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</o:shapelayout></xml><![endif]--></head><body lang=EN-US link=blue vlink=purple><div class=WordSection1><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>I am not a lawyer, but our Big Rip discussion has me thinking overtime in overdrive.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>If one hangs out on Quora or any of the other social commentary sites, one can get a good amateur-level education in anything, including law, with commentary by lawyers offered free.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Although I didn’t see anyone suggest it, an idea occurred to me. A case comes up where a big rich cherry-red lawsuit target does something to harm a penniless nobody, perhaps a news agency singling out a child with a questionable story. Now a lawyer agrees to represent the child in a lawsuit for a contingency, nothing if he gets nothing, a third of the take if he wins (I think that is a common standard today.)<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>OK then.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Suppose a case is being watched by a lot of people. The lawyer who takes the case is gambling: he still has to pay his people. But we can think of a payoff matrix: the lawyer might make yakkity yak dollars in such and such years from now, or bla bla dollars in urka urk years from now, etc. Create a payoff matrix, cross product with time to payoff matrix, get a present worth vector which can be (in an engineering sense) reduced to a scalar. We can (kinda sorta) claim that a client this lawyer just took on is “worth” (in a sense) a specific number of present-day dollars, based on one’s estimated payout and time matrices. Ja?<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>OK, the law firm might go broke before the case is adjudicated, so if we have a law firm with a (scalar) net worth of say 30 million bucks but has no income (because the 30 million figure is predicated on his entire firm working that case) and a 2 million a year payroll, then the probability of that firm going under before it gets its potential pay is considerable.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>What if… there was a way (or perhaps there already is a way) to buy the equivalent of stock in a law firm? Investors can keep the firm afloat and keep its staff paid while they work on the case. That would create a money equivalent to the breezy verbiage on Quora where people are guessing at the value of a civil case.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Law hipsters among us please: can a person buy stock in a law firm?<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>spike<o:p></o:p></p></div></body></html>