About
You know, lawyers should be working off of common terms and understand the words that we’re using. I think that’s a pretty basic principle among lawyers, wouldn’t you agree?
-Senator Whitehouse to Judge Kavanaugh during Congressional Hearings
The Whole Point
This is a legal insights newsletter. For full disclosure, we don’t have a lawyer on our team. We don't think…
Wait, Did You Say You Guys Are Not Lawyers? Writing A Legal Insights Blog?
Correct. We were just saying that we don’t think that should be a prerequisite for exploring legal implications of what are largely economic/financial phenomena. In fact, we think law is at its best when it applies a multi-disciplinary view, including economics/finance, history and logic.
Ok… What Do You Mean By Largely Economic/Financial Phenomena?
Definitions are everything. If we can’t agree on them, the rest is generally a waste of time and taxpayer money. It’s our contention that lack of consensus on definitions often leads to an incorrect application of the law; either in the form of wrong outcomes, or the right outcomes for the wrong reasons.
Give Me An Example. What Is One Definition That People Do Not Agree On?
Sure. Let us give you the main definitional issue: investing. Arguably the most misunderstood word of all time, we are inviting you into a world where everything looks drastically different once you restore the word to its original, much narrower interpretation.
Who is this newsletter for?
Anybody who is interested in financial truths and their legal implications: lawyers who need every edge, judges delivering well-reasoned opinions, reporters pursuing interesting stories, policymakers, regulators, researchers and all inquiring minds.
What Do You Mean Financial Truths? Aren’t The Positions You Are Taking Ultimately Opinions, Too?
Of course. In a world where many falsehoods and unsound opinions are advertised as truths, you have the right to be skeptical. We consider the positions we are advocating for as truths in the sense that we tried to evaluate all the alternatives, and they either led to some sort of inconsistency, or their implications are so much more undesirable from a public benefit perspective, we decided to discard those alternatives. We are our own harshest critics and if something doesn’t hang together, we don’t adopt that position.
Intriguing, but $35 a month? That seems steep, especially coming from non-lawyers.
We hear you. Again, this is an insights blog. This is not the place to get access to court opinions, legal gossip or law school rankings. What you’ll find here are well-thought-out opinions and comments that nobody else is talking about: fundamental assumptions that are not being challenged, alternative holdings that could happen once those assumptions are challenged, policy suggestions that are not being considered, inconsistent positions that are not being called out, etc.
At the end of the day, this is intended to be a complementary avenue for you, and hopefully, one that rocks your world. What we are bringing to the table is the perspective of someone who has been critically thinking about definitions and their implications through a multi-disciplinary lens over the course of many years. As far as we can tell, what we found doesn’t seem to be available elsewhere, at least not at this level of completeness. Only you can decide what that’s worth to you.
I Want To Give It A Try, But Why Are You Not Offering Trial Periods or Refunds?
We’ll be honest. This is not the type of newsletter that works well with trials or refunds. If those options were available, it’d be easy for someone to come in, try us, gather all the insights for free and leave. We know you wouldn’t do that, but enough others might, and the economics would simply not work.
That said, we appreciate we need to give you something. This brings us to…
Will Anything Be Free?
Yes. There will be occasional public posts, and every month we publish something, there will be at least one post that is free. Our hope is that the public posts will give you enough of a flavor as to whether this newsletter is something you would like to explore further.
Who Are You?
We believe in:
Critical thinking (We assume absolutely nothing);
Self-honesty (We try to go where the arguments take us); and
Context (Why something happened is just as important as what happened)
Validation is nice, but honestly, it’s not what drives us. Assuming we had the opportunity to think about something and establish a position, it doesn’t matter to us if the whole world is on the opposite side. It takes us a great deal of time to reach that level of conviction, but when we do, the popularity contest is not a concern.
We really do believe that Oscar Wilde was onto something when he said:
“Popularity is the crown of laurel which the world puts on bad art. Whatever is popular is wrong.”
Our pet peeves:
Outright disregard for the facts & unsound reasoning (the most profound problems of current times)
Inconsistent positions (We believe society lets flip-flopping off the hook too easily);
Situational ethics (It should be principles over self-interest, not the other way around).
Thus, we will make a point of calling this type of behavior out. Again, it gives us a ton to think and write about. Will it matter? We shall see.
What Else Do You Write?
F27, a financial insights blog. Our goal with F27 is to start a conversation and lead society to a consensus by the end of 2027. Not complete solutions, mind you, that will take society longer. But at least to a consensus on the starting point: definitions.
We have other projects in the pipeline, including a book, law review articles and essays.
