am noticing the unsung virtues of sloth and inefficiency.Report
I thought about making a song about those virtues, but it just seemed too hard.Report
I’ve read lots of e-mails. Some were pretty good. Most are ordinary life. Allegedly people have gotten office affairs before and talks of sneaking a quick one at work but I have not.Report
When we were reading pharma rep field reports our main entertainment was figuring out what passed for English with these people. It’s not that they were writing in texting shorthand or the like. It’s that they were only marginally literate, and their supervisors were no better. We also enjoyed seeing how long a rep could cut and paste the same report every month before the supervisor noticed.Report
@richard-hershberger
What was the record?Report
Sadly, I don’t recall. More memorable was the sputtering indignation from the supervisor when it finally dawned on him.Report
“Allegedly people have gotten office affairs before and talks of sneaking a quick one at work but I have not.”
@saul-degraw ‘s next piece will be entitled, “Workplace Love, Digital Communication, and the Crash of the Euro: A Simple Regulatory Fix that Is Not At All Aimed at Getting the Secretary to Notice Me… Also, San Francisco”
:-pReport
Hundreds of hours reading emails?
Better call Saul.Report
Well, “dozens” is probably closer to accurate for any given calendar year. I also have motions to write, depositions to take, and trials to try.Report
Quite seriously, this sounds like the kind of thing that AI could potentially be good for.Report
How do we bill for that?Report
How do you bill for associates or investigators today?Report
This reminds me of David Brin’s book Kiln People.
One the the best detective novels I ever read.Report
…right there on the bill!Report
Real AI? Maybe. But until failing to produce something is vailidly excused by “we used the industry standard AI search and it missed that doc” then its doubtful.Report