Math Phobia

I've begun to notice something about certain other lawyers. I'm not ready to generalize about the size or composition of this group, but I've observed that there is some subset of lawyers who, I think, chose the law perhaps partly because of a fear of math. These are the lawyers who try really hard not to look too closely at numbers, who accept the accountant's numbers blindly, whose eyes glaze over at spreadsheets and balance sheets.

This seems to me to be an extraordinary, glaring weakness. I mean, puh-leeez, people. NUMBERS MATTER A LOT. And the method you use to get to those numbers MATTERS THE MOST. And that's the stuff that you need to look closely at to figure out -- see the assumptions that are being made, the discount rate being used, etc. How the heck will you know if you're being bamboozled if you check out when the financials are being discussed?

I've played along with it from time to time, when I think it suits my client's interest. "Well, gee whiz, you know, a lot of what these accountants say goes way over my head but essentially I think the difference between your numbers and our numbers is this, although don't take it from me because heck I'm just an attorney....." I've been surprised at how readily some attorneys will jump right in and basically say, heck, no, let's leave all that complicated number stuff to the accountants, if they say that's the right number it must be, great, I don't really want to look at the math, thanks.

I think that's a crappy way to represent your clients.

Comments

[laura]

You should see the confusion that ensues when the check arrives at a table of my fellow law students - dividing it up is always a challenge...

[Lisa]

If I provided the name, would you let my
divorce attorney know that!

[Jeff Hobart]

Over the years I came to the realization that while lawyers are not illiterate, a majority tend to be innumerate! The language of business is accounting and finance, yet few lawyers are trained in either field. And as Robert Dickie in an ABA publication notes, “the training that does occur tends to be either too pedestrian or too esoteric to be useful in practice.” The adverse results include a myopic practice of business law.

In my own case, I returned to school to study accounting and finance, passed the C.P.A. exam, and began a career of teaching and consulting in the law, finance and accounting disciplines. The highlight of my teaching career was returning to my law school, U of Texas at Austin, as an adjunct to teach financial accounting and finance to motivated 2 and 3 L liberal arts students.

It has been my experience that students and practicing attorneys are acutely aware of their deficiency. I believe law students will eagerly enroll in a well taught accounting/finance course if afforded the opportunity to do Structuring a course for time pressed attorneys has proved to be more elusive. The one day professional seminars typically cram too much in too short a time. Yet lawyers have trouble committing to multiple short term chunks of digestible learning over a period of time. Unfortunately, that is the only effective way to learn this stuff.

[Richard Ames]

Accountants do all the work, and the lawyers can have all the fun IF they know their debits and credits, and a bit about ratios. I know this because I used to be an accountant before I went to law school, and specfically left accounting because it seemed overly tedious, and because I rarely seemed to be the end user of the numbers that I crunched. As a lawyer, my accounting days have been invaluable to me, and I actually get to USE the numbers that some poor accounting sod spent hours posting and calculating. Lawyers should embrace the numbers, have FUN with them, and be happy they chose law over accounting.

[Carrie]

Yep, total agreement here. This is why I prefer larger firms, despite their being more expensive. If a persons own lawyer isn't good at math, you can bet they've got one on staff who is a closet accountant or better...an accoutant AND a lawyer.

I know of one business partnership which dissolved and both partners used the same lawyer. The lawyer did not inform the partners they should each have independent counsel. Needless to say, one partner managed to rip off the other one from their life's work financially. If the lawyer had correctly advised the above, this could have been avoided.

[Steve]

I took the AP calculus test in 1983 so I'd never have to work another math problem after high school.

[Lawrence Wade]

Take it from me, a life-long mathphobe who went back to university to take Engineering...

Math isn't tough - just do your homework! Understanding comes with practice, and believe me, I have no natural aptitude for mathematics whatsoever. You will never be good at math if you don't practice.

Note that I still have a hard time adding two numbers in my head. I have to work through each problem step by step, meticulously doing things that my peers glance at. Maybe it's a learning disability? I don't know, but I have triumphed over it.

If you're out of school and want to brush up or learn something new, I highly recommend Calculus Made Easy by Silvanus Thompson.

Calculus is, to my mind, the most valuable and useful tool you can add to your numeric arsenal. It's all about rates of change and areas of weird shapes. To us engineers, that makes it about position, speed, acceleration; work and power. To you guys, it's all about rates of return, statistics and probabilities.

It's essential stuff whether you're designing bridges or prosecuting an investment fraud!

Don't be afraid of it, just take it one problem at a time. No human being has been born with an innate ability to integrate or differentiate.

But your car's speedometer knows how to differentiate. It finds the rate of change of your car's position with respect to time - the derivative of the number on your odometer! It does it by a dead simple little mechanism involving a cup, a magnet, and a spring.

Now, surely each one of you is smarter than a cup, a magnet, and a spring?

Lawrence Wade
www.glowingplate.com

[jennie]

omg