"The lawyer" is probably a bad name, but I've definitely worked with this sort of person before. "The novelist" might be a better name. Of of my ex-bosses pref

"The lawyer" is probably a bad name, but I've definitely worked with this sort of person before. "The novelist" might be a better name. Of of my ex-bosses preferred long, well-written emails to just about any other form of communication. He was a really bright guy with a degree in English Literature that somehow stumbled his way into the software industry. When he wanted to start working with a new technology, he'd ingest a small pile of driest textbooks on the subject over the course of a week or so, understand and retain all of it, then start running laps around the folks who had been working with the tech for years. He's still the only engineer I've ever met that preferred learning-by-reading over learning-by-doing.