In my years directing litigation and acting as a legal counselor to Motorola, I often realized that lawyers and businesspeople tend to approach litigation and conflict differently. Once when I was telling a senior manager how much a lawsuit was going to cost if it proceeded to trial, he asked me, “Do you know how many thousands of semiconductors I have to make to cover that cost?”
To the manager, I was talking about taking away from the company’s profitability. Of course, I knew that we usually filed suits only as a last resort in egregious situations. Still, the business perspective is that litigation is a waste of money and internal resources, and it diverts critical attention away from the primary goals of business.
