But lawyers working in private practice, or partners in firms with a lot of power, will presumably be willing to balance risk against reward, and try to optimize accordingly.
Lawyers: please correct me if I'm assuming incorrectly here.
I am not a lawyer, but you are certainly assuming incorrectly.
It is a lawyer's job to not only get you a good contract, but also to maximize their billable hours. They do not gouge too aggressively - after all they want future billable hours as well. But the risks and rewards that the lawyer is balancing are their risks and rewards, which are not the same as yours.
So what you have is a curve of diminishing returns. If you spend 2 hours on a legal problem, you might get an incomplete result. If you spend 10 hours, you might get something that meets the standards of good representation but still leave a few avenues unexplored. If you spend 20 hours, you might be able to explore those avenues and assure yourself that there are no risks lying there. If you spend 30 yours, you might just be gouging on tangentially related issues.
But you have a classic agency problem. It's in the lawyers interest to spend 20 hours, both because it increases hours and because that minimizes his chance of being wrong. It's probably in the client's interest to go for the 10 hour solution, because whatever risk is created by those unexplored avenues is likely outweighed by the extra time and cost.
Importantly, the threshold of risk is lower for the lawyer than for the client. Say one of those unexplored avenues requires delaying some deal by 2 days. That delay may be monetarily inconsequential to the client but is stinging for the lawyer because has advice has been found wanting, and that jeopardizes the client relationship.
The other problem is if your lawyer spends 20 hours, the many requested amendments are likely to prompt my lawyer to bill another 20 hours.
What happens then? Your lawyer has even more work to do.
The cycle can easily spiral.
Even for a 400k contract, it is not fun to feel nickeled and dimed with multiple 5k bills from my law firm before any work gets done.
I would rather work with someone willing to sign an imperfect contract. Unless you work very hard to tick me off, you have to do 50k worth of completely egregious stupidity before it is likely to be worthwhile to see the inside of a courtroom.
How likely is that? It is never going to happen. If I hate the work you are doing, I am going cancel the contract and never pay the final 100k or 200k you bill. Then you can effin' sue me. (More likely, we will end up negotiating a compromise...if we are not stupid buffoons.)
Absolutely. Doubly so because the lawyer is liable if their legal advice turned out to be bad, but the lawyer does not fully share in the upside if the negotiation goes perfectly.
"But the risks and rewards that the lawyer is balancing are their risks and rewards, which are not the same as yours."
Otoh if you take away that "pay for time" aspect you end up with someone who might be likely to cut corners because they are being compensated in a way in which they are disadvantaged if they spend more time than they need to.
After all you did also say: " They do not gouge too aggressively - after all they want future billable hours" so there is some "governor" on the process that prevents them from eating like a goldfish with unlimited food supply.
"They do not gouge too aggressively - after all they want future billable hours" so there is some "governor" on the process that prevents them from eating like a goldfish with unlimited food supply.
One of the things that you'll notice lawyers doing is throwing up a trial balloon by finding something to bill you for that you did not ask. If you don't push on that, you'll wind up on the "gouge" side of the equation. If you do push back on that, you've got better odds of winding up on the "maximize long-term returns" side instead.
Both ways the lawyer is doing their best to eat as much as they can get away with.
I will add to that thought something that I observed in a completely different business with respect to pricing.
Specifically pricing that is estimated and then needs to be revised when the job specs change. (Not programming by the way if it matters).
For certain customers when you give them the new price they go nuts and have a hard time accepting even though you are right to bill them additional charges (for things they asked you to do or material changes). What this does to the vendor is make them really cautious about trying to charge for things lest they get that anger unleashed again.
The "nice guy customers" on the other hand react like a gentleman and so you feel fairly confident in changing pricing liberally because they are so damn nice about accepting those pricing changes!
I should have been more clear: I meant that just as engineers are optimizing the risk/reward ratio for themselves and their interests, lawyers are likewise balancing risk and reward and optimizing for their interests. Often those interests overlap with those of their client/employer -- but at times they don't, as you underline.
My only point what that good lawyers probably use the same process. Good engineers aren't the only ones with strong logic skills.
While there is an agency problem and some lawyers take advantage, in general most lawyers are like most software contractors: basically honest, interested in their craft and keen to do a good job.
Lawyers are also held to a standard called "fiduciary duty". It's heavy ju-ju.
Lawyers: please correct me if I'm assuming incorrectly here.
I am not a lawyer, but you are certainly assuming incorrectly.
It is a lawyer's job to not only get you a good contract, but also to maximize their billable hours. They do not gouge too aggressively - after all they want future billable hours as well. But the risks and rewards that the lawyer is balancing are their risks and rewards, which are not the same as yours.