the Zealous

Knocking down a false, weak or misleading characterization of your opponent's argument is to engage in strawmanning. This kind of argumentation fallacy requires that the audience be ignorant or uninformed of the original argument to be successful.

In a study published in the Journal of Corporation Law, law school Professors Badawi and Webber examined, over a five-year period, takeover target share price changes in reaction to the perceived quality of the law firm(s) filing litigation challenging, on behalf of institutional shareholders, the fairness of the announced proposed merger or acquisition. The professors grouped the plaintiff firms into "high quality" and "low quality", based on a number of critieria, including value of settlements recovered and whether any of the firms were openly criticized by the Delaware Chancery judges as being, well, worthless leeches, basically.

A federal district court decision in Massachusetts (summarized ably here) is a grim reminder to all of us that even the most trivial article in the English language can make or break your client's contract or case.