Supermodernity

Wrote my first contract. Had help from an student who works as a legal assistant to a Law alum.

She told me that in law is simply thinking about what could happen and writing it  into the contract. I asked if it was like chess - where if opponent makes move a, then prepare move b, but at the same time take into account that opponent could  make move a2, which would also mean that your preparations would include b2,  and that b2 would leave you open to a future move by a2.1.

The thing is that perhaps law is not as complex as that. For instance, a contract simply states all action intersections where things might go wrong, or where the hiring party, client, and hired might be harmed.

All harms must be taken into account, which is similar to chess but not as complex, because harms can be listed out, instead of figured in tactically for a series of complex future moves.

It was like this when I used to do speech and debate. If I argued the affirmative, I had to prepare values a, criterion a, contentions a, arguments a. But I also had to think about what opponent b would bring. I would go around and ask the other debaters what the popular neg arguments were. Then I would figure those into my case before neg had the opportunity to pitch ideas in the case to the judge. Hearing a pre-rebuttal of a popular neg argument first denied the credibility of the neg's argument.

The only issue with speech and debate was that I was a lazy case writer. Instead of wasting time with tons of research I would utilize a set of qualitative and quantitative methods to quickly gain the most popular or more powerful information from my opponents, team members, and peers. This was often easy because tournaments were held in the gymnasiums of schools, and hundreds of debaters would be there with legal pads and briefcases. All were under the same resolution for that month. So each month I'd beef up my case as quickly as possible after the first few rounds of action.

I used to think that the methods I used for research were unethical, simply because they were shortcuts to the normal searching methods. The methods I used cut time, because I had 10 classes each semester and had to miss each Friday to go to the two day tournaments. I didn't have time to write coherent cases from scratch. Others somehow found the time to do so.

I feel that what I did was akin to online searching methods today. I felt out the database/ecosystem of the regional/state/national arena that I was competing in, and then sifted through comments and people to see the most popular topics. This is what sites like Digg and Stumbleupon do. In a way, I was networking for information. The other thing was that even though we all competed against each other, the debaters from different schools were often friends. I remember purposefully messing up a finals round for the benefit of a friend's win.

But my methods were not good enough. I always ended up in 2nd or 3rd place at tournaments, instead of first. Perhaps those methods were good only to a certain point.