The BUSKLAW October Newsletter: "Have We Been Captained All This Time by a Codfish?" The Case for Strong Organizational Contract Management
Children's literature can provide unique insights into best practices and procedures related to my legal specialty: business and technology contracts. Consider Bilbo Baggins's frustration when faced with a contract rife with legal jargon in J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit, a subject that my colleague Michael Braem and I wrote about here . Or how about using Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland to discuss - and refute - curious excuses for legal jargon in this Michigan Bar Journal article . And in J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan , we hear Peter accuse the ineffectual Captain Hook of being a codfish, causing the old pirate Smee to consider if the brigands have been captained by a codfish, adding "it's lowerin' to our pride." Let's talk about leadership in the context of organizational contract management. In my experience, many companies - large and small - don't grasp the importance of the careful and continuous tending of their contracts. They are