The business section of the Sunday New York Times today leads with a story on the prevalence in entrepreneurs of a psychological condition (or mental disorder, per the DSM) called hypomania. Hypomania is a state marked by elevated and expansive moods, racing thoughts, little need for sleep, that is, somewhere between exuberance and the manic phase of bipolar disorder. (I liked what one psychiatrist said: if you think you are God, you are manic; if you think you are God's gift to technology, you may be a hypomanic entrepreneur.)
I've been developing a thesis over the years about the disconnect, generally, between lawyers and entrepreneurs, probably best summarized by the title of my essay Why the Law of Entrepreneurship Barely Matters. Take a look at the Times story, and think about what it would be like to throw a person, fully inculcated by three years of traditional legal education, into a room with somebody like this, and tell the lawyer to do "legal work." I go back to the before and after frames of reference in contract that I have been playing with this semester. Not only must the lawyer to this entrepreneur deal in a "before-the-fact" frame, but it's entirely likely that the lawyer and the client have wholly different orientations to the future, and the need (or not) to deal with uncertainty. The lawyer will address it rationally, by projecting into the after-the-fact frame, anticipating the possible kinds of risks and disputes that may arise, and translating them digitally into contract language. I'm quite positive that's not how the client views things. That's not to say that the lawyer shouldn't do her job; it's to say, instead, that the lawyer needs both to understand the non-legal norms, mores, and constraints that may obviate or render useless the legal ones, and to be able to speak both languages.
As an aside, I'm reading a really fun novel called Horse Heaven by Jane Smiley. I happened to get to this description of the mental state of a great racehorse just after reading the Times article.
Like every genius, and he was a genius, as his race record would eventually prove, he had not so much a plan as a specific, overriding aim. His nature was out of balance in this way, whether through brain chemistry or as a result of organization of the nervous system as a whole. His aim was to run.... For him, as for all geniuses, the aim was insistent, the prompt was immediate and strong. The three-year-old never forgot that he wanted to move. Eating, sleeping, regarding fillies with interest, socializing in general with humans or horses, having to stand for a bath or another procedure, all of these activities only momentarily distracted his attention from his real aim, which he felt in his body, his mind, his heart - move move move. Like all geniuses, he had no perspective, could get no perspective, did not even seem to understand that there was such a thing as perspective.
Smiley's novel deals extensively with trainers who understand these animals. Maybe great business lawyers have similar skills.
Jeff, I'll confess that your reference to "hypomania" led me to believe that your post would concern the malady that strikes so many law professors: the fondness for hypos. Alas. Twas not to be.
Posted by: Tim Zinnecker | September 19, 2010 at 03:53 PM
oh that's nice!
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