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I know how lawyers behave and how companies of different sizes use them. However, I asked a different question, namely, what's legal obligation referenced in "

by anamax 17y ago

I know how lawyers behave and how companies of different sizes use them. However, I asked a different question, namely, what's legal obligation referenced in "they're often legally obligated to have you sign one."

tptacek 17y ago
Because they themselves are bound by confidentiality rules, either by contract or by regulation (HIPAA, etc), and the NDA is part of the due care they have to take to ensure employees and contractors can't violate those rules. It's been a little while, so now I'm wondering: what are we debating here? Clearly, large companies will demand NDAs, and clearly they are unlikely to back down for a 5 person web shop.
- anamax 17y ago
  > what are we debating here? Clearly, large companies will demand NDAs, and clearly they are unlikely to back down for a 5 person web shop. We're not debating anything. I'm trying to find out how the presence of in-house counsel and/or a couple of hundred employees is relevant to a legal obligation. Yes, legal obligations come from contracts and laws and company size leads to inflexible behavior, but that wasn't the original statement. I've quoted it below. "Practically no company with in-house counsel --- that is, no company with more than a couple hundred employees --- will show any flexibility on this; they're often legally obligated to have you sign one."
  - tptacek 17y ago
    I hope you feel like I've responded to your original question: (a) At some threshold size it becomes more cost-effective to keep legal in-house (b) That's because you'll be handling so many contracts for vendors, customers, and service providers that the round trips to an outside firm will become intolerable (c) Once you have legal in-house, they're going to set the standard for contractor legal relationships (d) Legal will have zero incentive to show flexibility about those standards; any laxity is pure downside risk for them (e) The effect is amplified here by the fact that legal spends more time on relationships with comparatively large legal risks, and couldn't care less about a 5 person web shop (f) In many cases, legal is right, because giving an outside firm enough access to get work done exposes them to regulated information (g) Even if it's unreasonable to presume that a 5 person web shop is going to facilitate a vast (say) HIPAA violation, for instance by accidentally printing and mailing tens of thousands of customer notices on paper used to print patient health records (note: actually happened), it's also unreasonable for there to be no contractual notice and protection for such an event happening As usual, 'grellas has the better example. Here's a refined version of it: virtually all my clients are confidential. If you came to my office, there's a nonzero chance you'd learn one of them (we take steps, but it's hard to be perfect about it in person, when you're on the phone with them or their apps are on your monitor). What keeps you from tweeting what you learn?

by anamax 17y ago

tptacek 17y ago

Because they themselves are bound by confidentiality rules, either by contract or by regulation (HIPAA, etc), and the NDA is part of the due care they have to take to ensure employees and contractors can't violate those rules. It's been a little while, so now I'm wondering: what are we debating here? Clearly, large companies will demand NDAs, and clearly they are unlikely to back down for a 5 person web shop.

anamax 17y ago
> what are we debating here? Clearly, large companies will demand NDAs, and clearly they are unlikely to back down for a 5 person web shop. We're not debating anything. I'm trying to find out how the presence of in-house counsel and/or a couple of hundred employees is relevant to a legal obligation. Yes, legal obligations come from contracts and laws and company size leads to inflexible behavior, but that wasn't the original statement. I've quoted it below. "Practically no company with in-house counsel --- that is, no company with more than a couple hundred employees --- will show any flexibility on this; they're often legally obligated to have you sign one."
- tptacek 17y ago
  I hope you feel like I've responded to your original question: (a) At some threshold size it becomes more cost-effective to keep legal in-house (b) That's because you'll be handling so many contracts for vendors, customers, and service providers that the round trips to an outside firm will become intolerable (c) Once you have legal in-house, they're going to set the standard for contractor legal relationships (d) Legal will have zero incentive to show flexibility about those standards; any laxity is pure downside risk for them (e) The effect is amplified here by the fact that legal spends more time on relationships with comparatively large legal risks, and couldn't care less about a 5 person web shop (f) In many cases, legal is right, because giving an outside firm enough access to get work done exposes them to regulated information (g) Even if it's unreasonable to presume that a 5 person web shop is going to facilitate a vast (say) HIPAA violation, for instance by accidentally printing and mailing tens of thousands of customer notices on paper used to print patient health records (note: actually happened), it's also unreasonable for there to be no contractual notice and protection for such an event happening As usual, 'grellas has the better example. Here's a refined version of it: virtually all my clients are confidential. If you came to my office, there's a nonzero chance you'd learn one of them (we take steps, but it's hard to be perfect about it in person, when you're on the phone with them or their apps are on your monitor). What keeps you from tweeting what you learn?