As I and the rest of the people in our company have been working on legal documents I kept thinking of how ridiculous the barrier has become for performing simple corporate tasks. This “hedge” extends beyond the legal profession and has reached all parts of society. In many ways I think it is an indicator of the major amount of pride people have today.
The “hedge” that I am talking about, is making your job appear as if it is proverbial rocket science. The “you wouldn’t understand even if I told you” attitude. It seems every day that I come across this with programmers, marketers, lawyers, doctors, or whatever. The more I studied in college the more I realized that the actual knowledge divide between the elite scientists(professors) and students was not as large as they would like you to think. I have always believed that if I want to learn something I can with enough work. I don’t want to downplay the fact that we each have our own talents, and that some people are suited for tasks more than others, but people overinflate their cerebral worth way too often.
I think this came to my attention first after three years of college. After thinking about what I had learned and the fact that I could then consider myself “a programmer”, and I realized that I really was not much more advanced than when I started. But I could pretend to be. By throwing out such phrases as object oriented, recursive functions, and object instantiation, that suddenly people would just cringe and declare my mental superiority. That is just absurd! Now, to be become a good programmer takes a lot of work, as with doctors, lawyers, managers etc, but it does not take a lot to just “be one”. I have found that with a little research and reading you can learn the fundamentals of about any field and be comfortable talking about and even discussing almost any topic.
I think programmers are historically at fault in this regard. To combat this I have tried to help whoever I can understand that programming isn’t that tough. You may not like to program, but with some help and work you could, if you wanted, learn to program. I started working with PHP on w3schools.com. Simple as that. I have since gone much farther than anything they teach, but that is where I started. So I guess all I want is for those around me to approach others with the expectation that they really can understand what they are doing. You may have to tone down your job speak, but it will work with almost everyone. Because remember, in some ways the only thing between us in our professions and a person flipping burgers is four years of falling asleep in class (if you even go).
Trent, I enjoyed reading your web log posting above. I am a lawyer and I can attest to the truthfulness of your points. It makes me sad to see my colleagues think, speak and act like they are “all that”.
I don’t want to hijack your post, but it has sparked some thoughts…
I try to make a point of “smartening up” my legalese when I speak with clients. Where I say “smartening up legalese”, others usually describe it as “dumbing it down into laymens terms”. My choice of wording reveals how I feel about legalese. I think when a lawyer uses legalese to communicate with a client, s/he is being extremely lazy and very rude–and not manifesting the flexability in communication that is the hallmark of a truly good attorney. I can’t stand the loud american that walks into a restuarant in Barcelona and starts rattling off his order to the server in thick Americanese with no attempt to speak the language. Totally rude. So, as you think about what attorney or professional service provider to work with, consider the one who “speaks your language” or at least makes bonafide attempts to connect with you on that level. That is smartening up legalese.
Nathan
April 27th, 2006
Hi Trent, this is a facinating post in light of the book I just read, Freakonomics. It’s a beseller right now and goes into great depth about the so-called experts. The piece on realtors was so revealing. Realtors sell their own homes, on average, for 3 percent more and wait 10 days longer to sell it. The author argues that when an expert treats himself different than clients, he is using his information to his advantage. Realtors want us to believe that we need their help and understanding of the market to sell our home for the best price possible, but in reality, they’re incentives are set up for us to move the property more quickly.
Neal Harmon
May 4th, 2006
[...] I wrote a blog almost a year ago speaking about how often people build a hedge around their job. My thoughts right now are related to this, but are in a broader context. With the Internet dead-horse currently being “community”, “Web 2.0″, “user generated content”, and “viral”, I have realized how incredibly arrogant the so-called experts in all these areas have become. It is a human trait to want to be the “go-to” person in something, and with the world population so large, people are nit-picking over the stupidest minutia ever. Here are some community examples from the Internet: [...]
Technology, Business, and Doritos » Blog Archive » Arrogance of communities
January 3rd, 2007