Nice Letter, Lawyer Letter
Simple Justice:
Few things generate as much anger from non-lawyers as the lawyer letter. When I posted about lawyer letters the other day, following Patterico’s and Jeff Jarvis’ complaints about the APs handling of their silly quotation demands, a comment was left by my buddy Mark, the WindyPundit. I wrote that a letter was just words, and this is how Mark reacted:
Almost everything a lawyer does is just words, so that’s not exactly a comfort.
And maybe it’s not just words, maybe it’s notice of some kind—an official requirement before the next step. Is there some response I have to make to preserve my options? Did the letter start some clock running that will ring later on?
Whenever I get a letter that someone spent over $100 to write (maybe way over $100), it gets my attention. If I have to pay a lawyer to read the letter for me, it could easily cost more than all my out-of-pocket expenses for a year’s worth of blogging.
A lot depends on whether the AP tried a lighter hand first. Did they originally send a letter that starts something like “Hi, I’m Bob Smith at Associated Press, and we just noticed something about your website that caught our attention…”?
Aside from the issue I raised in response, that the idea that there should be required precursors to lawyer letter, where “nice” overtures precede the demanding ones, it struck me that there is a substantial gap in the appreciation of why letters are sent by lawyers in the first place. I want to try to clear this up.
A short time back, I was asked by a client to help with a problem he was having with a neighbor. My client was the former CEO of a major corporation. His neighbor is a professional athlete in a major sport. …