I am a little confused by this. If there is an email chain where all the engineers are speculating wildly about what could go wrong, then that posses a legal risk to the company, if and only if, they are later being sued because one of those wild speculations was actually correct.
That is not to say that the speculation is necessarily useful, an infinite list of speculative failure modes, containing a tiny number of realistic ones, is just as useless and a zero-length list. But I would prefer that the choice between a longer list (where true dangers are missed because they are listed alongside reams of nonsense) and a shorter list (where true dangers are missed because they were omitted) was made to maximise effectiveness, not minimize legal exposure*.
*This is not a criticism of any organisation or person operating sensibly within the legal system, but a criticism of said system.
If there is an email chain where all the engineers are speculating wildly about what could go wrong, then that posses a legal risk to the company, if and only if, they are later being sued because one of those wild speculations was actually correct.
Close—the risk being managed is one of total costs to go through the process, rather than their outcomes per se. So the risk to the company is increased if any of the wild speculations happens to be consistent with any future lawsuit, whether correct or spurious. How I think legal departments model this is that the length of the lawsuit determines the costs, and lawsuit length increases with the amount of purported evidence (since anything the other side says still needs to be argued against or countered, even if it is not ultimately a factor in any judgment).
I agree on the maximize effectiveness criterion, and furthermore I suspect that this could be a source of strategic advantage for companies to implement. I suspect this because I have seen a lot of commentary about how companies are much more risk-averse about lawsuits than is warranted as measured in settlements and judgments. I haven’t validated these comments, but I do observe being utterly cavalier about legal risk doesn’t seem to hurt tech companies near as much as you would expect given how other industries treat it.
I am a little confused by this. If there is an email chain where all the engineers are speculating wildly about what could go wrong, then that posses a legal risk to the company, if and only if, they are later being sued because one of those wild speculations was actually correct.
That is not to say that the speculation is necessarily useful, an infinite list of speculative failure modes, containing a tiny number of realistic ones, is just as useless and a zero-length list. But I would prefer that the choice between a longer list (where true dangers are missed because they are listed alongside reams of nonsense) and a shorter list (where true dangers are missed because they were omitted) was made to maximise effectiveness, not minimize legal exposure*.
*This is not a criticism of any organisation or person operating sensibly within the legal system, but a criticism of said system.
Close—the risk being managed is one of total costs to go through the process, rather than their outcomes per se. So the risk to the company is increased if any of the wild speculations happens to be consistent with any future lawsuit, whether correct or spurious. How I think legal departments model this is that the length of the lawsuit determines the costs, and lawsuit length increases with the amount of purported evidence (since anything the other side says still needs to be argued against or countered, even if it is not ultimately a factor in any judgment).
I agree on the maximize effectiveness criterion, and furthermore I suspect that this could be a source of strategic advantage for companies to implement. I suspect this because I have seen a lot of commentary about how companies are much more risk-averse about lawsuits than is warranted as measured in settlements and judgments. I haven’t validated these comments, but I do observe being utterly cavalier about legal risk doesn’t seem to hurt tech companies near as much as you would expect given how other industries treat it.