Woke up this mornin’ (da DA da da)
Sun shiny and bright (da DA da da)
Finished writin’ my articles (da DA da da)
They were lookin’ tight (da DA da da)
But wait just a minute (da DA da da)
What’s that I see (da DA da da)
A note from Legal, sayin’ “we just don’t agree”!
I got the legal beagle blues, yeah, they get me ev’ry time
Legal don’t want no ‘splaining, no, say folks don’t need no bottom line.
Had three employee newsletter articles fall under review by my client’s Legal department in the past week. One article was completely thrown out, or maybe deferred a couple of months. One was cut in half (“eviscerated” is the word that springs to mind) to remove “too much detail.” And I am waiting with only a faint hope that the third makes it, after being revised to take out certain potentially “dangerous” words and references.
Have you ever met a more cautious, seeing-monsters-in-every-corner bunch in your life? No wonder lawyers as a whole (and this is totally an opinion based on observation of every lawyer I have ever known) seem to go grey early.
Not long ago I had a lawyer tell me that “if we had our way, we wouldn’t tell anybody anything.” I replied that we communicators would tend to err on the side of telling everybody everything!
I believe it – if they had their way, there would be no such thing as employee communications! (The good news is, article #3 above made it with only a slash or three.)