Always Read the Fine Print, Even If You Have a Lawyer
Words matter, and even the smallest mistakes in legal documents can have dire consequences.
It’s your lawyer’s job to read them.
Photographer: Jasper Juinen/Bloomberg
Suppose you hire a plumber to fix a leak. While the plumber works, you’re busy on your laptop. An hour later, he tells you he’s done and hands you a bill. In theory, you could decline to pay until you’ve crawled beneath the sink to check the newly welded joint for signs of moisture. But a professional has just told you that the problem is fixed, so you’ll probably just write the check.
That example comes to mind in the wake of the $310 million malpractice lawsuit filed last week by TerraForm Power against a pair of the nation’s most prestigious law firms. All we have at the moment is the plaintiff’s version of the facts, an account the defendants deny, but the suit serves as a reminder that words, like numbers, matter. Lawyers aren’t engineers, but even the most trivial of errors can lead to disaster.