CIO —
Legal Advice
Two books plead the case that ignorance of the law can be either costly or self-destructive?or both
Make the Rules or Your Rivals Will
By G. Richard Shell
Crown Publishing Group, 2004, $27.50
Where will hard work combined with a good product and business plan get a company? Next to nowhere, unless the people in charge learn how to exploit the legal and legislative systems their business operates in. This decidedly un-Horatio Alger-like philosophy is the foundation for Wharton B-school professor G. Richard Shell’s argument that skill in using the law for competitive advantage is a requirement?not an option. Executives who disdain the legal playing field, he says, place their companies’ fates into rival hands. In Make the Rules, Shell introduces the legal tactics that confer competitive advantage (but not before attaching the disclaimer that many of these tactics are, in fact, unethical and that his educating readers about their use is no way an endorsement). He identifies five factors?legal merit, public legitimacy, strategic position, financial resources and access?that ultimately decide who wins and who loses in a business clash and traces these factors through every imaginable business situation.
Stories of successful legal maneuvering by businesses appear throughout. Highway weigh stations, it turns out, are the result of a successful 1950s campaign by the railroads to slow down their freight-hauling rivals. Who knew? This is an easy to read and often fascinating account of how the powerful got and stay powerful. Readers are guaranteed to come away more politically savvy. The only downside of the author’s message is that except in the case of large, financially solid companies, there isn’t much room for optimism: Those with power will always use it to keep others from joining their ranks.
-Ben Worthen
Software Agreements Line by Line:
A Detailed Look at Software Agreements & How to Change Them to Fit Your Needs
By Michael Overly and James R. Kalyvas
Aspatore Books, 2004, $49.95
To suggest that you shouldn’t acquire this book based on some quibble with its style or tone would be akin to telling a man dying of thirst to turn down a glass of water because it’s tepid. As the authors (both attorneys) rightly point out in the beginning, software licensing has long been about vendors maximizing revenue and minimizing accountability, while CIOs have stood by and even resisted taking an active role in changing that fact. This book sets out to change all that. The authors offer up a sample vendor agreement in the first chapter, then use the rest of the book to show CIOs how to tweak, edit and otherwise twist that agreement to their favor.
