Simple, Not Stupid
Charles Perez at Trial Presentation Blog has posted an entry that refers to one of my very favorite principles: Occam's Razor. I love this principle and not just because it has a cool sounding ring to it. Perez's post highlights this principle well and I look forward to reading in upcoming entries about his trial adventures foreshadowed in this post.
In fact, as I write this I am looking at an article that I cut out of a copy of The Economist entitled "Keep It Simple." I cut it out of the magazine almost four years ago as a way to simply help me remember that things can be made simpler, if we try. I taped it right to the top shelf of my office credenza hutch, directly above my monitor when I use my computer. It's not specifically tied to lawyers or the legal community, just a nice little article about how things are getting increasingly complex in our society.
It daily reminds me that a sound principle, and one that I have found consistently works well in commercial litigation, is to keep things simple when describing the complex. From a trial lawyer's perspective, one of the best ways to begin the process of making things simpler is to figure out what human motivation is at the root of the transaction or series of transactions you are trying to tackle. Greed? Embarassment? Pride? Laziness? Those base emotions are simple to describe and invariably connect with judge or jury. They are also invariably the driver behind any number of large and complex commercial transactions that may be the basis or the subject of the dispute you are handling. Anyway, that oftentimes is a good place to start when trying to reduce things to their simpler forms, even in commercial litigation. It won't always work, but it often does.
