October 2014

Admittedly, it feels disconcerting to freely disclose legal text that you've grown quite proud of over the years. It's your IP, your know-how, your craft. You feel like you are somehow giving away a piece of you, and for seemingly nothing in return.
 
But here's the lesson to be learned from Redline: you are not your legal text, but the counselor and advisor behind it. Your years of accumulated experience and wisdom cannot be reduced to a mere indemnification clause, or a MFN provision, or a redlining tactic. We share what we consider to be extremely valuable legal text on Redline because we know that we're never as good as we think we are, and that there's always someone who can teach us something.

This notion is validated by the quality of the work product on Redline. It far surpasses anything available in any online or offline form libraries or repos, and it continues to improve as more seasoned lawyers join us, increasingly from members inviting in trusted colleagues. We've had our mistakes corrected and our assumptions challenged, and we are far better lawyers because of it.

When I was a young law firm associate back in the day, I was second chair on a complex, lucrative (for our client) and acrimonious technology/patent license negotiation. We were holed up in a conference room with buyer's counsel, in the dead of a typical brutal Colorado winter, groping our way towards final agreement. The legal negotiations were excruciating. We were the smaller party going up against a huge computer manufacturer, and the buyer's counsel, on the junior side of the experience scale, simply kept repeating the same mantra that corporate policy forbids any flexibility, even on what clearly should be uncontentious points.
 
My boss (senior partner at my firm) eventually lost his patience -- but never lost his cool. I can hear his words to this day: